Comm Quiz Biases

anchoring effect

anchoring effect

In assessing the need of food assistance of affected populations in a given area, the first evidence found is a testimony of few villagers saying they lack proper food to feed their children. Despite the contradictory information, you will find afterwards, this first testimony will be the one you remember and base your conclusions on.

availability cascade

When an outbreak of meningitis is declared in a region, humanitarians are more likely to think about meningitis first when patients present similar symptoms, while they could only have the flu.

confirmation bias

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa was initially approached from a sole medical and epidemiological perspective. Only Ebola cases were seen as the priority. The initial assessment of the situation did not provide a good comprehensive picture of humanitarian impacts and requirements. It provided only a fragmented picture of the needs and risks and left organisations to neglect beneficiary groups at the beginning. This slow and inadequate perception of the crisis produced “a new crisis within the Ebola crisis”, with major non-Ebola related health, food, livelihood and education needs unmet

evidence acceptance bias

I have multiple local and biased sources indicating protection needs: few mention recent increase in displacement, others mention reports of gender-based violence and some indicates tensions between local armed groups. The story seems to hold up: because of renewed tensions between local armed groups, the population started fleeing the area and was being targeted by the armed group. I will accept the story as it seems to make sense. However, if I start to have a closer look at the data, I would realise that the recent increase dates prior the renewed tensions between armed groups. If I dig a bit more, I might realise that no baseline data was available before on displacement so the “increase” mentioned is based on the intuition of the author of the report and not on credible data.

salience bias

Thinking of an Ebola outbreak whenever blood and fever are the symptoms presented by people in an area while statistically it is more likely than it is not such deadly disease.

groupthink

We saw earlier than the absence of information does not always mean absence of a problem. Similarly, the absence of negative reactions on the findings of an assessment for example does not always mean that every member of the team agrees with the findings. Some might be afraid of the consequences of speaking up, some might feel they are not legitimate enough to express their disagreement. It is easier to comfort our opinion by not seeking explicitly feedbacks.

halo effect

Affinity plays a bigger role in our analysis than we think. I will have a tendency to trust what my dear friend and colleague said rather than what my competitive and cold colleague have to say about the same situation

institutional

A WFP analyst will have a tendency to analyse information through the lens of food security and livelihood.

mirror imaging

At the beginning of the Ebola crisis, humanitarian actors assumed that affected communities will be open to sensitisation campaigns and were surprised by the aggressive attitude of the affected populations.

sterotying

We usually assume that girls are more likely to drop schools in humanitarian crises. Accordingly, most humanitarian programmes focus on getting girls back to school. However, in Somalia, for example, fewer than 40% of children were attending schools — girls slightly less than boys. But the agencies dealing with education initially only focused on why girls were not attending, and did not look into why boys were dropping out. This caused a backlash in the community, as female education was seen as a western concern

clustering illusion

During World War II, the German military regularly bombed London. Some areas of neighbourhoods in London were hit more often than others, triggering some people to move out from the worst affected areas. Consequently, the relatively untouched areas were suspected to be home to those sympathetic to the enemy. However, shortly after war, British statistician R. D. Clarke analysed 537 impacts and found that there was no consistent pattern that would confirm an intention to target more specifically an area than another one; the bombs which hit London were randomly dropped

framing

During the Ebola crisis, one of the sub-cluster was named Dead Bodies Management framing our vision of the issue in very simple terms: people were dying we needed to dispose of the bodies to avoid further infection. By doing so we neglected to see the social and religious component of death in the culture of the population affected fuelling discontent, anger and frustration towards the international community. This same sub-cluster was later renamed Safe and Dignified Burials to acknowledge and take into consideration the symbolic of death and not only the management of corpses.

hindsight bias

Most people agree today that the removal of Gadhafi was a mistake that the international community should have foreseen before it allowed a country to spill into civil war. Today, it is obvious; however back in 2011, Gadhafi was being seen as a threat.

impact

Just because a nuclear war between North Korea and another country might happen one day and lead to terrible human consequences, does not mean that we need to focus all our efforts on preparing to this possibility