Affect Heuristics Bias – When Emotions Lead the Way

In the workplace, unconscious biases — the ones we have but don’t know we have because they are hidden and automatic — sway a great many policies including hiring practices.   We have many of these.  One such unconscious bias is Affect Heuristics Bias.  Like most unconscious biases, this is a type of mental shortcut.  In this shortcut, decisions are heavily influenced by a person’s current emotions. 

In Affect Heuristics Bias, a person’s affect – which is a psychological term for emotional response — plays a critical role in the choices and decisions made.  (Heuristics are mental shortcuts that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently. These rule-of-thumb strategies shorten decision-making time and allow people to function without constantly stopping to think about their next course of action.)  Rather than make decisions solely on concrete, factual information, logic and reason, people will make quick decisions based on their emotions.  While this allows them to reach a conclusion quickly and easily, it can also distort the thinking process and lead to suboptimal choices and decisions.

On the one hand, it is hard to really believe many important decisions in life are distorted by Affect Heuristics Bias.  People consider themselves to be rational, logical beings.  We do our due diligence when buying a property.  We seek wise counsel before making life-altering decisions.  We research, read Consumer Reports and create a pros and cons list before buying a car.  And yet, Affect Heuristics Bias has been proven.  The impact of affect has been demonstrated repeatedly in a remarkable series of studies by Robert Zajonc and his colleagues.  Zajonc’s central finding was that, when objects were presented to an individual repeatedly, the “mere exposure” was capable of creating a positive attitude or emotion for those objects.  This in turned swayed decisions.  The same was true of negative objects and a negative response when exposed.  

On the other hand, most everyone can probably think of a time when they allowed their emotions to sway their decision-making process.  It happens in small decisions all the time… things with little or no consequence.  But it also happens when making big decisions too.   Proposing marriage.  Quitting a job.  Buying a car or boat.  Choosing a university to attend.  Deciding on a career path.  Such life-defining decisions should be made only after giving a tremendous amount of thought, weighing of options, and consideration of all the facts.  But thanks to Affect Heuristics Bias, these decisions are often made in the spur of the moment due to emotions.  Those emotions can either be positive ones such as joy, pride, or gratitude.  Or those emotions can be negative ones such as anger, humiliation or envy.  Regardless of whether the emotion is positive or negative, emotions distort the thinking process and can result in flawed decisions and poor choices.

Affect Heuristic Bias in Hiring

The hiring process is never easy.  There are so many variables to consider for each applicant.  Skills. Education.  Training.  Experience.  Talent.  Personality.  Attitude.  The more important the role, the harder it is.  But it is always a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack.  But what if the process is made even harder due to Affect Heuristic Bias… emotions distorting the evaluation process?  This might include if an interviewer sees a tattoo that they don’t like or if a female candidate has a shaved head.  It might also be related to things the candidate says that endears or offends.  It’s not necessary for these biases to have anything to do with the job for them to impact the candidate’s ability to be disqualified by a manager exercising their bias.   

Imagine this scenario.  A company is hiring to fill a C-Suite position.  The company hires a recruiter to identify candidates and ads are placed.  The company’s Applicant Tracking System screens applicant resumes to weed out those who do not meet the minimum basic requirements.  The company pays for applicants to complete multiple assessment tools to identify those individuals who are the best fit for the position.  The HR department has whittled the pool down to the top dozen candidates, prescreening to ensure key hiring criteria are met.  The hiring manager has prepared a series of questions for the hiring team to ask candidates and a scorecard to prevent group think and confirmation bias.  The candidate pool is further reduced to the top five potential hires.  Everything has been done to make the process fair, impartial, and fact-driven in order to identify the one person best suited for the role.  All that remains is for the Hiring Manager to interview those five potential hires and made a decision.

In turn, those candidates have done a lot of work to prepare to interview for their dream job.  They have prepared for how they will answer questions.  They studied the company’s leadership model and organizational values in-depth.  They have tried out the company’s product so they understand fundamentally the value it has for customers.  But one candidate has more industry experience, technical skills and education. 

