that best ensures our survival. Is that brown shape in the grass a snake or stick? The fastest way to do this is to map it to something we already know. Make one connection between the new experience and an existing, and your brain can file it away. As soon as you can say something is ‘just like’ that new thing is not new or dangerous anymore. In the process we create stereotypes. Stereotypes save us a lot of time and mental energy and getting things wrong occasionally is a small price to pay for all the other times we got it right. Psychologists term this tendency for people to favour information that confirms their preconceptions a  ‘confirmation bias’. It works for us most of the time. Except when it doesn’t. If that long, thin brown shape turns out to be a snake, the price is death and it is irrelevant that the previous thousand times you walked on that path it was only a stick. The effect of confirmation bias is to erase the new experience and to assimilate it into what we know, which creates a virtuous loop of self-fulfilling confirmations. Eventually we only perceive that which confirms our preconceptions. This in turn keeps drawing us to people, things, and ideas which are already familiar with – we read the newspapers which share our views, watch the movies we like, and we mingle with people who are like us. And even when it doesn’t quite fit, we ignore the bits that don’t and simply complete the picture we want to see. In the figure below you will see a square that does not exist, because you fill in the blanks to see what you want to see. We do the same with ideas, experiences, and interpretations of other people. I am sure you have been on a holiday somewhere and thought that the landscape looked ‘just like’ somewhere else. And, soon after you are thinking the bread tastes just like that deli back home and the coffee reminds you of that time you visited Melbourne… and you start wondering why you paid all that money. The objective truth is that no two things or experiences can be alike. When we say something is just like we diminish the new experience and destroy what is unique for the sake of remaining in a comfort zone. This is especially sad when we diminish people who are not like us to something that they are not, but suits our prejudice. In the business world, we are prone to make this mistake too. Even if confirmation bias is potentially fatal we continue to do it because that is just how we are wired. Is there is a way to minimise the effects of confirmation bias in the workplace? It takes a bit of work and re-training the brain, but there is. I can’t (and no one can) change how you process things, so consider the logic below: When we match patterns, we match to things we know. The easiest match is with the things we know best. What do we know best? Ourselves. Our environment. The familiar. Otherwise known as our comfort zone. So the solution is simply to start training yourself to: Do things outside your comfort zone Be conscious about seeking out differences rather than similarities Consciously take a different route Make an effort to catch yourself saying it is ‘just like’ and correct yourself Can you remember which retailer you said is ‘just like Sportsgirl’? Now make an effort to now consider how those two are different. And there has to be at least one major point of difference, otherwise one of them won’t survive. Then make that kind of thinking a habit. That is how you discover new things, that is how you innovate and that is how you see opportunities; by focusing on differences and gaps, not on similarities. Image source http://webvision.med.utah.edu/imageswv/KANSQR.jpg Have fun Dennis Ganador: Learn to Perform