Module 3 Personal Reflection: Hey doc, it's my thumb

One of my early character-building jobs was working at Allen’s Drive-In when I was in high school in Kansas City. I began as a lowly, poorly paid car hop/dishwasher ($.75 per hour plus tips) and slowly advanced to be one of the lowly, poorly paid cooks. I remember one time I was slicing breakfast ham on the meat slicer machine when I suddenly realized that my right thumb had gotten too close to the blade. Up to that point, the ham had not appeared to be bleeding. Anyway, we wrapped a bandage around my thumb and I went to our doctor’s office to get some stitches. And that is when things got interesting.

Our regular family doctor was not in that day, so another doctor with an accent that was not Midwestern greeted me warmly, put the medical history file on the counter and began tapping my knee with his reflex hammer. I thought it was a bit odd, but for some reason (automatic acquiescence to authority figures?), I let him look in my ears, at my throat, and listen to my heart before I finally raised my bleeding bandaged thumb and asked if he would please take a closer look at it (before we moved to any internal examinations). He was flustered and then apologetic as he realized he had my sister’s medical file who was due for a complete physical exam soon. My sister and I are both commonly known by our middle names but we share the same first name initials. Her first initial is W for Wanda and mine is W for William, and evidently he grabbed a file for the wrong W Lynn. When I realized the mistake, I was particularly happy that the physical exam ended before it became more intrusive.

Perhaps the doctor grabbed a file that was near the top of the pile, easily available since my sister was scheduled for an upcoming appointment. Though the circumstances are clearly not identical, many of us have made similar mistakes in judgment. I am thinking specifically of a common critical thinking error, often called the availability bias. We instinctively reach for a nearby mental “file”, an example or personal experience that we use to explain or prove something larger. We demonstrate the availability bias when we have an automatic preference for examples we are most familiar with to help us reach conclusions about issues that, on a larger scale, may be unfamiliar to us.

For example, I recall class discussions about the negative impacts of spanking children. It is not uncommon for someone to say something like “My parents spanked me when I was a kid and I turned out alright.” Maybe so, maybe not, but just because we have a wealth of available examples from our personal file of memories does not mean that they are authoritatively extendable to other scenarios. Examples that easily come to our mind should not be dismissed, but neither should they be universalized to definitively explain issues on a larger scale. The best way to resist the allure of the availability bias is to spend time with and learn from people who have different experiences and examples to offer. There will always be things that come easily to mind. But may we keep an open mind to the input and examples of others to help us reach more reliable and reasoned determinations.