I think there’s some good argument that privilege is itself a cognitive bias—a complex one, that both builds on and encourages development of others.
It’s not clear to me that privilege is a bias of its own, so much as aspects of privilege are examples of other biases, like availability bias.
I think the primary reason that attempts to discuss privilege don’t go well is because the quality of most thought on privilege is, well, not very good. People who volunteer to speak on the topic generally have strong enough opinions that they can’t help but moralize, which is something to resist whenever possible.
I think another problem with discussions of privilege is that they frequently sound as though some people (in the ways that they’re privileged) should have unlimited undefined obligations and other people (in the ways that they’re not privileged) should have unlimited social clout.
I would love to see a discussion of privilege in terms of biases. Obvious ones include: attribution errors (fundamental & ultimate); system justification; outgroup homogeneity & ingroup superiority biases.
I hadn’t considered the availability heuristic but yes, that’s probably relevant too.
That’s actually a really interesting thought. I am white and male and straight and am very aware of my privilege, and also am very interested in heuristics and biases and how they are part of our thought patterns. I consider myself very much a feminist, and also a realist in terms of how people actually work compared with how people would like each other to work. I might brood on this for a bit and write about it.
This could be something that’s kicked around in Discussions for a while perhaps?
Related, I’d like to see defensiveness discussed through the lens of cognitive bias. It has wide impact; it can be improved; improving it likewise has wide impact on one’s life. I think it’s one of those meta-levels of improvement where upgrades significantly affect our ability to upgrade many other things.
It’s not clear to me that privilege is a bias of its own, so much as aspects of privilege are examples of other biases, like availability bias.
I think the primary reason that attempts to discuss privilege don’t go well is because the quality of most thought on privilege is, well, not very good. People who volunteer to speak on the topic generally have strong enough opinions that they can’t help but moralize, which is something to resist whenever possible.
I think another problem with discussions of privilege is that they frequently sound as though some people (in the ways that they’re privileged) should have unlimited undefined obligations and other people (in the ways that they’re not privileged) should have unlimited social clout.
Or is that what you mean by moralizing?
I would love to see a discussion of privilege in terms of biases. Obvious ones include: attribution errors (fundamental & ultimate); system justification; outgroup homogeneity & ingroup superiority biases.
I hadn’t considered the availability heuristic but yes, that’s probably relevant too.
That’s actually a really interesting thought. I am white and male and straight and am very aware of my privilege, and also am very interested in heuristics and biases and how they are part of our thought patterns. I consider myself very much a feminist, and also a realist in terms of how people actually work compared with how people would like each other to work. I might brood on this for a bit and write about it.
This could be something that’s kicked around in Discussions for a while perhaps?
Related, I’d like to see defensiveness discussed through the lens of cognitive bias. It has wide impact; it can be improved; improving it likewise has wide impact on one’s life. I think it’s one of those meta-levels of improvement where upgrades significantly affect our ability to upgrade many other things.
There’s also the fundamental attribution error (“they’re not doing a good job because they’re just lazy”).
So do I, as long as it doesn’t start from the subtle assumption that men have privilege(s) while women don’t.