[castleofargh]

J.E. (Hans) Korteling, Alexander Toet, in Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, 2nd edition, 2022

Abstract

Cognitive biases are systematic cognitive dispositions or inclinations in human thinking and reasoning that often do not comply with the tenets of logic, probability reasoning, and plausibility. These intuitive and subconscious tendencies are at the basis of human judgment, decision making, and the resulting behavior. Psychological frameworks consider biases as resulting from the use of (inappropriate) cognitive heuristics that people apply to deal with data-limitations, from information processing limitations, or from a lack of expertise. Neuro-evolutionary frameworks provide a more profound explanation of biases as originating from the inherent design characteristics of our brain as a neural network that was primarily developed to perform basic physical, perceptual and motor functions, and which also had to promote the survival of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

A. Wilke, R. Mata, in Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Second Edition), 2012
Heuristics and Biases: A Short History of Cognitive Bias

In the early 1970s, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the term ‘cognitive bias’ to describe people's systematic but purportedly flawed patterns of responses to judgment and decision problems.

In this hobby, we could take confirmation bias as a meaningful example. Some dictionary wrote this:

The fact that people are more likely to accept or notice information if it appears to support what they already believe or expect.

The general idea is clear enough, can be found in all common definitions, and we all know of this most common and very human behavior. Our own desire for a certain outcome becomes a significant influence on how we think, how we search for answers, and it also determines what we're more willing to accept as true when information is presented to us.
A more correct outcome would obviously require to only rely on facts pertaining to the matter at hand.


Now I'll just present a few experiments showing how something apparently unrelated still manages to affect our behavior or experience:


People get tasked to count money, while another group counts M&M's. Then people go to another room one by one and on the way someone drops what she/he was carrying. The M&M's group will have more people stop to help. And over other similar tests, it was found that dealing with money will on average make people more egoistical. Money manages to affect decisions that aren't related to financial concerns. It's not logical, but it sometimes happens to some people.

A similar experiment is about people waiting for the bus, another is done on kids, the trend remains. At the same time, various experiments have shown that counting our money made us feel good and made us more willing to take on challenges.




People gamble and while anybody with basic education on statistics knows when successive results are not statistically related( random sequences where previous results do not affect the following ones), most people will still "see" patterns within the results and want to bet based on those discovered patterns when nothing in principle or in practice validates that behavior.




The Monty Hall problem. You have 3 doors, you pick one, then one of the 2 other doors is opened (with no prize behind). You can decide to keep your initial choice or change it for the remaining door.
Statistics clearly tell us to change, but most people had trouble letting go of their original gut feeling choice and would mostly stick to the door they first picked.
They knew nothing about where the prize was, they had no particular reason to stay with the same door, and stats actually tell us to change. But something inside people's head made them reluctant to let go of what they had already decided to be the answer, no matter how arbitrary that initial choice was.




People working on matching fingerprints were given extra information about the prints in the form of a DNA result. Sometimes saying the DNA already matched, sometimes saying it didn't and sometime saying the result was inconclusive(none of it specifically following the actual matching of the fingerprints, to offer a variety of scenarios). The result of that experiment showed how of course the DNA information that should absolutely not affect their own work, did. It also revealed what has been found in various areas of study, that the harder it was to match the fingerprints, the more they got influenced by the DNA information. Simply said, when the thing we're trying to find is hard to get, the brain will assign more significance to other, less related sources of information to make up for the missing data. Some people talk about this in terms of the brain answering an easier but false question, instead of the hard but correct one.




Next, consider a particular encounter with one person clearly identified as belonging to a certain group (ethnic, country, fans of a football team, members of Sound Science...). That encounter if it has gone particularly bad (or really well) can easily have someone expect all members of that group to behave similarly. It's to the point where he might predict behavior and motivation for people he doesn't know, just from that one initial encounter.
It's a prevalent tendency in the world. It isn't logical or right, but it's in us. From racism based on anecdotes, to a priori linked to being a Samsung phone owner instead of having an iPhone. Our brain wants to simplify things into convenient groups and patterns. The complicated world becomes simpler, easier to handle, at the cost of being somewhat wrong or very wrong about too many things to count.





