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How sorting through Bias can help us communicate more effectively

In Episode 2, Carol invites Amy Herman, best-selling author of Visual Intelligence, to join her in a dive deep into Amy’s unique work - revealing bias by exploring fine art. For the past two decades, Amy worked with the New York Police, the FBI, French National Police, Department of Defense, Interpol, and many fortune 500 companies.

Visual intelligence is the ability to filter out all of the noise and to really concentrate on what we need to see, and reacting appropriately. During this conversation, you will learn while sharpening your perception will change your life. 

Carol and Amy discuss the difference between the different types of bias and how they affect our behaviors, our reactions and our ability to perceive reality. 

Main Ideas 

Introduction to Visual Intelligence

• Introduction to Amy Herman and her unique work
• Defining Visual Intelligence
• How Visual Intelligence actually shapes and improve your life

The Different Types of Bias 

• Affinity Bias
• Anchor Bias
• Confirmation Bias
• Cognitive Bias

Getting the Full picture 

• What am I being influenced by
• Being aware of your surroundings, and fighting the temptation to jump to conclusions
• How you can become more aware of what biases you may have unintentionally, and not attaching judgment
• Being aware of your own projections

Key Thoughts

09:18 - We are all susceptible to the anchoring bias - the human tendency to believe the first thing we see or hear is true. And in our world of  24-hour news cycles and social media and Snapchat and instant messaging, we fall victim to this. We hear something and we say, “Oh, it's an outrage.” However, before we jump to conclusions, and I realize not every situation allows us the luxury to stop, look, and listen. But I want you to be able to say, “No, I didn't fall victim to the anchor bias. I looked at the facts, and this is what I gleaned from the situation.” - Amy  

11:13 - Confirmation biases are dangerous because you want to fit a square peg into a square hole and sometimes that hole is octagonal. You want to go in with an open mind, you don't want to go in saying, been there done that and this is going to be one more. - Amy 

The last bias that I deal with is implicit bias, often called cognitive bias, unconscious bias. It dictates that we act a certain way, according to long-held assumptions about people's people, group ideas, and we don't even realize we're being affected by it. That's why they call it unconscious or implicit, we don't even realize that it's there. My feeling about implicit bias is yes, it's dangerous, but it's no more dangerous than confirmation bias or the anchoring bias because, in all three, you can end up in the wrong place unintentionally.” - Amy

15:00 - My hope is that through the art of perception, I give people the confidence to look in the mirror and say,
“This is what I do well and this is what I don't do so well and what I need to work on.” - Amy 

16:05 - The idea of affinity bias, it is what it's what it sounds like - we gravitate towards people like ourselves in appearance, ideas, belief, and behaviors. It's understandable because we feel most comfortable with people like ourselves. I tell people that to overcome affinity bias, you're really going to enrich your world because multiple perspectives make for a more enriching life. - Amy

17:57 - We have a house rule that at least once every three movies we watch has subtitles, it’s such different storytelling. - Carol

25:03 - What I'm saying is, we're seeing three seconds of a video, you don't know what happened in the 60 seconds before that clip of the video, and you don't know what happened in the 60 seconds after. And so we have to resist the urge to pull things out of context because that fosters anchor bias and can lead to conclusions that just aren't true. - Amy

LINKS: 

www.HamiltonThinkTank.com

Amy Hermans Best Selling book <--Click Here