The Person You Mean to Be

The Person You Mean to Be teaches you how to navigate cognitive biases that may prevent you from forming meaningful relationships and experiencing the world as it is by leading you to wrongful assumptions or limitations about your environment or by anchoring you in your preexisting beliefs.

You probably know about confirmation bias—the tendency to search for and accept information that confirms your existing beliefs and rejects information that challenges them. But did you know that there are a whole host of other cognitive biases that we all fall for?

In fact, Harvard conducted a study about this phenomenon and even created an online test (the IAT test) to demonstrate how we all have unconscious biases that affect how we think. Even for the most progressive people, this test was a revelation.

On average, it seems that the majority of respondents associate black people with dangerous weapons, women with childcare, and men with careers and work. It may sound bitter, but it’s all there. So, how do we get rid of these biases?

One way is to keep an open mindset or a growth mindset. Such a mentality is in contradiction to a fixed mindset, as it implies that a person is open to new perspectives, they willingly try new things and get out of their comfort zone.

For example, a fixed mindset person might say something like “I was never good at singing”, while a growth mindset person would just try it out regardless. It’s the same with biases – we must accept that we have them and work from there. It takes proactive participation and an inner will to work on it.

Cognitive biases are something that we all experience in our daily lives. For example, when you meet someone new, you probably try to guess what kind of person they are based on their appearance and behavior. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—it’s just human nature! But there are times when your assumptions about other people may be off-base. Take the example of Kimberly Davis (an American executive) who walked into a room full of people that shared her position at an event. Everyone there was white, so as she walked in, she immediately felt excluded, as no one came to chat with her. That doesn’t mean they were racist, but rather that they didn’t recognize her as one of their own based on their assumptions that a black woman could never be in an upper management position. To overcome such assumptions, educate first yourself and then those around you. The book suggests that this works even better when you step up for someone different from you. Society normally expects people that are alike to stand up…