When the time comes for the interviews with the Hiring Manager, candidates are interviewed throughout the day 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.  The most qualified candidate is the last to be interviewed.  At that point, the hiring manager is just not very engaged in the conversation even though the candidate nails the interview questions.  Between the 3pm and 5pm interviews, the Hiring Manager took a call from a vendor at 4pm that was very upsetting.  In the end, the candidate hired is one who was interviewed at 11am and attended the same university as the Hiring Manager but has far less education, experience, and skills than the most qualified candidate.  The Hiring Manager’s explanation is that the last candidate was just not a good fit.  But, what might have happened is that the Hiring Manager was tired and was in a bad mood after the call with the vendor.  He allowed emotions to sway his decision and the company missed out on hiring the best-qualified person for the job. 

This is a fictional scenario, but one that plays out much like this every day in companies everywhere.  The details might be different but the outcome is the same.  The Affect Heuristic Bias goes far beyond just having a good day or bad day.  Any emotion can create biased decision-making, including perceptions of a candidate’s voice or laugh, a joke that connects or a stray comment that irritates.  Consider how many minor things affect human emotion daily and thus how widespread this bias is.  If a candidate reminds a Hiring Manager of their mother-in-law, then he might unfairly find faults.  And if a candidate has a baseball signed by Babe Ruth sitting in a glass case in the Zoom call background, the Hiring Manager (who is a NY Yankees fan) might be singing that candidate’s praises.  Irrational hiring decisions are often explained as a “gut feeling.”

Overcoming Affect Heuristic Bias

If Affect Heuristic Bias happens unconsciously, how does a company keep from allowing emotions to hijack the hiring process?  All of the steps in the fictional scenario above — up to the final interview — are designed to look at data and eliminate bias.  But in the end, bias can still creep in during the one-on-one interview.  After all, everyone is guilty of making assumptions about somebody who they see or meet for the first time.  According to one study, 60% of interviewers form an opinion and decide whether the candidate would be a good fit within 15 minutes of meeting them.  That is a clear sign of Affect Heuristic Bias at work… a shortcut emotional response not based on enough factual information.  So can Affect Heuristic Bias be eliminated?  There are some additional steps that can help.

1. Be aware of your emotional state to avoid the affect heuristic.  Candidates should be interviewed at the same time of day, preferably early in the day and before decision-fatigue and other issues can sway emotions. 
   
2. Validate as much information as possible.  Just because a candidate lists skills, experiences, certifications and other information on their resume or LinkedIn page does not mean it is true.  It is crucial to check references and confirm information.  If an applicant cites degrees, ask for transcripts.  Request copies of certifications.  Ask candidates to demonstrate skills in small exercises.  This provides data that is free of emotion.
   
3. When evaluating candidates, pay most attention to the data.  Assessments.  Past results.  Recommendations.  Achievements.  Then trust the facts. 
   
4. Never cut one-on-one interviews short.  Ask a lot of questions.  Allow each candidate time to get comfortable and share a lot about past experiences failing forward, achievements, lessons learned, and their thoughts on how they might do the job and what they think is needed.
   
5. Take time to think logically about the choice to be made and consider all the possible options to prevent taking a mental shortcut just to reach a conclusion.  A point system for scoring candidates based on the key skills, education, certifications, experiences, recommendations, attitude, etc. can help remove bias. 
   
6. Involve the entire hiring team in the selection process.  Bias is less likely to have an impact when several people are involved in the vetting process.
   
7. Keep an open mind.  Things aren’t always what they appear.  Being slow to hire and thorough in vetting candidates usually reveals if a person can and will do a good job.  Remember that the best predictor of future success is past success. 

In the end, if companies are committed to hiring the best talent and are willing to push aside irrational emotions on variables that have no bearing on the job, then the organization has a better chance of hiring the best talent available.  But keep in mind that there are other unconscious biases impacting hiring.   Next week, we’ll dive into Expectation Anchor Bias and look at how this affects hiring practices to the detriment of both the employer and employees.  Stay tuned.

Quote of the Week

“In the recruitment process, the evaluation of the candidate must be based on facts and data that is gathered. The candidate is evaluated based on the goals that were set before the recruitment started and not the likes and dislikes felt in the moment.”

© 2022, Keren Peters-Atkinson. All rights reserved.