Unpacking Bias and Creativity: Lessons from The Simpsons’ Writing Process for Innovators

Explore how biases shape our perception of the world and learn actionable strategies to overcome them in your work and life. Learn how to create crazy, real ideas like The Simpsons' creative team!

Happy Mid-Week!

In our last “Sunday Smarties”¹ we explored The Simpsons and their uncanny “predictions” of the future. While it’s fun to believe that a cartoon seems to foresee real-world events (again, it doesn’t) the truth is, much of this can be explained by biases that shape how we perceive the world.

Today’s post has two parts:

1. A continuation around biases: what they are, how they influence us, and how you can use them or overcome them in your creative and professional life.

2. How The Simpsons creators are going into these creative meetings to come up with new ideas for content (and it’s not a crystal ball, as you’ll soon learn). This part will hopefully give you some insights on strategic thinking, and how ideating wild ideas might be something helpful for your team, idea, product, whatever you’re building!

---

The Brain’s Odd Pair: System 1 vs. System 2

If you’ve read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, you’ve probably learned about this term of System 1 and 2.

Our brains operate in two modes:

System 1 (the autopilot) and System 2 (the thinker). System 1 is fast, intuitive, and thrives on experience and shortcuts. It’s what helps you recognize a face in a crowd or avoid walking into traffic. Think of System 1 a type of brain system that is based on quick links and bookmarks, like when you use your pc and you save the links you use the most. It’s quick most of the time, but it also might lead you to be biased.

System 2, on the other hand, is the tortoise of the two. Slow, deliberate, and effortful, it’s what you engage when solving a tricky problem or deciding whether a bold pitch at work is grounded in data or just wishful thinking.²

Bias at Work (and on the Couch)

2 posts ago, we discussed Survivorship bias. In our last post, we learned more about Confirmation bias (and Frequency illusion).

Imagine you’re brainstorming ideas for a new project. You have a killer concept that just “feels right.” That’s your System 1 talking. Maybe you’re falling into the trap of Confirmation Bias: you only notice data that supports your idea, or Anchoring Bias, where the first concept that comes to you head sticks like glue and frames every other discussion.

As consumers, these biases are everywhere. Ever felt like Instagram ads are creepily tailored for you? While they might be (you should probably turn all settings off…), it also can be the availability bias working on you. You remember seeing the ad after you thought about the product, creating the illusion it’s new or special. But it’s just clever algorithms meeting your very human mental shortcuts.

As I already argued in the last post, The Simpsons don’t predict the future: they’re just really good at spoofing human behavior, and predicting it through asking themselves (this is what I imagine goes in their mind): “what’s something wild, that’ll make people laugh and still feel relatively remotely possible it can happen, but also impossible that it will”?.

Our perception of them as prophets stems from Hindsight Bias: the belief that events were more predictable than they were. Once something happens, we connect the dots backward, selectively forgetting the 99 times they were wrong. It’s like playing a game where only your lucky guesses count.

---

Fighting Bias Like a Pro (or at Least Trying)

So, how do you outsmart biases at work and in life? Roughly 6 years ago, I had 2 entire semesters to learn about Structured Techniques to avoid bias, and one of our “bibles” was a book by Heuer and Pherson’s playbook, offer some help:

1. Structured Brainstorming: Instead of a free-for-all, use clear rules to explore multiple angles. List pros, cons, stakeholders, and even unlikely ideas to shake off biases like groupthink.

2. Indicators and Evidence Testing: This is like the receipt of your thinking. Write down why you believe an idea works and test it against contradictory data. The goal? Avoid premature closure (jumping to conclusions).

3. Scenario Planning: Borrowing from the intelligence community, play out “what ifs.” This keeps you from anchoring too firmly on one story while ignoring others.

   ---

Behind the Scenes: The Simpsons’ Creative Process

Let’s analyse how they do it. They’ve been doing this for 3 decades, so I’m sure we all can learn a thing or two about their creative process!

In an interview between Matt Selman (The Simpsons executive producer) and Ryan Fleming, from Deadline magazine, in 2022, their conversation revolved around the upcoming season from The Simpsons.³

DEADLINE: How do you keep a show that’s been on for 33 seasons fresh?

SELMAN: That’s our greatest creative challenge, to make sure that every episode is unique and distinct and has something fresh to say. Luckily the world keeps delivering things that need reflecting on in the Springfield mirror. So that’s a thank-you to the world, but also the world needs to do better. I don’t have any problem with repeating an emotional dynamic. There’s only so many emotional dynamics, like we have a table read where Lisa and Marge have a fight about a charity they co-founded, but Lisa and Marge have had plenty of fights before. You can’t cross off emotional family storytelling just because you’ve told those emotional family stories before. But you have to have something new to say about the outside world or a new facet of the relationship to explore that’s more specific and more interesting.

The Simpsons didn’t become a cultural phenomenon by accident. Its creative process thrives on a mix of wit, deep research, and a playful dose of absurdity. When you peek behind the curtain, it’s clear that what sometimes seems like future prediction is actually a testament to their sharp storytelling.

