Perspective & Bias

Understanding your perspective means taking stock of your prior knowledge, experiences, and priorities.

By evaluating your own particular perspective, you make it possible to do the research that only you can do. What kinds of research questions can best capture your unique way of seeing the world?

Factoring in perspective is also a crucial step in thinking critically about a claim or argument. Asking critical questions about our own perspective allows us to strengthen our arguments and find new depths of analysis:

• How do I know what I know about this?

• If I had a different experience or perspective, how might I see it differently?

• What don’t I see? Am I taking anything for granted that might deserve a closer look?

When reading or evaluating an argument, it’s also important to consider the perspective from which the argument is made. This can not only help us understand why a particular person might make a particular claim, but it can also reveal good starting points for critical analysis:

• Who is making this claim? Where are they coming from?

• What kinds of experiences contribute to their perspective on this issue?

• Would a different perspective—maybe my own perspective—reveal gaps or contradictions in the argument?

Perspective and Identity

Experts often start with the most basic categories of identity when analyzing perspective: race, class, and gender. These aspects of identity help us make sense of the world (e.g. by classifying individuals into groups based on biological makeup and socioeconomic status) and also shape ideologies. For instance, growing up as a Black American in Chicago most likely gives an individual a different perspective from a white American growing up in rural Virginia.

Sure, I have biases, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

Although the word bias sometimes has a negative connotation, it is unavoidable in our everyday lives—we all have preferences and predispositions.

Bias becomes a problem when it prevents you from making a fair or reasoned choice about something.

In this regard, implicit bias (also known as unconscious bias or implicit stereotype) is especially problematic (Greenwald and Banaji). As the name suggests, unconscious or implicit bias refers to stereotypes about people that remain hidden to the person who holds them. Unconscious biases can be extremely harmful in many circumstances—for instance, in healthcare (Marcelin), law enforcement (Ross; Weir), education (Staats), human resources (Elias et al.), and public communication (Usher, Holcomb, and Littman).

What does bias have to do with research writing?

Just as bias can cause us to make unreasoned or unfair judgments about people, it can also impair our ability to develop or analyze an argument. If we think in advance that we’re going to disagree with an article (perhaps based on what we know about the author or the publication), chances are good that we’ll find reasons to dispute its claims, even if we would agree under other circumstances. In short, we all tend to jump to conclusions based on our preexisting ideas, and this can inhibit our ability to analyze arguments and situations rationally and objectively.

Researchers have identified a number of psychological habits or tendencies that can cloud our judgment when evaluating a situation.

• Confirmation Bias is the tendency to seek out information that reaffirms our past choices and preexisting beliefs. (Nickerson)  For example, two people on social media may be arguing the existence of climate change. In the instance of confirmation bias, each of those people would look to find scientific papers and evidence that support their theories, rather than making a full examination of the situation.

• Availability Bias (a.k.a. Availability Heuristic) is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The easier it is to recall an example of something, the more important or relevant it seems to be. Having seen a lot of news reports about airline accidents, for instance, many people worry more about flying than driving, even though, statistically, driving is much riskier. Likewise, since we’re more likely to remember an exciting win than a lot of boring losses, we may overestimate our chances of winning money with scratch-off lottery tickets.

• Recency Bias is the tendency to favor recent events, experiences, or results over previous ones. Essentially, it’s an effect of our our lazy memories. Recency bias creeps into our research when we find ourselves giving more credence to sources we’ve encountered more recently, or when more recent experiences seem to outweigh previous experiences.

• Framing Bias describes how decisions are affected by the way the decision is presented. (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981) For instance, people prefer an economic agenda when high employment rates are provided, but they are against it when the complementary unemployment rates are accentuated. (Druckman) Framing effects are important to consider not only when reading or writing arguments, but also when searching for information online. The way you word your search might have a large effect on what you find!

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"Perspective" by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Changes were made to the original work / No changes were made to the original work. 

"Bias" by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).