WHEN birds fly together, they purposively either take advantage of the strategic aerodynamic V-shaped skein formation or through a flock called murmuration to intimidate a predator.
Humans are less intelligent than these birds when they decide and take action based only on what is popular and through a mental process that does not involve thinking. Sadly, the most intelligent creation endowed with intellect and free will may not be using these gifts in making decisions in this modern age of information and science. Automatic behavior, the dearth of cognition, seems to govern many decisions and actions.
During this election season, there are surveys (many are not based on sound scientific processes) that seem to strategically shape some biases over time toward election day. That is through the bandwagon effect, a dangerous cognitive bias. It is weaponized to be more dangerous in the virtual space where social media feeds on an algorithm of attention incited by an army of paid and organized trolls to feast on netizens who are short of critical thinking enslaved by their cognitive biases.
Cognitive biases, heuristics, fallacy
The concept of cognitive bias became the subject of research, and the concept evolved across a wide range of areas of decision-making in social behavior, thinking, behavioral economics, education, management, business, finance and health care. Researchers Tversky and Kahneman first introduced, in 1972, the concept of cognitive bias as unconscious errors in thinking rooted in a processing error often arising from problems in memory, attention, attribution and other mental mistakes. These biases result from the brain’s effort to simplify the complexities of the world we live in.
There are several forms of cognitive biases, namely confirmation bias, hindsight bias, optimism bias, anchoring bias, among others. While they can be surprisingly accurate, they can also lead to errors in thinking.
Cognitive biases stream from a number of sources, but it is heuristics โ mental shortcuts โ that often are referred to as a major contributing role. In the 1950s, Nobel prize-winning economist and cognitive psychologist Herbert Simon originally introduced the concept of heuristics. He theorized that while people strive to make rational choices, human judgment is subject to cognitive limitations.
Heuristics can help solve problems and speed up our decision-making process, but they can introduce errors. Heuristics can also contribute to things such as stereotypes and prejudices. Mental shortcuts can simply label, categorize and classify people. Such may overlook more relevant information and create stereotyped categorizations that are not aligned with reality and sometimes even with logical reason.
Cognitive bias called the bandwagon effect
The bandwagon effect refers to our tendency to adopt a certain preference, behavior, style, feelings or attitude simply because everyone else is doing it. The more people adopt a particular trend, the more likely that other people will also hop on the bandwagon.
We are highly influenced by the social pressures and subjective norms that are exerted by groups. When it seems like the majority of the members of the group is doing a certain thing, doing that thing becomes increasingly easy. Bandwagon is a type of group thinking that exerts pressure to conform.
This is also influenced by our fear of being excluded. We don’t want to be the odd one out. Going along is a comfortable way of inclusion and social acceptance.
People also desire to be right and to join the winning side. The social group becomes a source of information of what is right and acceptable. What the majority is doing denotes the impression that it is the correct thing to do.
In marketing, some launching strategies of products that capitalize and publicize (or even suspiciously orchestrate) the queuing of a mass number to draw the attention of those who may, out of curiosity, jump into the bandwagon.
Seeing that customers are patiently in queue drives some assurance that the product or service must be good, and therefore, worth trying.
But such a bandwagon holds dangerous implications for matters that are of greater value like elections. For elections, it has been proven that people are most likely to vote for the candidate who they think is winning. Surveys that lack credibility, validity and reliability, which only educated people really understand, can have a destructive effect on what benefits our country. They simply influence people to jump onto the bandwagon. Political strategists will always look for the critical mass and focus their attention on wooing them to achieve a momentum and eventually benefit from a bandwagon.
The massive rallies, which attract people through celebrities and other incentives, can draw conclusions of a bandwagon.
Fragility of the bandwagon
The bandwagon effect can be very powerful and lead to the ready formation of fads and trends. However, these behaviors also tend to be somewhat fragile and volatile. People jump on the bandwagon quickly, but they also jump off it just as fast. This is perhaps why fads tend to be so fleeting and quick to change.
How to deal with biases
While cognitive biases operate in the unconscious, there are steps that can be taken to train the mind into adopting new patterns of thinking to mitigate the impact of the biases.
First strategy is the awareness of bias. Recognizing that there are biases like these is the beginning in reframing the mind toward more critical thinking, objective decision-making and purposeful acting.
Another strategy includes an introspective approach that considers the factors that influence decisions like overconfidence or self-interest. You need to think about the influences around your decisions. Such insights may help you make better choices.
To avoid the bandwagon in choosing from among the candidates, you may need to create a set of criteria on what matters most in the selection of whom to vote. Given the valid information you can search and gather, you need to go back to the criteria and grade each candidate objectively.
We may need to also learn to challenge our biases. Critical thinking is about suspending judgment to allow us time to gather more evidence toward a more objective decision. Simple reflection on the following matters: what information could you have missed, what relevant information that doesn’t support your view could have been ignored, or what matters could you have given too much weight?
James Goldsmith warns that if we see a bandwagon, it is too late. That is because a bias has just taken place. It is up to us whether we will jump on them unquestioningly or jump on them to overturn them and subvert them.
The good news may come from the digital native โ the millennials (born 1981 to 1996) and the GenZers (born 1997 to 2007) that comprise the 68 percent (25.94 million and 21.87 million, respectively) of the 74.9 million voting population. They are not on television and are too lazy to be in campaign rallies. They are critical netizens capable of navigating information in cyberspace. If their bandwagon can be toward their felt need for change mindful of their generation, they will be game changers in these elections.
May the force be with us in creating the bandwagon for positive change.
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