The concept is “confirmation bias” in which a decision is made not necessarily based on rational facts, but based on the fact that the decision creates a physiological response which produces a comfort level for us. It is that comfort level we are responding to, not the rational basis. In fact, the brain’s rational areas have not been activated in anyway in many of those instances when we are operating from a bias of some type, such as our political party, our religious beliefs, and so forth. For that reason the suggestion is, that, as business people, we should seek to have our best advisors around us to provide contradictory arguments, contradictory evidence, and contradictory conclusions, in a true adversarial way, before decisions are actually made.
Original writing date: July 31, 2006