Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts our FCM99 brains use to simplify decision-making, but these biases often lead to errors in judgment and perception. Whether it’s overestimating our abilities, sticking to what we know, or making snap judgments, cognitive biases can affect the way we view the world and make decisions. Fortunately, there are engaging ways to challenge these biases, and one of the most effective methods is through playing games. Games offer a fun, interactive environment where you can test and strengthen your cognitive flexibility, critical thinking, and decision-making skills.
In this article, we will explore several games designed to challenge and counteract common cognitive biases, helping you improve your thinking patterns while enjoying some friendly competition.
What Are Cognitive Biases?
Cognitive biases are inherent mental shortcuts that help people make decisions quickly. While these biases can be helpful in some situations, they often lead to distorted thinking and poor decision-making. Some of the most common cognitive biases include:
Confirmation Bias: The tendency to seek out information that supports pre-existing beliefs while disregarding contradictory information.
Anchoring Bias: The reliance on the first piece of information encountered when making decisions, even when it’s irrelevant.
Overconfidence Bias: The tendency to overestimate our knowledge and abilities.
Availability Heuristic: Making decisions based on information that is readily available, often because it’s recent or emotionally charged.
Attribution Bias: The tendency to attribute others’ actions to their character while attributing our own actions to external factors.
While it’s impossible to eliminate biases entirely, regularly challenging them can help minimize their negative effects. That’s where games come in—by engaging in games that promote strategic thinking, creativity, and perspective-taking, you can develop greater cognitive flexibility and improve your decision-making skills.
- Chess: Combatting Overconfidence and Anchoring Bias
Chess is a classic strategy game that offers a powerful way to challenge cognitive biases, particularly overconfidence and anchoring bias. In chess, players must think several moves ahead, anticipate their opponent’s actions, and adjust their strategy based on evolving circumstances.
How It Helps:
Overcoming Overconfidence Bias: Chess requires a deep level of analysis and often forces players to reconsider their moves, which can prevent overestimating their skills. The game reveals weaknesses in your strategies and forces you to adapt.
Breaking Anchoring Bias: Early moves and initial positions can “anchor” your thinking, making you stick to certain strategies. Chess encourages players to constantly reevaluate their positions and not become fixated on the initial setup.
Critical Thinking: To succeed, players must constantly evaluate changing patterns, requiring flexibility and the ability to make decisions based on logic rather than gut feeling.
Chess is a fantastic tool for anyone looking to develop their ability to think critically and make more rational decisions.
- The Game of Codenames: Countering Confirmation Bias
Codenames is a word association game where players give and guess clues to identify secret agents (words) on a grid. The game challenges players to think creatively and look for patterns in a way that forces them to consider different perspectives.
How It Helps:
Challenging Confirmation Bias: In Codenames, players often have to move beyond their initial assumptions and look for associations that aren’t immediately obvious. Confirmation bias can lead to narrow thinking, but the game encourages players to think outside the box and challenge their preconceptions.
Promoting Perspective-Taking: As a team game, Codenames requires players to communicate and understand each other’s thought processes, forcing them to confront biases in how they interpret clues.
Cognitive Flexibility: Players must adjust their strategies as they gain new information, promoting adaptability and the avoidance of rigid thinking patterns.
By challenging players to consider alternative connections between words, Codenames helps overcome confirmation bias, which can limit open-mindedness and the ability to process contradictory information.
- Dixit: Breaking the Availability Heuristic
Dixit is a beautifully illustrated storytelling game where players give clues to describe abstract images. The goal is for players to interpret these images and guess which card matches the clue, while other players try to mislead them with subtle hints.
How It Helps:
Disrupting the Availability Heuristic: The game challenges players to go beyond the obvious and think creatively. When players are forced to come up with clues for abstract images, they can’t rely on readily available information or previous experiences; instead, they must draw on diverse ideas and perspectives.
Improving Creativity: The game encourages players to think beyond the first thing that comes to mind, thereby reducing reliance on the availability heuristic.
Perspective-Shifting: By interpreting artwork and coming up with creative clues, players practice flexibility in their thinking and push against the tendency to rely on familiar or recently encountered information.
In Dixit, players learn to think divergently, which helps break free from the cognitive shortcut of the availability heuristic and opens up new ways of approaching problem-solving.
- Werewolf/Mafia: Counteracting Attribution Bias
Werewolf (also known as Mafia) is a social deduction game where players are divided into two groups: the villagers and the werewolves (or mafia members). The villagers must figure out who the werewolves are, while the werewolves try to blend in and deceive the group.
How It Helps:
Counteracting Attribution Bias: In Werewolf, players must challenge the tendency to attribute other people’s actions to their character (attribution bias). For example, if someone acts suspiciously, you might assume they’re guilty. But in the game, it’s crucial to avoid jumping to conclusions and to consider the context of each player’s behavior. Players are encouraged to observe, analyze, and question their assumptions.
Critical Thinking: The game requires players to assess social cues and behaviors, helping them recognize when they’re projecting personal biases onto others.
Empathy and Perspective-Taking: Werewolf fosters a deep understanding of others’ perspectives, forcing players to shift their judgment away from personal biases and consider the motivations and actions of all players equally.
This game helps players practice fairness in their evaluations and combats the cognitive bias of attributing motives based on personal beliefs or assumptions.
- The Resistance: Enhancing Cognitive Flexibility
The Resistance is a game of deception, where players are assigned secret roles and must either work together to complete missions (if they are part of the Resistance) or sabotage the mission (if they are spies). The goal is for the Resistance members to succeed in missions without being discovered by the spies.
How It Helps:
Challenging Cognitive Biases: The Resistance forces players to question their initial impressions and to avoid making decisions based on gut feelings. Players must adapt to new information, recalibrate their strategies, and avoid sticking with their first judgment.
Cognitive Flexibility: As the game progresses, the dynamics shift, and players need to adjust their strategies accordingly. This constant shift encourages cognitive flexibility and helps prevent the kind of rigid thinking that reinforces biases.
Social Perception: Players must observe the behavior of others and decide who they can trust. This requires shifting focus from personal biases toward logical reasoning based on actions and evidence.
In The Resistance, players learn to let go of automatic judgments and become more adaptable and open-minded in the decision-making process.
- Trivial Pursuit: Reducing Confirmation Bias and Expanding Knowledge
Trivial Pursuit is a classic board game where players answer questions from various categories to move around the board. The game offers a chance to challenge the confirmation bias by exposing players to new information and diverse topics they might not otherwise consider.
How It Helps:
Exposure to New Information: Trivial Pursuit forces players to confront information outside of their usual interests or knowledge base, which helps break down confirmation bias by providing a broad range of perspectives.
Intellectual Humility: The game encourages players to acknowledge gaps in their knowledge and be open to learning. This reduces the tendency to assume that their pre-existing knowledge is correct.
Challenging Assumptions: As players encounter new information, they may be prompted to question assumptions and evaluate the accuracy of their beliefs.
This game helps players embrace intellectual curiosity and combat the tendency to only seek out information that confirms existing opinions or beliefs.
Conclusion
Cognitive biases are an inevitable part of human thinking, but they don’t have to dictate the way we make decisions. By engaging in games that challenge these biases, we can strengthen our cognitive flexibility, enhance our problem-solving abilities, and make more rational, objective decisions.
Whether it’s playing strategic games like Chess to challenge overconfidence, testing creativity with Dixit to overcome the availability heuristic, or questioning assumptions in The Resistance, each of these games offers an opportunity to exercise and refine your mental processes.
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