4 Steps To Manage Cognitive Biases

People always said I was a calm guy. I never got angry or raised my voice. But it all changed when my daughter turned 3.

Like many 3-year-olds, she was testing her limits. She would flat out ignore me when I told her to do something, or she would look me in the eye and start drawing on the furniture. I started getting angry at her. I’d shout at her, she’d cry, and I’d feel sick to the stomach. But I couldn’t stop myself.

“I better look for anger management books,” I thought.

Anger is an emotion, and emotions, in general, belong to a rapid response system that helps us respond to changes in our environment that could impact our survival or well-being. Anger, in particular, is a natural response to threats. It’s a rapid response that helps us defend ourselves from an attack. Emotions like anger evolved to enable us to survive. It’s natural for us to experience them, but they need to be managed correctly or else they can have a negative impact on us and the people around us.

What Cognitive Biases and Emotions Have in Common

Cognitive biases are similar to emotions. They belong to a rapid response system that helps us to fill in gaps in our information and act decisively despite those gaps. We all have them. We have evolved to have both anger and…