Have you ever opened your email inbox on a Monday morning, seen the overflowing new messages, alerts and spam, and felt paralyzed by a sense of dread? You are not alone.
听of being unable to process information as fast as it arrives, along with the constant demand for our attention,听leads to exhaustion and burnout. Between the anxiety-inducing 24-hour news cycle and our phones dinging every 10 seconds with the latest social update, many of us are reeling from the effects of information overload.
听refers to the strain on a system, whether our own nervous system or a company鈥檚 IT network, when it鈥檚听trying to handle too much information at once.听And in today鈥檚 fast-paced digital world, information has never been so accessible 鈥 or so impossible 鈥 to avoid.
While all that offers enough food for thought on its own, the bigger question is this:听How do we filter听the deluge of reports and information to separate the wheat from the chaff?
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Erik Bean, EdD, has a few ideas when it comes to understanding how people can discern a reliable source from an unreliable one. As a research fellow at the听爱污传媒 College of Doctoral Studies and a thought leader in cognitive biases, Bean studies this topic professionally and anecdotally.
His interest was complemented by imperative as he watched the media coverage of the COVID pandemic, the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 insurrection. Eventually, Bean felt compelled to create a resource so the public could more easily separate fact from fiction.
鈥淚 wanted to come up with a short survey people could use to听assess their own personal biases, which can affect their ability to interact with information,鈥 he explains. Bean鈥檚 work on cognitive biases and how to investigate information culminated in his award-winning book,听.
Cognitive biases are a result of your brain鈥檚 attempt to听. Basically, they鈥檙e听mental shortcuts听that, in our efforts to cope with too much information, end up听distorting our judgment.
There are many听听examples, but a few you might already be familiar with include:
Dependence on social media听as a news source can also be a source of bias. 鈥淢any individuals rely on social media as a news source. We need to take a step back and inspect the information with a more careful eye,鈥 Bean advises. "In this day and age with TikTok and AI, people鈥檚 posts will be duplicated, information will be stolen, and information that we believe comes from a reliable source may not be so. We need to investigate who the author is.鈥
A key emphasis of Bean鈥檚 work is the importance of informational awareness despite being surrounded by constant bias.
There are many different biases in the world, including and .
For his part, Bean focuses on information selection, and in his book, he identifies seven primary sources of bias:
To help evaluate information for accuracy and objectivity, Bean developed the听KLEMP model, which is based on the听classic principles of rhetorical argument. An acronym for Kairos, Logos, Ethos, Mythos and Pathos, KLEMP is a cognitive tool that allows us to analyze information in a structured way, so that we become aware of the presence of bias in the information we are consuming.
To put KLEMP into practice, select a news story from your social media feed and evaluate it based on the five factors. Starting with Kairos,听ask when听the information was published. Was it last week or last year?
Next, examine Logos to determine听if the data contains facts听or statistics from reliable sources.
Then, evaluate the Ethos and Mythos to get a feel for听the writer鈥檚 beliefs, agenda and level of expertise.
Finally, is the information听driven by emotion (Pathos) or facts?
In Bias Is All Around You, Bean explains that information that demonstrates less bias could be timely, data-driven and unemotional. At the other end of the spectrum, highly biased information is driven mainly by emotion, is not timely and has no documented facts. Where does your social media news story fall on the spectrum?
To make his bias-fighting resources more accessible, Bean has created a website,听, where free tools, like a downloadable Bias Assessment Form, are available.
While taking the extra time for information inspection might deter some, Bean asserts it is a necessary practice. 鈥淎s Tim Voss [of Michigan State University] said in my book鈥檚 foreword, inspecting information takes time. It鈥檚 like exercise, and, you know, I try to get my 10,000 steps in every day, but I don鈥檛 always love to do it.鈥
Like getting in our daily walk, taking a moment each morning to evaluate our diet of information (and weed out what鈥檚 not so good for us, especially in big quantities) is essential for our mental health.
The College of Doctoral Studies at 爱污传媒 offers听four doctorates听in business, education and health administration.
Additionally, students, fellows and alumni create a robust community of research and insight through the following programs:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire O鈥橞rien has led copywriting teams for Hilton Worldwide Corporate鈥檚 creative studio and advertising agencies specializing in the real estate, hospitality, education and travel industries. In 2020, she founded More Better Words, a boutique copywriting agency that taps into her global connections. She lives in Costa Rica with her husband and six rescue dogs.
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March 23, 2023 鈥 5 minutes