This is the 84th #WILTW

This week Steve Harvey made a mistake. It was a pretty simple mistake.

He looked at a piece of paper to see who had a won a competition. He saw “1st”, saw a name next to it and so read out who he thought the winner was….

The problem was that he didn’t see “runner up” and his error took place in front of 10 million viewers.

In retrospect it is easy to judge and wonder how he made such an error? But confirmation bias, like other forms of cognitive bias, is a subtle beast. I suspect, although I don’t know, that he was expecting to see ‘winner’ or ‘1st’  on the card. While in the cold light of day it is easy to see that Miss Universe is in bold on the right side it is possible that he never moved past seeing ‘1st‘ on the left.

In this case only Miss Colombia’s dreams were broken. In healthcare the consequences of confirmation, and other, biases can be far more serious. There are many great summaries of cognitive biases – this from a business perspective is one of my favourites.

And the below video contains a talk from  Pat Croskerry – somewhat of a international guru on the subject.

So whenever, or wherever, you are working this holiday period don’t let the amount of chocolate you have eaten lower your threshold for a cognitive error. You want to eat the turkey rather than be one…

What have you learnt this week? #WILTW

Thanks to a couple of my colleagues for highlighting this #WILTW.

Have a great holiday period and see you in the new year!

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