A group is given one of 2 numbers by turning a wheel (one small, one big number). Then they're asked to estimate the number of African countries, members of the United Nations. People given the small number gave on average a smaller value than those with the bigger number from turning the wheel.

Similarly, a businessman negotiating a selling price knows the value of giving a first number that's above what he wishes to sign on. Because it creates a mental reference, and the buyer will be satisfied from simply getting below that first reference.





Maybe the most significant aspect about biases is thinking we're not susceptible to them. Many experiments demonstrate that all too well. Somebody ran tests on biases on a group, then asked that group to estimate how biased they thought they have been in those experiments. After that, they gave the participants results showing how biased they actually were in those tests.
Then for the lolz, the participants were asked again to estimate their bias, and they still on average kept saying that they were less biased than they had just been shown to be.








How is this actually related to audio? But of course this was all a clever plot to sell you blind testing and measurements. You shouldn't trust yourself as much as you do, so how about some more love for evidence based data and tests that try to remove some of our biases?
It's also to have something to show people who get mad when we suggest they might be biased (as we all are). Because while we mean "remember that you're only human", they often think we just called them stupid, and as you can expect, that really helps nobody.

If I made big mistakes(I'm not a psychoanything), if some of the experiments I describe are not what I make of them, or if they got debunked by other work. Let me know, I'll look into it, correct my mistake, then deny it ever existed, like one should. ^_^

Found this on the wiki, to illustrate that maybe your previous rational about why you weren't biased, might have missed a few dozen scenarios. Brains are complex:

 

[sygnus21]

And so the point of this post?

 

[Somafunk]

And so the point of this post?

Are you seeking an objective or subjective response?

 

[sygnus21]

I hadn't thought about it.

 

[castleofargh]

And so the point of this post?

Just saying they exist. I keep having conversations where the possibility of bias is being ignored or rejected for reasons that can only suggest they don't understand what biases are.
When confronting people directly, it's near impossible to get them to consider it seriously. Perhaps with some definition and experiments that don't hit too close to home, more people will be willing to consider biases as a reality in their life and in the hobby, instead of pushing the all thing under the rug of cognitive dissonance.

That alone would be a great, happy result. But as I said, I can now link to this post next time the concept of psychological bias manages to offend somebody. Time will tell if someone already offended for the wrong reason will bother reading this long boring thing. One can always dream, and at least I would have tried.

 

[sygnus21]

Just saying they exist. I keep having conversations where the possibility of bias is being ignored or rejected for reasons that can only suggest they don't understand what biases are.
When confronting people directly, it's near impossible to get them to consider it seriously. Perhaps with some definition and experiments that don't hit too close to home, more people will be willing to consider biases as a reality in their life and in the hobby, instead of pushing the all thing under the rug of cognitive dissonance.

That alone would be a great, happy result. But as I said, I can now link to this post next time the concept of psychological bias manages to offend somebody. Time will tell if someone already offended for the wrong reason will bother reading this long boring thing. One can always dream, and at least I would have tried.

Honestly, I see nothing surprising here because as you've already said, it's part of who we are.

Pertaining to sound, I'm sure (hope) you are aware that psychology also plays a role in how we perceive sound. One example, If I upgraded from a 5K to a 20K amp, I'm damn sure looking to hear some kind of difference, even if I have to make my mind hear it. No one wants to pay for something and get no value.

Of course, there are a myriad of shades of gray of what ifs, maybe so's, and whatnots, but generally, most want to hear a difference, while some will note there is none.

On the flipside, you'll get the person who swears there's no sound difference between the two because to them wires are wires. These are usually those who aren't into Hi-Fi, and probably never owned a system costing more than maybe $1,000. The cable debate is also a good example on both sides of the aisle.

At any rate, and to be truthful here, it wasn't my intention to be involved in this conversation as it can go on forever, often at times turning into a *itch fest. And something I'm not interested in participating in. Also, why I tend stay out of the theory of sound debates.

