Michele Williams: ‘Black Widow’ Killer?

Wow… that is so creepy. Both that we filter like that, and that she said that.

people are limited by what they expect.

>I don’t know why, but it does…

Let me see if this fits… We all have biases. Daniel Khaneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics because his arguments about biases (many of them below our level of awareness) are very real.

In addition to many well known biases (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases), one that I’ve never seen reported – but it definitely applies here – is the bias toward the normal or familiar – even if it’s wrong. In other words, if we perceive something that is odd, we will interpret it to be much more “normal” that it actually is. In other words, we see the world in terms that are more familiar and normal to us than they actually are. Or to put it another way, if something is totally bizarre, such as what this lady said, but there’s a less bizarre interpretation, such as what Yahoo reported, humans will virtually always go with the less bizarre interpretation, even if it’s wrong, because it’s more normal and familiar. The odd thing is *we don’t even know it when we do it*. It’s easier to spot in others, but more difficult to spot in ourselves.

This is why people say, “I can’t believe…” – they are telling the truth – it’s so far outside their experience that it totally does not register.

This is why people report that a person just could not be a killer or a thief or whatever – it’s so outside of their understanding of that person that they re-interpret the “facts” in light of what they believe about the person – even if it’s wrong.

The bias toward the normal and familiar and usual is usually our friend, and usually harmless – but sometimes the consequences can be deadly because people don’t see the danger that is right in front of their eyes until it hits them – quite literally.

That’s why I think this happens.

I think one of the things that’s related to this is the concept of projection– wherein a person projects onto someone else some attribute or behavior that actually belongs to the person projecting it.

We tend to see the world through the lens of our own experience, often without considering that our experience is not really universal. Each of us has a slightly different experience, even if we may share most of our experiences with others. One of the best areas that I’ve noticed this happening is with hearing things around us. Probably most of us have had the experience where someone says, “did you hear that?” and the other person didn’t hear anything.

A common situation where this is relevant is when speaking to someone else, and a third person is able to overhear what’s being said and comments on it despite the person speaking using a hushed voice that they believe is too quiet to be heard by anyone around them. I’ve seen that happen several times, and I’ve had it happen to me once or twice as well. The assumption is made that everyone hears things equally well to oneself, so we speak at a voice level that’s appropriate for the person we speak to to hear and for someone else standing some distance away not being able to. But some people have much better hearing than most people, so they do hear what’s being said quite clearly, and depending on the topic, they may make it known by their becoming upset or offended. If you are friends with any of those “super hearers” then you’ll have seen it happen too often to be a fluke, but does that cause you to re-calibrate your own model of how quietly you need to speak in public to not be overheard? Some kinds of people will, while others won’t, and whether or not they do, I think, is an illustration of this particular form of bias.

A less commonly noticed, but probably even more prevalent example is how well a person sees– how good their vision is. Some people can be driving down the road and spot a cop car a mile away, while others may regularly drive right past them and never see them. Since we don’t always broadcast everything we perceive, other people don’t really have a way to calibrate their own model of reality accurately, so things which are actually common may be seen as unusual. Faceblindness comes to mind on that one, as well as synesthesia. I’d never heard of either of those things until the past 8 years or so, and up until recently, they were both thought to be very rare, but as the public has been made aware of them, it’s turned out that both are far more common than was believed. It’s kind of the same bias at play here too I think– or at least related to it.

We see the world largely through the lens of our own experience, therefore, we see something radically different and think to ourselves, “How could anyone do that to their child?” or “Why would someone even DO that?” We don’t know the answers to these questions, because from the lens of our own experience, we would never have thought that the even question existed– it’s not a part of the lexicon of our own experience, and we don’t know what we don’t know.

Interestingly, this is another facet of lie detection– someone who lies frequently is more likely to say things indicating that they want to be believed, whereas with a person who rarely lies, it wouldn’t even occur to them that they wouldn’t be disbelieved, because lying isn’t even a part of their lexicon.

You explain it exactly as I hear all the time in my class, Paul. You are totally normal 😉 People feel things are off but can’t put their finger on it. Hence they lack the confidence to stand on their decision and take action. That’s exactly what I teach, how to learn to spot and articulate reliable data to spot deception 🙂 Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts. I really appreciate it!