Better Decision Making is a group for anyone interested in Cognitive Biases, Mental Models, or just improving their decision-making process. No previous knowledge is necessary; your interest in the topic is sufficient.

Cognitive Biases mean that our brains are sometimes playing tricks on us, and we believe that using (the right) Mental Models can help counter at least some of them.

Biases in the Media

For our third meetup we thought we'd look into Biases in the Media and we'd love to discuss topics such as:

1. Reactive devaluation in the media. Do we really analyse the information that comes from sources we don't like or do we instantly assume that they come from antagonists and dismiss them straight away?
2. Media bias. The bias or perceived bias of journalists and news producers in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered.
3. Attitude polarization. A phenomenon in which a disagreement becomes more extreme as the different parties consider evidence on the issue. When people encounter ambiguous evidence, this bias can potentially result in each of them interpreting it as in support of their existing attitudes, widening rather than narrowing the disagreement between them.

Why this meeting or how we got the idea?
My wife and I built a browser extension that shows you a Cognitive Bias every time you open a new tab as a weekend project. We just wanted to work together on something we both have an interest in (but admittedly not enough knowledge about) and for her to get into more tech and digital marketing and to learn about cognitive biases.

The extension became very successful and someone might have recommended we meet and talk about these things with strangers. So the idea was born.

We've known Ionela for a very long time, and over the years, we had countless conversations about self-growth and how we can make better decisions. Ionela has a vast experience in delivering Bootcamp sessions, workshops, managing teams, and coaching people on different topics such as mindset, wellbeing & habit creation. When we started to think about hosting an event like this, it was a natural thought to ask her to co-host it.

These meet-ups are very engaging and collaborative and an excellent opportunity for likeminded people to discuss how our brains are sometimes helping while other times plays tricks on us, see if there are any mental models that we use effectively and generally discuss ways to improve our decision-making skills.

Feedback is always welcome and appreciated.