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The Devil's Advocacy Analysis

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Cognitive biases are tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment. This bias occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and attempting to simplify it would skew the processing while making decisions. Not all biases are bad, however they can lead to errors in situations such as social pressures, emotions, or individual motives that would limit the human thinking. Perceptual bias is a tendency to perceive or notice some aspects of an available image or piece of data while ignoring others. Perceiving expectations while focusing attention on a particular set is remaining selective and can be distinguished by emotional connotation, …show more content…

(U.S. Government 2009) As an example, providing an analyst an opportunity to review the work of someone else potentially lead to missed ideas, opportunities, or solutions because they view the data with different rationalities and individual motives. Considering alternative options opens a door and ideas where possible arguments and contrasting hypotheses lead to healthy debates. There are downfalls to this technique where people could take offense and shut down due to built up tension but I feel it is worth the extra resources if possible developments are noteworthy. Everybody comes from different backgrounds and personal beliefs, which shape the involuntary thinking process. This weeks lessons paved the way for us to think about different options when analyzing ourselves and others and what each are capable of. Opinions will always differ but incorporating the Devil 's Advocacy technique in all situations provide a checks and balancing method that we currently use in the United States Judicial system. This method does add extra steps, manpower, resources and brainstorming, but it will ensure we have the most accurate and well thought out product of information that is not skewed by cognitive and perceptual biases. An individual analyst or a team can spend an hour or two articulating and reviewing the key assumptions. Rechecking assumptions also can be valuable at any time prior to finalizing judgments, to insure that the assessment does not rest on flawed premises. (Heuer

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