[Continued. Read Part 1] [Read Part 2] [Read Part 3]
Modern psychology research has a WEIRD bias, relying heavily on participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic societies. Scientists long assumed that human minds everywhere work the same, but evidence shows WEIRD people are psychological outliers. In Part 1, we discussed the cultural influences on cognitive biases. Here, we try to answer the question what are the differences in judgement biases and belief systems in Indian collectivist culture compared to the WEIRD cultures.
Decision-Making and Judgment Biases
Anchoring: Anchoring is our habit of relying too heavily on the first piece of information (the “anchor”) when making decisions. For example, if the first price you hear for a product is ₹1000, you judge other prices against that anchor. This cognitive bias appears to be universal, humans everywhere are influenced by initial numbers or ideas.
Indians are no exception, street market haggling is a great local illustration. A seasoned shopper in an Indian street market knows that the first price a vendor quotes (often an inflated anchor) will skew the negotiation; skilled bargainers actively try to reset the anchor. Interestingly, cultural factors might affect how we deal with anchoring.
Indian society, with its prevalent bargaining culture, might produce people who are somewhat aware of anchoring in negotiations (“quote your own low price to counter the anchor”). In contrast, a person from a fixed-price culture might be more blindly anchored. That said, formal experiments show that even financially savvy Indians (like professional investors or MBA students) can be strongly influenced by irrelevant anchors in estimates. Education and awareness help, but the brain’s anchoring shortcut is deeply ingrained.
The main variation in the anchoring bias is that people in some cultures might trust authorities or initial information differently. For instance, if an authoritative figure provides the anchor, people in high power-distance cultures (which includes India) might be especially likely to stick to it. In practice, an Indian courtroom might see lawyers throwing out a high damage claim number as an anchor, just as in the US. Being aware of anchoring is crucial for everyone, whether you’re buying a car in Delhi or New York.
Availability Heuristic: This bias means we judge the likelihood of events by how easily examples come to mind. If we can recall something quickly, perhaps because it was recent or dramatic, we think it’s more common. This mental shortcut is universal, but what’s “available” in memory depends on experience and media, which vary by culture.
In India, for example, people might overestimate the prevalence of certain rare events because those get heavy news coverage or community attention, say, a sensational crime or a film-inspired suicide. An Indian might think “train accidents happen all the time” after seeing a big one on TV, even if statistically road accidents are far more frequent (just less sensational).
Likewise, after watching dramatic reports about child kidnappings, parents across India may overestimate that risk (availability bias), while underestimating more mundane dangers like traffic accidents or diabetes. Culturally, India’s oral storytelling traditions and media could make some vivid events stick sharply in mind. The bias itself – judging by ease of recall – seems to hold everywhere, but the content differs. Westerners might fear plane crashes after one is in the news; Indians might fear collapsing flyovers or communal riots if those are salient.
Regions with different exposure will have different availability skew. For instance, someone in Kerala who has seen frequent floods will judge flood risk higher (accurately so), whereas someone in a desert state might hardly consider it but overweight droughts. Another factor is literacy and information access in rural India, personal anecdotes and local folklore may dominate what’s “available” mentally, whereas urban Indians might be influenced by global news cycles.
Other non-WEIRD societies show similar patterns, e.g. in parts of Africa, shark attacks aren’t on anyone’s mind (no local availability), but maybe snakebite is top-of-mind. The key is understanding that our risk perception is locally shaped. Cross-cultural research in decision making finds that Asians and Westerners alike can be misled by vivid examples, though training in statistical thinking helps a bit.
Framing Effect: The framing effect occurs when people’s decisions change based on how options are presented. For example, gains vs losses framing (saying a vaccine has a “95% survival rate” vs “5% death rate” can alter choices even though they mean the same). This bias exploits emotional reactions to wording.
Research indicates that framing effects are robust across cultures, but there may be subtle differences. Some studies have suggested East Asians might be a bit less susceptible to certain framing in financial decisions, potentially due to holistic thinking or dialectical reasoning.
