In science, it is customary for researchers to disclose any potential bias, as part of the process of publishing work. While this is often considered in the realm of financial biases, I have previously suggested that our other biases—our mental architectures that shape how we think, why we do what we do—matter as much, or perhaps more than, easily quantifiable other biases. With this in mind, I will here disclose my own bias, one which has relevance for how I see, and write about, the COVID moment. My bias is this: if presented with a choice between, on one hand, absolute safety at the cost of the interactions and experiences that make life worth living, and having these experiences with the understanding that doing so entailed some amount of risk, I would choose the latter.
Let us call this the sunk cost bias. This bias is our tendency to continue with a given approach to health not necessarily because the data support it, but because we have already invested much in pursuing this approach. The sunk cost bias echoes the sunk cost fallacy, where we continue with a behavior or investment because it is something we have long done. The sunk cost bias is the last in a series of three biases I have discussed in recent columns, as part of the lead-up to the November 1 launch of my new book, The Contagion Next Time, which aims to help us see the true causes of health during a pandemic, which our biases can obscure.
In some ways, I think my bias is a product of being an immigrant, one who has—like many immigrants—worked to construct a life in a new country, often in the face of uncertainty and risk. While my journey from Malta to Canada to the US has been far less difficult than the journey of other immigrants, I nevertheless know what it is like to experience the challenges that are ever-present in the life of the immigrant. I also know what it is to choose to undertake such challenges in search of a better life, to willingly accept uncertainty and risk because moving forward seems to demand it. This perhaps helps counter the sunk cost bias—I may have a particular perspective on the status quo we have traded in exchange for a feeling of greater security during COVID-19, understanding that it was never as certain as it perhaps seemed. This sense of permanent uncertainty, and the ability to live with it, can help us avoid persisting with approaches that seem to lock down a sense of security which is, in fact, more illusory than we may care to admit. Once we recognize this uncertainty, we are that much closer to realizing that life always entails some measure of risk, and the challenge is to learn to coexist with, rather than eliminate, it.
Read the full post at The Healthiest Goldfish.