Ep. 4 Are your aware of your unconscious running bias'? with David McNeill

Today, three time Olympian and Physiotherapist David McNeill and I, chat about some of the common ‘unconscious biases’ that are ever present in all our lives everyday (whether you are aware of them or not).

Unconscious biases are cognitive shortcuts that we use in an attempt to better understand the unknown aspects of the world around us. Unconscious biases are often fear or reward driven and allow us to feel comfortable and in control with our lives.

Historically, from an evolutionary standpoint, they enabled survival in a less comfortable and certain world, as they allowed us to make decisions quickly. The advantage of this fast, reflexive, intuitive thought, is it enables us to take immediate action. However, it is prone to over-confidence and jumping to inaccurate conclusions. Fortunately, today we are seldom in such imminent life threatening situations.

Too much emotional attachment to our running habits, goals, beliefs and identity, can blind us into making errors of judgment. When it comes to optimising running decisions, the presence of ‘reflexive thinking’ makes our brains ill-equipped to handle certain decisions.

Slower, reflective and deliberate thought however, allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, it is much slower, more logical and less prone to error.

This episode is the first of two episodes where Dave and I discuss just some of the many common unconscious bias out there.

The unconscious bias’ we discuss on this episode are:

-Confirmation bias,

- Association bias,

-Framing bias,

-Authorative bias

-and Anchoring bias.

By being more aware of when our unconscious bias’ are limiting, we can change the way we think and more often than not make better life/running decisions.

I hope this chat gets you to self-reflect, as that’s the aim.

Enjoy!

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