Hello and welcome to my presentation.

In the next few minutes, I will be discussing my mental models and how they assist and limit my perceptions when I meet a person for the first time. First, I want to introduce confirmation bias as one of the most prevalent mental models in my world. It impacts the way I am able to gather information and interpret and recall the same. It is formed from a natural point of trying to interpret information based on what I know. It is a subject of my environment and exposure.

The confirmation mental model assists me when meeting a person for the first time through helping in a quick synthesis of information about the individual for me to place the person in a certain personal category. However, this system of synthesizing information limits my perceptions in a manner that may result to poor and risk decision making processes. For instance, in the same example as above, it can be easy for me to overlook red flags in an individual who is come and collected the first time we meet because of my bias towards aggression and violence. It becomes very easy to overlook information that is not aligned to what I am already looking for.

While the confirmation bias is a good way to help in the analysis of daily life and experiences, it can be limiting to a large extent. For learning and development both personally and professionally, I need to work on changing perspectives to analyze and interpret information using other points of view that may not necessarily be my own. I plan to achieve this development and learning by accepting opposing and disagreeing positions on different issues. I will also need to keep an open mind and receive and interpret information without involving personal biases.

Thank you for listening.