With that I'll move on.

Peace

 

[BS5711]

That makes sense but it honestly seems like a lot of audio enthusiasts have no idea that such biases exist or they acknowledge they exist but don’t seem think they apply to them because they know what they hear.

On the face of it what I just said doesn’t make a lot of sense but it seems to apply to a disproportionate number of people that are enthusiastic in the audio hobby.

 

[bigshot]

I hadn't thought about it.

Motto!

 

[o0genesis0o]

J.E. (Hans) Korteling, Alexander Toet, in Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, 2nd edition, 2022

Abstract





A. Wilke, R. Mata, in Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Second Edition), 2012
Heuristics and Biases: A Short History of Cognitive Bias




In this hobby, we could take confirmation bias as a meaningful example. Some dictionary wrote this:

The general idea is clear enough, can be found in all common definitions, and we all know of this most common and very human behavior. Our own desire for a certain outcome becomes a significant influence on how we think, how we search for answers, and it also determines what we're more willing to accept as true when information is presented to us.
A more correct outcome would obviously require to only rely on facts pertaining to the matter at hand.


Now I'll just present a few experiments showing how something apparently unrelated still manages to affect our behavior or experience:


People get tasked to count money, while another group counts M&M's. Then people go to another room one by one and on the way someone drops what she/he was carrying. The M&M's group will have more people stop to help. And over other similar tests, it was found that dealing with money will on average make people more egoistical. Money manages to affect decisions that aren't related to financial concerns. It's not logical, but it sometimes happens to some people.

A similar experiment is about people waiting for the bus, another is done on kids, the trend remains. At the same time, various experiments have shown that counting our money made us feel good and made us more willing to take on challenges.




People gamble and while anybody with basic education on statistics knows when successive results are not statistically related( random sequences where previous results do not affect the following ones), most people will still "see" patterns within the results and want to bet based on those discovered patterns when nothing in principle or in practice validates that behavior.




The Monty Hall problem. You have 3 doors, you pick one, then one of the 2 other doors is opened (with no prize behind). You can decide to keep your initial choice or change it for the remaining door.
Statistics clearly tell us to change, but most people had trouble letting go of their original gut feeling choice and would mostly stick to the door they first picked.
They knew nothing about where the prize was, they had no particular reason to stay with the same door, and stats actually tell us to change. But something inside people's head made them reluctant to let go of what they had already decided to be the answer, no matter how arbitrary that initial choice was.




People working on matching fingerprints were given extra information about the prints in the form of a DNA result. Sometimes saying the DNA already matched, sometimes saying it didn't and sometime saying the result was inconclusive(none of it specifically following the actual matching of the fingerprints, to offer a variety of scenarios). The result of that experiment showed how of course the DNA information that should absolutely not affect their own work, did. It also revealed what has been found in various areas of study, that the harder it was to match the fingerprints, the more they got influenced by the DNA information. Simply said, when the thing we're trying to find is hard to get, the brain will assign more significance to other, less related sources of information to make up for the missing data. Some people talk about this in terms of the brain answering an easier but false question, instead of the hard but correct one.




Next, consider a particular encounter with one person clearly identified as belonging to a certain group (ethnic, country, fans of a football team, members of Sound Science...). That encounter if it has gone particularly bad (or really well) can easily have someone expect all members of that group to behave similarly. It's to the point where he might predict behavior and motivation for people he doesn't know, just from that one initial encounter.
It's a prevalent tendency in the world. It isn't logical or right, but it's in us. From racism based on anecdotes, to a priori linked to being a Samsung phone owner instead of having an iPhone. Our brain wants to simplify things into convenient groups and patterns. The complicated world becomes simpler, easier to handle, at the cost of being somewhat wrong or very wrong about too many things to count.





A group is given one of 2 numbers by turning a wheel (one small, one big number). Then they're asked to estimate the number of African countries, members of the United Nations. People given the small number gave on average a smaller value than those with the bigger number from turning the wheel.

