Dr.Heath (@drheath)

I remember hearing this riddle back in the 80’s. It plays a clever trick on our brains, exploiting how we process information. But, it’s more about how the brain is engineered to process data than it is about gender bias. Here’s why: It starts by focusing on the father (primacy effect), locking him in as the key figure, and ends with the emotional weight of his death (recency effect), which sticks in your mind. Then, when the surgeon enters, your brain takes a shortcut—relying on the most familiar idea (i.e., the availability heuristic) that pops up (father). The way the story is structured intentionally makes it easy to miss the simple answer: The surgeon could be the boy’s mother. It’s not so much rooted in bias but cognitive neuroscience and is a great example of how our brains are engineered to take shortcuts and UNDERthink situations in order to be able to process situations more quickly for sake of survival of our species.