UCSF. The many connections in the brain "make up our mind" in more ways than one--physically and also in decision-making. New learning and experiences shape the brain's plasticity, function and architecture in fundamental ways.

This post is co-authored by Amanda Sue Grossi

Development. Poverty. Africa. Just three words on a page these are, almost no information at all. But how many realities did our readers just conjure? And how many thoughts filled the spaces between? Cover yourselves. Your biases are showing.

While development solutions should be thoughtful, the kinds of thoughts may matter more than we ever expected. According to the World Bank’s 2015 World Development Report, technically competent, sincere, seemingly unbiased, and good-intentioned development professionals are capable of making consequential mistakes with significant impacts upon the lives of others, namely the poor. The problem arises when mindsets are just that―set.

Development professionals, like people generally, have two systems of thinking, the automatic and the deliberative. For the automatic, instead of performing complex rational calculations every time we need to make a decision, much of our thinking relies upon pre-existing mental models and shortcuts, based on assumptions we create throughout our lives and which stem from our experiences and education. More often than not, these mental models are incomplete, and shortcuts can lead us down the wrong path. Thinking automatically then becomes thinking harmfully.

Susceptible to a slew of unconscious cognitive biases shaped by social and environmental factors, development professionals often harbor deeply ingrained mindsets and preconceptions that cause them to make systematically biased and sometimes detrimental decisions. These biases are problematic because how development practitioners perceive a problem directly affects how development policy is created, implemented, and evaluated.

So what can be done? After awareness and acknowledgment of these problems must follow carefully designed mechanisms and measures for counteracting these paradoxically unthoughtful thought patterns. In other words, we must combat this unintentionalism with intentionalism. But how?

There is perhaps no system more explicitly dedicated to the business of (re)shaping mindsets than the educational system. By specifically targeting the educational architecture related to development, it may be possible to transform the overall landscape in which development practitioners learn and operate to better serve those they intend to help.

To make this more concrete, consider the four cognitive biases identified by the World Development Report:

1. “Thin simplification” ― When the number of policy options increases, the ability of people to critically evaluate them decreases, leading to greater influence of framing effects for the sake of simplification.

2. Confirmation bias ― When individuals selectively gather (or give differential weight to) certain information in order to support a previously held belief.

3. Sunk cost bias ― When individuals have a tendency to continue a project once an initial investment is made, and stopping a project would mean acknowledging previously allocated resources have been wasted.

4. The Influence of context ― When development practitioners do not fully understand the mindset and circumstances of those they are trying to help and instead fill in the gaps with their own assumptions and perceptions.

Other biases of which we are not yet aware or have not fully yet explored may exist as well, but for now, let us assume the educational system not only has the ability to disrupt these particular biases, but a moral obligation to do so. Then let us consider how this might be done.

Take the issue of “thin simplification”. When dealing with complex issues and problems, as most development situations present, development agencies often apply standardized management tools and certain uniform, one-size-fits-all approaches to control the variables of the problem at stake. However, this behavior not only discourages the kind of regular reexamination of the underlying assumptions about problems that a constantly evolving world necessitates, but it also does not acknowledge their nuanced component parts and, by extension, promote the tailored solutions that each piece or context demands.

To combat this bias, most fundamentally, development professionals must learn how to identify a problem, and all of its multifaceted aspects, correctly. Ideally, this involves working incrementally within groups and with informed counterparts in a space where all assumptions and perspectives can be heard and challenged, followed by the development of a set of manageable goals with “small wins” that contribute to the overall resolution of the problem. On an educational level, classrooms might stress collaborative techniques for identifying problems, and facilitate the kind of step-by-step thinking that follows therefrom. In Columbia University’s Development Practice Lab (DP-Lab) course, for instance, students are coached through the process of creating problem trees, turning them on their heads into solution trees, and then carefully thinking through how proposed interventions might be measured and evaluated. In the course of sixteen labs, high priority skills in the field of development are experimented and piloted in real world contexts to enhance the role of practice in the educational and learning experience. Done collaboratively and openly, hands on exercises like these allow students to both air and check their assumptions about the ways they conceive populations, processes, and problems. Moreover, the more diverse the student body, the more opportunity there is for an exchange in the marketplace of ideas from those who have worked, or even grown up, in particular contexts, allowing us to move from what we think a population may need to what we know it needs. In other words, by creating space for preexisting mental models to collide with one another in a safe space, they can be collapsed, reshaped, and adjusted to more accurately reflect the realities in which they operate.

Next, consider confirmation bias. Placing students into situations in which they are exposed to multiple and divergent viewpoints, large data sets, and new ICT4D, forces them to produce the best versions of their arguments, and, done in groups, provides the social pressure to do so in an articulate and compelling way. For instance, orchestrating intentionally adversarial setups, known as “red teaming,” through role play or the introduction of other actors known to share different viewpoints, prompts perspective shifts. By creating an enhanced learning space for open deliberation, educational institutions simultaneously fill it with competing perspectives that throw a kink into patterned thinking and non-ingenuitive complacency.

The battle of the sunk cost bias is one of changing attitudinal dispositions. Especially under the watchful eye of donors, there is a pressure to not recognize failure, and if not cover it up, then at least not broadcast it or share it alongside best practices, where such stories might actually serve as useful cautionary tales. While most people would agree that failure is a part of life, there seems to be a pretense that the development world should somehow be immune, that colorful vignettes of successful projects rather than failures should be shared the widest, and that acknowledging that resources have been wasted―even if that decision means redirecting them toward programs and projects where they could make a real positive impact―is something to be ashamed of. Educational programs and especially respected instructors might fight this notion by setting the example of openly discussing failures in their own work, as well as what they gleaned from these failures. As Einstein once observed, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” If we are only sharing the successful half of what we are doing (and half may be a generous estimate), then we are permitting the entire unsuccessful half to repeat itself, without caveat. How can we expect different results when there is a culture of hiding some of them? It’s time to restore sense, not perpetuate insanity.

Lastly, with regard to the question of context, there needs to be a recognition of the two-way street whereby mindsets not only shape poverty, but poverty shapes mindsets as well. The manner in which development practitioners perceive the poor and their problems greatly affects how development interventions are created, implemented, and assessed. Too often, solutions are designed by people who do not share or understand the cultural norms, dispositions, history, or mindsets of the people they seek to serve. Immersion programs are useful in getting practitioners to walk a mile in the shoes of the poor, internalize their problems, and motivate more contextually driven solutions, though they may be time intensive and require significant travel resources. However, this kind of social and emotional intelligence training in an institutional system that seems to place a preeminence on conventional intelligence (IQ) is arguably worth the investment. Educational programs should therefore make it their priority to sponsor their students to travel and work in developing country settings for a set period of time, as is done with the summer placement program at the School of International and Public Affairs’ Masters in Development Practice.

The educational system can be a powerful lever of change for building the support systems necessary to consciously tackle the unconscious biases present in the minds of development professionals and address the monumental global development challenges set forth by the Sustainable Development Goals. And with 3 billion people, nearly half the world’s population, living on less than $2.50 per day, the case is urgent. It’s time to rethink the way we think.

Amanda Sue Grossi is a recent graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs now serving as a United Nations Association Summer Scholar Fellow with Plan International Senegal.