Cognitive Biases

Social Loafing

instead of groups working harder together, each person tends to contribute less because each person knows that others will take up the slack. The effect can be conscious, but is mostly unconscious. The important aspect is the anonymity of being in a group. If one's work is singled out, one returns to normal levels of performance.

Illusion of validity

the belief that more information will increase the strength of predictions, even when there is proof that it will not. (Similar to information effect). Related to confirmation, overconfidence effect, representativeness heuristic?

Dunning-Kruger Effect

we think we know our level of competence, but in reality we often exaggerate our abilities and underestimate the difficulty of tasks. As one increases in knowledge or ability, one learns more about how much more there is to know or to do.

Introspection

we think we know why we feel, but many of the reasons we feel a given way are out of our reach. Forcing ourselves to think logically overpowers our more basic emotional states, and there may be conflict between the two. The act of explaining why we felt something can change how we felt. Related to confabulation.

Priming

actions and perceptions unconsciously affect how we feel—connection between words (metaphors) and deeds. "a stimulus in the past affects the way you behave and think or the way you perceive another stimulus later on." Works best when we are on autopilot, not thinking about them.

Interview Illusion

after a short period of time with a person, we tend to believe that we know them well enough to be able to predict their behavior fairly accurately. When new data arrives and we accommodate our mental schemas, we fall prey to the hindsight bias and believe that our current view of them has been our view all along.

Narrative Fallacy

after the fact, we look back through events and construct a narrative that fits the data, but may not have any relation to reality. We love narrative so much that we construct make-sense stories.

Choice-Supportive Bias

after we make a choice (such as a purchase), we begin to believe that that choice was more positive than it really was because we've chosen it. In reality, it had its share of downsides, but we begin to believe that it was the best choice available to us.

Belief perseverance

in the face of evidence that directly contradicts our beliefs, we tend to still hold onto our old beliefs. It is so very difficult to admit when we are wrong, so we refuse to do it and believing what we always have.

Herd Behavior

in times that leave little time for decision making, we tend to make decisions based on the actions of others, or the group. This includes taking similar actions and adopting similar opinions/beliefs. Think about bank rushes and such. Related to conformity. Practically is conformity.

Planning fallacy (A.K.A. Hofstatdter's Law

"It always takes longer than you think, even when you account for Hofstatdter's Law."): we tend to underestimate how much time or work it will take us to complete a task. Consider how construction workers always seem to be behind schedule. Are they lazy, or is the schedule too optimistic to begin with?

Cognitive Bias

A "predictable pattern of thought and behavior that leads you to draw incorrect conclusions" or "an error in information processing/interpretation"

Anchoring Effect

First perceptions affect later perceptions, rather than our evaluating everything rationally. Think how sales work, even though the "full price" is almost never actually used, it provides an anchor point that makes the "sale price" look cheap, even though it's still expensive. Related to priming? Related to consistency.

Post-Purchase Rationalization

a specific instance of choice-supportive bias, wherein we rationalize our choice to purchase something after it has been purchased, regardless of the actual quality of the product and our reasoning beforehand.

Apophenia (A.K.A. Clustering Illusion)

coincidences are given undue meaning. Sometimes shit happens. The meaning isn't in the coincidence, it's in your head. Related to Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy and pareidolia—seeing patterns where there are none.

Over-confidence effect

confidence in one's judgments is much higher than observed accuracy in those judgments. If you think you did well on a spelling test (or were "100% confident") in your answers, you likely did not do as well. We tend to be wrong about 20% more than we think we are. Related to illusory superiority, Dunning-Kruger, illusion of validity

Framing

depending on how information is presented, we can draw completely different conclusions from it. Occurs a lot in politics and advertising.

Social Contagion

emotions tend to spread rapidly through a crowd. This is part of the reason why group behavior can be so different and extreme from individual behavior, as we can be affected by the strong emotions of those around us.

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

gathering data, then adjusting/inventing a hypothesis to fit the data. Instead of testing a hypothesis fairly, we sometimes look at those data points that interest us and frame data around them, ignoring data that doesn't fit the set. Should this one be included?

group polarization

groups tend to come to much more extreme conclusions or decisions than those that would be made by any individual in the group. Related to choice shift, groupthink, bandwagon, conformity.

Ben Franklin Effect

having done somebody a favor, we like that person more. We rationalize it that we did the person the favor because we liked them; the reverse is also true. We may come to hate those that we do harm to, rationalizing it that we did them harm because we don't like them. This leads to a dehumanization of the victim, which decreases cognitive dissonance and allows us to do more without violating our consciences.

