Philosophy
Detecting and Defeating Bias in Our Everyday Judgments
Katie Gosewehr ('11); Mentors: Peter Kung, Peter Thielke
Abstract: My ongoing project strives to define
bias and distinguish between its different
manifestations, to determine how to identify and
remove bias from our thinking. First, I turned to
psychology research on the various models of
cognition proposed to describe how we make
judgments. I focused on the “dual process” models
of judgment-making and adapted these to my own
research. According to many psychologists, we
rely heavily upon heuristics—strategies we use to
solve judgmental problems more quickly and
easily. On my view, when we use a heuristic, there
is always some danger that it will result in a
corresponding bias. If we accept the implications
of certain dual process models, then biases are
much more natural and integrated into our ways of
thinking than previously supposed. As I continue
my research, I will focus on ways to identify and
eliminate bias, and determine whether and when
bias may be inescapable.
Funding provided by The Faucett Family Foundation