Similarly, a businessman negotiating a selling price knows the value of giving a first number that's above what he wishes to sign on. Because it creates a mental reference, and the buyer will be satisfied from simply getting below that first reference.





Maybe the most significant aspect about biases is thinking we're not susceptible to them. Many experiments demonstrate that all too well. Somebody ran tests on biases on a group, then asked that group to estimate how biased they thought they have been in those experiments. After that, they gave the participants results showing how biased they actually were in those tests.
Then for the lolz, the participants were asked again to estimate their bias, and they still on average kept saying that they were less biased than they had just been shown to be.








How is this actually related to audio? But of course this was all a clever plot to sell you blind testing and measurements. You shouldn't trust yourself as much as you do, so how about some more love for evidence based data and tests that try to remove some of our biases?
It's also to have something to show people who get mad when we suggest they might be biased (as we all are). Because while we mean "remember that you're only human", they often think we just called them stupid, and as you can expect, that really helps nobody.

If I made big mistakes(I'm not a psychoanything), if some of the experiments I describe are not what I make of them, or if they got debunked by other work. Let me know, I'll look into it, correct my mistake, then deny it ever existed, like one should. ^_^

Found this on the wiki, to illustrate that maybe your previous rational about why you weren't biased, might have missed a few dozen scenarios. Brains are complex:

Informative post and a great read. I would need to save it to a PDF and read again later.

But does it even matter in personal audio hobby? At the end of the day, the goal of the personal audio is not the “objective” world out there but the “subjective” inside. If we sit and “feel” whether a signal has been transferred correctly across computer networks, that’s dumb because the goal is the correctness of the signal transfer, which happens in the “objective” world. But the goal of the personal audio is what happens inside, bias and all. What if a certain impression is due to bias? Cool. Then find a way to force that bias to happen more often to make listeners satisfied, because that subjective impression is the goal and the “objective reality” of personal audio. Even if a 00000.1dB change is inaudible, if it / they manage to convince (“trick”) enough / a lot of listeners into “hearing” it and makes them satisfied with their experience, then it’s not a trick and perhaps one should research to find a way to control that illusion better.

But no, if it’s not on the oscilloscope or coupler or multi-meter, “it’s not true and if you hear it you are stupid.”

 

[FunkyBassMan]

Informative post and a great read. I would need to save it to a PDF and read again later.

But does it even matter in personal audio hobby? At the end of the day, the goal of the personal audio is not the “objective” world out there but the “subjective” inside. If we sit and “feel” whether a signal has been transferred correctly across computer networks, that’s dumb because the goal is the correctness of the signal transfer, which happens in the “objective” world. But the goal of the personal audio is what happens inside, bias and all. What if a certain impression is due to bias? Cool. Then find a way to force that bias to happen more often to make listeners satisfied, because that subjective impression is the goal and the “objective reality” of personal audio. Even if a 00000.1dB change is inaudible, if it / they manage to convince (“trick”) enough / a lot of listeners into “hearing” it and makes them satisfied with their experience, then it’s not a trick and perhaps one should research to find a way to control that illusion better.

But no, if it’s not on the oscilloscope or coupler or multi-meter, “it’s not true and if you hear it you are stupid.”

Exactly. It's the "you are stupid" they're after, because it makes them feel good (see: dopamine).

But you put your finger exactly on why the stupid ones are in fact they.

Because, if you can't avoid cognitive biases, then what things "objectively" sound like is totally irrelevant to the human experience.

Like their comments, as you and everyone else and the millions who good-sounding music on good equipment knows all too well.

 

[bigshot]

If you don’t care about spending money where it matters and you don’t care if your system is reproducing music with high fidelity, then there ‘s no reason to look at it objectively. Just buy what makes you happy and listen to whatever color of sound you like that day.

But that isn’t what the people who reject science are saying. They’re saying that their hearing is more accurate than tuning your system with science.

When people say that they don’t care that tube amps are colored and often have added distortion, that’s perfectly fine by me. If someone is making a conscious choice to follow that and understands the ramifications, who’s to speak against that? It’s a conscious choice. But I don’t think that describes most audiophiles that engage in arguing here.

