Describing a situation in which I experienced intellectual blindness, when I realized it was only self-delusion, and what I did afterwards
What context? What was the subject?
The situation I am about to describe happened in a school context; during a people management team assignment on HR Policies in collaboration with Lidl’s HR Director.
Describing the confirmation bias, false consensus bias and correspondence bias in this case.
Confirmation bias
At some point during the course of this team assignment, I constantly assumed that a team member who always gave an excuse for not doing his assigned work on time was lying because he didn’t share the same punctuality, attention to detail, creative writing skills, and task-orientation values/attitudinal patterns as me in that sense. I almost always immediately judged whatever work he does even before I take a look at it because he never showed any sign of seriousness with the assignment. On the other hand, because the other team mates I had for this assignment were more attentive to detail, punctual and task-oriented like I am to a good extent, I tended to always listen to what they had to say with a more open and objective heart and had a look at their work without any initial conclusions about it. I also never wanted to work with him too because I had observed that he was rarely in any class unlike me who very much values attending classes; I wanted to work with people whom I knew had the same mindset as I do with regards to school and working on tasks.
False consensus bias
I portrayed a false consensus bias when I overestimated the level to which my other two teammates share same work attributes with me. I observed this overestimation after a certain day I read through a written piece or work one of them had written and noticed that she left out a whole lot of important details that would’ve caused us to lose much points if I hadn’t figured it out. I had expected more from her; at least to my standard or more. Plus, she also had taken her time to get it done; she wasn’t as timely as I presumed her to be and as I had observed her to be a few times. This was when I knew she didn’t share my behavioural pattern and values to the level at which I thought she did.
Correspondence bias
One day during the course of this assignment, I realised that I had misinterpreted the behaviour of the teammate who I always thought was lying about the excuses he gives. He didn’t deliver his task on time as usual and I immediately interpreted his actions to mean that he was out partying and didn’t care even one bit about the assignment. When he finally came through with the assigned task, he let the team know that he had been at the hospital as he was sick, and he also didn’t attend classes for a while. When he resumes school, one could indeed tell that he had been sick. I interpreted his behaviour too quickly; I didn’t stop to think that maybe I’m too perfectionist and task oriented and overthinking simple issues, and should take a break from work from time to time to recuperate before getting back to work, etc.
Who did I disagree with? When did I realize that this was only self-delusion and what did I do afterwards
During the course of this assignment, I mostly disagreed with the teammates who didn't share enough of all my work ethics/values/attitude to work. I only came to the cognizance that this was only self-delusion while following the preparatory learning path for the third TMD workshop for this semester. Afterwards, I took note of the kinds of self-delusion I had displayed by writing them down here and will be more conscious of not repeating them again in the future.
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