First Bias and Reducing Influence of Bias

When you go to the grocery store, at least here in the US, often the first section you walk through is the produce section. And at the front of it are a bunch of flower arrangements.

You never buy the flowers, but the grocery store doesn’t care. Why? Because studies have shown that the olfactory stimulation provided by the flowers spurs people into higher levels of purchasing when they’re in the store.

It’s a psychological marketing trick; the flowers aren’t actually there to be purchased.

Some of you reading have probably heard about this. It’s become something of an open secret about such stores, even while others, similar tricks are less well-known.

The music that plays just loud enough to hear but not loud enough to be immediately noticeable is another of these tricks. No music = less time spent in the store, which equals less money spent. We seem more accustomed to meandering when there’s background music. Wine shops have discovered something similar, and further weaponized it. If music is playing and someone is speaking in French in the music, French wines will be purchased at higher rates. And so on for various other geographic regions.

Awareness = Inoculation

Here’s the thing about such triggers: they work on pretty much everyone to some extent. But the greater one’s awareness of them, the less control they exert over that person.

This is true of all sorts of psychological biases. We may never be immune to their effects entirely, but we can minimize them through awareness and understanding of how they work.

This is a lesson worth learning in life as a whole. But now let’s jump to tabletop games.

“First Bias” and Other Problems

Lords of Waterdeep remains a love of mine, despite the fact that it checks basically no boxes in a hypothetical list of qualities I love in games.

It also happens to be one of the first hobby games I played in my life. If I’d played it for the first time in the 2020s instead of back in 2014, would it still make its way into my collection? Almost certainly not.

Keyflower is a favorite game of mine. While I can still point to why I love it, and these reasons make sense given my current tastes, it’s not wrong to call it an exception, along with 1-2 others that have resource-conversion, engine-building elements.

But Keyflower is the earliest of these that I played, which merged high levels of interaction with engine-building that typifies many modern Eurogames. These games aren’t numerous, but Keyflower isn’t the only one of its type. And if I’d played it for the first time this year instead of 2015, would I own and love it the same way? Probably not.

These are anecdotes in a larger whole, one in which the first thing we try of a type is more likely to be our favorite. This is true of games within genres in particular.

But we can also all identify exceptions.

El Grande existed in my collection before San Marco, Tammany Hall and Mexica, but I own the latter three now, and not El Grande. While I still enjoy El Grande, those three largely replaced its purpose in my collection.

I could identify others, as could you. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we can identify the “first bias” and recognize that it does have an influence on us or anyone. To an extent, at least.

Awareness = Inoculation (Redux)

Second verse, same as the first…

Once you are aware of something like “first bias,” you’re more likely to be able to overcome it to see things without its influence clouding your opinion.

You’ll probably still cling irrationally to some childhood love, or a game from 10+ years ago that introduced you to hobby gaming and what it could be.

This is the case even if you were to encounter that game for the first time today, in which case you’d likely be indifferent toward it.

This is also perfectly fine, for reference. We’re talking about games, not anything serious. Love whatever you want. But some of that love for most of us is influenced by these unseen psychological forces, at least in part.

Specific Examples, Meet General Takeaways

So again, this isn’t bad, necessarily. I’ve talked in the past about how our favorite games aren’t necessarily the best games for us in theory, but are those we choose to spend time playing and appreciating with others.

This is a variation on that idea. Your history with a thing matters. Games aren’t just their immediate experiences, but their memories. So clinging to an old love isn’t always bad.

However, I think it’s also not hard to see how this can be destructive. If you cling to an old love in a real-world, romantic sense, it might mean you’re holding onto pain or bitterness that you’d be better off moving on from.

Games don’t usually come with such high emotional stakes, but cluttering one’s collection with nostalgic boxes that will never again be played will be – for some – a detriment. Or it can blind them to faults in games that others don’t possess.

The good news is, the low stakes of owning and playing games means that this is a great place to practice one’s awareness of various biases that inform your opinions. It doesn’t mean these biases are wrong or unhelpful, but if they ever cloud your judgment, being aware of them is the easiest way to protect yourself against them.

This is a life skill, not a gaming skill. Games are merely one small theater in which we can practice.

I’ve clung to some old favorites, and likely always will. But I’ve also shed several, and my gaming life is better because of it. For clarity, “old” in this context doesn’t necessarily mean older chronologically. Some games that have replaced “old favorites” were in fact designed several years before the games they replaced.

Regardless, I feel more free when I can remove the tethers of such phrases as “I’ll always own {X}” or “{X} is the best version of these ideas.” Maybe those statements are true, but it’s just as likely that they’re simply influenced by my biases, and I’d be better off with a more detached perspective that acknowledges my biases in stating them.

It may not wholly change our opinions, but it will free us from various psychological traps that can influence thinking in ultimately unhelpful ways.