 

[BS5711]

Understanding and accepting our biases and our ability to be fooled by our own senses and thoughts but then accepting and being OK that our subjective enjoyment is being effected by our biases is entirely different to not even knowing about or acknowledging our biases, thinking that we can control them or are somehow above them like they don’t apply to us. The latter seems to be very common in the audio community.

I am fully aware that I spend money on things that I know make no difference technically but just improve my subjective experience, nice looking cables for example. If I really enjoy using a certain IEM or headphone that enjoyment is greatly enhanced but liking the set up aesthetically and for me that includes a nice cable that to my eye suits the IEM or headphone. I know a properly made $20 cable will sound the same as a $200 cable but I also know that my mind will trick me into enjoying the listening experience more if I like the cable aesthetically and if I feel I have a somewhat premium product.

However, I don’t want to be blind to my biases and fooled by the nonsense reviews on Head Fi and other places and being convinced that a $500 or $1,000 cable will make a notable improvement in sound quality over my $200 one.

I don’t want to be fooled by a reviewer who gets stuff for free and describes the improvement in sound brought about by getting the latest rhodium plated 4.4mm plug for the cable with swappable terminations. I do want to know that the same reviewer is over 60 years old, very likely doesn’t have highly refined hearing but is quite possibly suffering the same age related hearing degradation as I am !

I want to understand and make choices that work for me and spend my money on things that add to my subjective enjoyment rather than ignore my biases and chase improvements that don’t exist but believing they do and wasting a lot of money in doing so, meanwhile lining the pockets of those that are deceiving me with marketing and reviews that exaggerate reality, flat out lie about a product or worse still describe sonic improvements that don’t exist because the reviewer doesn’t understand or acknowledge their own biases. I don’t want to be fooled by someone who is being fooled themselves.

 

[castleofargh]

Informative post and a great read. I would need to save it to a PDF and read again later.

But does it even matter in personal audio hobby? At the end of the day, the goal of the personal audio is not the “objective” world out there but the “subjective” inside. If we sit and “feel” whether a signal has been transferred correctly across computer networks, that’s dumb because the goal is the correctness of the signal transfer, which happens in the “objective” world. But the goal of the personal audio is what happens inside, bias and all. What if a certain impression is due to bias? Cool. Then find a way to force that bias to happen more often to make listeners satisfied, because that subjective impression is the goal and the “objective reality” of personal audio. Even if a 00000.1dB change is inaudible, if it / they manage to convince (“trick”) enough / a lot of listeners into “hearing” it and makes them satisfied with their experience, then it’s not a trick and perhaps one should research to find a way to control that illusion better.

If you're happy about your system and enjoying it, there might be no need or desire to go look beyond that. It is, at the most basic level, a hobby about trying to have a good time or an emotional connection with our favorite music. "A subjective claim is not a factual matter, it is an expression of belief, opinion, or personal preference. A subjective claim cannot be proved right or wrong by any generally accepted criteria". Definition I often bring up that clearly seals the deal. We feel what we feel, and I cannot prove that someone did not. If I say I prefer using one cable over another(and I do), there is nothing to argue about or disprove. Someone can still feel differently and both are correct because our feelings are or own and do not define the actual sound of the cable. That's when the "agree to disagree" seems like a perfect closing argument.

But when you see people arguing on the forum, is it their happiness and preferences that someone is contesting? That almost never happens, in part because of what I just said about subjective feelings and preferences.
Instead, people tend to argue about the sound of the gear or what they can or cannot hear:
-The sound of the gear is a purely objective and testable variable, so there is an answer and at least one side is wrong. Biases or subjective opinions are irrelevant to the actual sound and have no role or place in finding out what it actually is. Measurements do that.