Here’s the kicker: many of those “predictive” moments aren’t magical guesses but byproducts of how the writers work. The team takes current events, trends, and societal quirks, then makes them a bit exaggerated, in true The Simpsons fashion. They ask wild “what if” questions that stretch scenarios to their limits. It’s part satire, part social commentary, and part controlled chaos.

How their process works: “Let’s get weird but grounded”

Their process⁴ combines structured creativity, collaborative refinement, and future-focused thinking.

1. Structured Ideation: Start with a Focused Pitch

• What They Do: Writers bring detailed pitches to a retreat, presenting ideas to key creative leads like Matt Groening and Al Jean. This kickstarts the process with clear, well-thought-out concepts.

  Despite being to hundreds of table reads, Al Jean still can’t get comfortable. He describes a critical setting in which the script is judged on its creative value, but also under the duress of external forces. A cell phone might go off or an actor might be fighting a cold, and the read's vibe shifts. "Last week," says Jean, "there was a truck backing up, that came in the middle, and that was distracting people. The table read is my number one unpleasant experience.⁵

• How you might apply it: Begin with a solid idea, but make sure it’s specific and grounded. Whether pitching to a team or yourself, clarity sets the stage for productive feedback.

2. Collaborative Refinement: Build and Polish Together

• What They Do: The team refines scripts over weeks, going through multiple rewrites and collaborative feedback sessions. Ideas are sharpened and polished until they shine.

• How you might apply it: Embrace collaboration. Share your ideas early, get diverse perspectives, and iterate until the concept evolves into something stronger.

3. Meticulous Execution: Trust the Process

• What They Do: Their high-touch production process spans months, from table reads to digital storyboarding. Every step has a purpose, ensuring quality.

(The Simpsons storyboard)

• How you might apply it: Resist rushing. Treat execution as a series of thoughtful steps, each improving the final product. High-quality outcomes need high-quality processes.

4. Future-Driven Extrapolation: Push “What If” Scenarios

• What They Do: Writers start with current trends and imagine how they might evolve, amplifying them for satire. This playful foresight often aligns with future realities.

• How you might apply it: Spot trends and ask, What’s next? Use imagination to explore bold outcomes in your field. Thinking ahead turns speculation into strategic advantage.

When creating moments like video calling or a President Trump, they likely started with questions like:

• What’s the next step for phones or technology?

• Who’s the most outrageous yet plausible public figure to put in the Oval Office?

By pushing boundaries within a believable threshold, they produce scenes that feel outrageous yet eerily possible, something that has the majority of the people laugh because it’s an example that hits home. It’s almost like speculative fiction: you take what’s real today and project it forward, sometimes with hilarious, sometimes with unsettling results.

---

Innovating Without Falling for the Same Old Traps

Bias is inevitable; it’s human. But recognizing it and using tools to counteract it can turn your wild ideas into grounded innovations.

Next time you catch yourself thinking, “This is it, the perfect solution,” ask: Is this my intuition, or have I tested it with System 2?

And as for The Simpsons, let’s give them credit where it’s due: not for being psychic but for capturing the quirks of human nature, and bringing us some laughter, with funny things that could happen in our world, but most probably won’t.

Biases
> Slow Down: Gut instincts aren’t always right, so test your ideas before jumping in.

> Write It Out: Document your assumptions to spot gaps and rethink biases.

> Think Together: Collaborate to challenge groupthink and expand perspectives.

Simpsons Creative Process

> Start Bold: Be open to wild ideas - they might sound wild, but eventually work out. 

> Ask “What If?”: Imagine how trends might evolve to uncover new opportunities.

> Play the Long Game: Quality takes time: don’t rush the process.

Next Sunday, we’re going back in time and into the future, simultaneously. What happens if we don’t have checks & balances with our wild ideas? If you want this directly into your inbox on Sunday, and every Wednesday and Sunday, then

Want to learn more about this topic? Here’s some insightful articles, apart from the ones in the footnotes!

• System 1 and System 2 Thinking - The Decision Lab by Joshua Loo

• Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman - Google Books

• Designing a Bias-Free Organization

1. Sunday Smarties is how I’m calling our sunday posts moving forward. A rethinking on the term Sunday scaries, as I come to you with something you can learn to inspire you for the week ahead!

2. Heuer, Richards J., Jr., and Randolph H. Pherson. Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis. 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2015.

3. Fleming, Ryan. "‘The Simpsons’ Showrunner Matt Selman on How the Series Stays Fresh and the Nuances of Animation." Deadline. August 11, 2022. Accessed November 18, 2024.https://deadline.com/2022/08/matt-selman-the-simpsons-showrunner-animation-emmy-dialogue-1235088268/.

4. Chris, Plante. "How an Episode of The Simpsons Is Made." The Verge Website. Accessed November 18, 2024. https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/25/9457247/the-simpsons-al-jean-interview

5. Same quote as above.