For India, we lack direct studies, but given that Indian consumers and voters are as human as any, they do respond to framing. Indian advertisers certainly bank on it – e.g. an insurance ad highlighting “protect your family’s future” (gain frame) vs “don’t leave your family unprotected” (loss frame) to see which resonates more. Political messaging in India also employs framing, policies are sold as “pro-poor” vs “anti-development” depending on the speaker’s bias.
One cross-cultural decision study did find that cultural background can influence preferences under differently framed stock market trends, but specifics aside, the general point stands: Indians can be risk-averse or risk-seeking depending on framing, much like Americans in the classic Asian Disease problem. However, one interesting cultural nuance: dialecticism in some Eastern cultures (accepting contradiction) might reduce the starkness of framing effects. If a person can reconcile “5% die = 95% live” as the same reality, they won’t flip their choice.
Are Indians dialectical thinkers? Indian philosophy often embraces multiple truths (think of the saying “Truth is one, paths are many”). It’s possible that this mentality, for those who have it, could buffer framing biases. On the flip side, education level matters. Those with training in critical thinking might spot a trick frame. In less critical thinking educated populations, framing effects might be stronger, as people react more to surface wording. In summary, framing is a human bias with likely small cultural modulations, it’s wise in any culture to reframe a problem in multiple ways to see if you’d still make the same choice.
Sunk Cost Fallacy: This is the tendency to continue investing in a losing proposition because of the resources (time, money, effort) one has already sunk into it. Essentially, people don’t want to “waste” what they’ve put in, even if cutting losses is the rational move. The sunk cost fallacy is found worldwide, from a farmer who keeps watering a failing crop because of the work already done, to a business in Mumbai that keeps funding a floundering project because “we’ve spent so much already.”
Indian culture might in some cases encourage honoring past commitments, which can feed into sunk cost behavior. Loyalty and persistence are valued, so quitting a course of action can carry stigma (“giving up too soon”). This suggests Indians might sometimes be more prone to the sunk cost effect in personal life, e.g. staying in a degree program or job longer than they should because their family invested in it. This may even lead to a prolonged dysfunctional marriage.
That said, entrepreneurial circles in India are trying to import Silicon Valley’s “fail fast” mantra to counter this. Data specifically comparing sunk cost tendencies are scarce, but one survey-based study across cultures found no large differences, sunk cost fallacy appears to afflict people similarly unless they’ve been trained otherwise (like seasoned investors).
In other non-WEIRD settings, one could expect similar patterns, collectivist societies might emphasize not wasting group resources, perhaps reinforcing sunk cost adherence, while some very poor communities might actually be more brutal in cutting losses (because they can’t afford to throw good money after bad). The key is that psychological aversion to loss/waste is universal, but the decision to persist can also be influenced by cultural norms about perseverance and honor.
Curse of Knowledge: This bias is when someone who knows something finds it hard to imagine not knowing it. It often causes us to overestimate how much others know. For example, a tech expert in Bangalore might struggle to explain a smartphone issue to a novice, accidentally using jargon. They’re “cursed” by their own knowledge. This cognitive pitfall is quite universal (teachers everywhere experience it with students).
In Indian society, one interesting angle is the hierarchical gap in knowledge in many settings, e.g. the educated vs the illiterate. An official in a government office might assume villagers understand bureaucratic procedures that are actually baffling to them, due to the curse of knowledge combined with class distance. There is minimal study on the specific cross-cultural studies on this bias; it likely doesn’t differ greatly by culture since it’s tied to cognitive empathy (or lack thereof).
However, how people handle the curse of knowledge might vary. In cultures where teaching and storytelling are strong (India has a tradition of simplifying complex ideas into folktales and analogies), experts might be a bit more attuned to explaining at different levels. On the other hand, social hierarchies might discourage a junior from saying “I don’t follow,” so the knowledgeable person never realizes they lost the audience. The result can be worse in contexts like multilingual communication, an English-speaking doctor in India might not realize their patient didn’t grasp the diagnosis explanation, due to curse-of-knowledge plus language gap.
Overall, it’s a human bias for sure, one that better communication training can mitigate anywhere. Indians who navigate across India’s 22+ major languages and myriad education levels might become adept at code-switching and checking understanding, a way to beat the curse of knowledge bias that perhaps Western monolinguals don’t practice as much.
