Under pressure check your biases.

Under pressure, for very good reasons, most of us tend to employ what Kahneman and Tversky called System 1 thinking – fast, instinctive and emotional decision-making.  This can leave us prey to biases which distort perception and judgement.  

Among these are:

• Hero bias – setting unreasonable expectations for ourselves, and feeling guilty or incompetent when we don’t meet them

• Loss aversion – constantly framing situations in terms of loss (e.g. mortality rates) rather than gains or successes (e.g. survival or patient discharge rates)

• Control illusion – the tendency to overestimate one’s ability to influence events.

As a counter to these and related biases, it can help to have a few trusted reality check questions up your sleeve, such as:

• What assumptions am I making here?

• What can I control in this situation?

• What assets do I bring (e.g. from my past experience and current abilities)?

• What do I know works?

• What is important right now?