-As for fighting over what we can hear, while that might look subjective(as in giving a result per subject), it is testable and can be disproved, in this objective world, that person can or cannot hear some things, and again, his opinion or beliefs have nothing to do with it. A blind test, removing potential biases(mostly visual cues, expectations, and just paying attention to not introducing more biases like volume level differences or some identifiable clicking sound or delay or an examiner smiling like a fool anytime his favorite device is ON) will give the statistical answer to how likely it is for someone to hear something. Obviously biases must be considered and listed, otherwise we might forget some in the test and get biased results instead of correct ones like it can often happen in a poorly controlled sighted impression.

Perhaps the line is too thin for most people to even notice when they cross it. I would suggest clearing the misunderstanding the moment you realize a conversation that was about your feelings and preferences, turns into one about sound and your ability to hear something. They're different discussions.

Now, for those who insist on knowing what they heard, despite relying entirely on a casual sighted impression full of potential biases, well, until they perform a test to objectively demonstrate that ability, biases will and should count as a potential influence in the subjective experience. It's the right thing to do.
Being a big brave confident alpha male has no value in how factual his objectively testable claim is. self-confidence only affects our level of belief.
Perhaps understanding those distinctions is even more relevant to the hobby than understanding the omnipresence of biases in our life. But it's near impossible to dissociate them, so we better have some expectation of biases anyway.


Of course, someone who refuses to look at the possibility of sound difference and audibility to only claim the experience is due to biases, is guilty of the exact same poor diagnostic and biased logic as the one ignoring biases and only looking at his feelings to describe objective reality. If an event can have multiple causes, ignoring some of them without legitimate reasons, that's cherry-picking and it is wrong.

But no, if it’s not on the oscilloscope or coupler or multi-meter, “it’s not true and if you hear it you are stupid.”

Exactly. It's the "you are stupid" they're after, because it makes them feel good (see: dopamine).

But you put your finger exactly on why the stupid ones are in fact they.

Because, if you can't avoid cognitive biases, then what things "objectively" sound like is totally irrelevant to the human experience.

Like their comments, as you and everyone else and the millions who good-sounding music on good equipment knows all too well.

Really? Half of my reason to bother making this thread was to avoid this.
If someone does argue that you are stupid because you believe in something they don't, you can report it as a personal attack. It's not a scientific position or a proof, it's someone trying to put you down.
Yes, someone is going to bring up Dunning-Kruger to call someone stupid. And someone will think you're a fool for not understanding how a biased experience should never be fully trusted. And someone will say that if it's not measured, it certainly isn't audible and imply stupidity for believing otherwise.
I'm sure all of that happens, I know it does.
But, first, the elephant in the room. Those are personal opinions, not demonstrations. They could have posted, "lol U dumb" and it would have had the same argumentative value about sound, audibility, or someone's being stupid.

Second, let's be honest that kind of stuff goes both ways, @FunkyBassMan who is quite experienced at insulting others and calling what they say stupid, knows it well. Just being somewhat interested in measurements and objective testing get ridiculed on an almost daily basis by some people on Head-Fi. I'm sure you know the general level of respect given to the Sound Science section and people in it.
Someone is going to get butt hurt, someone is going to get mad at someone else, someone is going to generalize and put that guy in a box with a certain group of people. Again, it is how our brains work, and it does often lead to actions with little dignity or logic. Rapidly, what is being discussed isn't even the point, someone out of argument will try to win the internet instead.

Of course, I'm the exception. I'm never wrong, I never attack a person instead of his ideas, I never ever call a group I mean to criticize, "they", "so called subjectivists", "audiophools". I don't do that because I'm never biased, and I know when I'm right!




My strong suggestion is to try and understand more about ourselves, others, and our very many flaws, more so for a hobby where we matter quite a bit I would say ^_^. If along the way it helps be more patient with others and their obvious biases, that's a cool bonus.

 

[KinGensai]

@castleofargh
I don't see anything wrong with your summation of our current understanding of cognitive biases. The graph of biases seems like a multi-disciplinary collection of terms for similar biases grouped by type, good find.

 

[Bytor123]

'My strong suggestion is to try and understand more about ourselves, others, and our very many flaws'
Seems reasonable