Marginal decisions
Are you sure you always know why you make the decisions you make? Are you confident you are impartial? I got into a discussion about unconscious bias tonight with a poker player who’d been knocked out of the tournament he was playing. His opponent was very inexperienced and failed to protect his cards from view. In a live game this is heresy. Although he didn’t mean it to gain any advantage it still upset the player who went out on a vulnerable hand. He called for the revealed hand to be killed (declared void) but the decision went against him. The benefit of the doubt was (rightly) given to the inexperienced player. After words of consolation I pointed out how unconscious bias can play an important part in what we often believe are impartial decisions. I recently heard about how the world of fingerprint evidence had been thrown into disarray by two high profile international cases that support the view that mistakes are made. Scientific research demonstrates that prejudice affects highly trained fingerprint specialists without them even knowing. It’s well known that referees can make bad calls in a sporting contest. How often is that down to a misplaced sense of justice? My poker friend (who by now had calmed down!) recounted his experience as a line judge at the ladies’ FA Cup final on an offside decision. Just goes to show that if you dig around you can find out something about people you never would have thought! Often we shoot first and ask questions later. We should never underestimate our ability to rationalise our choices in hindsight.