Ostrich Effect

ignoring obviously negative information. Related to confirmation bias

Misinformation Effect

memories are not recordings, but are reconstructed every time you remember them. Our present changes how we remember our past. Word choice in particular can affect what we "remember," as can what other people tell us. Related to On Being Certain, Witness to the Defense. Are there other memory biases present that I can link to, or that might all fit under one umbrella? Can be related to conformity.

False Consensus Bias

not only do we think that others think like us, we also assume that they agree with us. We think that we are more normal/typical than we actually are. Leads to exaggerated confidence

Commitment

once we have committed to a course of action, we feel better about it and are more confident in our choice. Related to consistency, choice-supportive rationalization.

Curse of Knowledge

once you know something, it is difficult to remember what it was like not to know it. This bias makes it more difficult to relate to those who do not share your knowledge, as we forget what it was like to be them.

Confirmation Bias

one tends to look for data that validates what one already believes and ignore data that opposes one's beliefs.

Peak-End Rule

our memories of experiences are most affected by how they were at the end and at the peak of the experience. Colonoscopy example.

Salience Bias

our tendency to pay attention only to those things that are easily recognizable about an event/person, and ignore any other relevant but harder to discern information. Also encompasses a tendency to worry more about dramatic (i.e., more easily recognizable) events rather than mundane ones.

Procrastination

rather than a lack of time management skills, procrastination is more about how we plan for the future and deal with it when it becomes the present. We want what's best for ourselves, right? So we plan to eat healthy food. Tomorrow. But when tomorrow comes and we're given the choice between eating celery or cake, we're likely to be weak and pick the cake. Essentially, you took a choice that you had now (do I eat healthy?) and pushed it back to the future (will I eat healthy?). The problem is that future-you is not stronger than now-you. You cannot trust future-you. Future-you is weak. You cannot accurately predict your future mental states. You must learn to overcome short-term desire in favor of long-term reward. Related to confabulation.

Normalcy Bias

rather than respond to a crisis with fight-or-flight instincts, most people remain calm and refuse to accept that anything out of the normal is happening. The overflow of information is likely to force you into a state of conscious catatonia. The best way to overcome this state is to be prepared. Practice. Run through scenarios in your head.

Availability Heuristic

related to Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy (idea that we take randomness into account but actually don't). The more often you see something, the more likely you are to believe it is true. The less common something is seen, the less likely it is believed to be true. We treat information we are more familiar with as more true than information we are not familiar with, even though familiarity is not truth.

Third Person Effect

related to ad hominem, we think that those who disagree with us are gullible and persuaded by lies/propaganda and that we have the truth, but we're all heavily affected by persuasion. All of us. We are not as independent thinkers as we think. Related to self-serving. Ego protection, seeing ourselves as better than we are.

False Recall

remembering or recognizing something that never happened. We can have just as much confidence in these false memories as in our real memories. So, how confident should we be when we say we "remember" something?

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

sometimes, things that we believe become true because we believe them. Also known as the placebo effect. Related to expectation

Naive Realism

the belief that we see things as they are, that other people would come to the same conclusions as us if they had access to the same information and thought rationally and open-mindedly, and that anybody who doesn't agree with us is uninformed, lazy, irrational, or biased. This is an important one! Related to confirmation bias, false-consensus effect, bias blind spot, curse of knowledge, hindsight bias, hostile media effect?, attitude polarization, reactive devaluation, fundamental attribution error, empathy gap.

Bias Blind Spot

the failure to recognize that you yourself are affected by all of these biases. We more easily see them in other people, but we don't really believe that we are subject to them.

Bystander Effect

the more people that are present in an ambiguous crisis, the more likely that nobody is to do anything.

Illusory truth effect

the more we are exposed to a certain piece of information, the more likely we are to believe that it is true. "Say a thing long enough and it becomes true." Related to Mere Exposure Effect.

Mere Exposure Effect

the more we are exposed to a given person, image, idea, song, etc., the more and more we grow to like it. We mistake our familiarity for liking. Things grow on us.

Optimism Bias

the tendency to believe that our actions will have more positive actions than they actually will. Related to positive expectation bias.

Einstellung Effect

the tendency to get stuck on a good idea and stop looking for a better one. We get stuck in our ways and no longer seek to advance our techniques or knowledge. It is the tendency to use a subpar solution that worked for previous problems even though a better solution exists. The better solution is there, but we don't look for it because we already have a working solution at our disposal. YOU HAVE A BETTER WAY TO SAY THIS. SPEND SOME TIME WITH IT. Related to consistency, confirmation, congruence.

Pro-innovation Bias

the tendency to overestimate an invention or innovation's positive effects in society while ignoring its possible negative effects and limitations. Related to optimism bias.

Restraint Bias

the tendency to overestimate our ability to resist temptation.

Catharsis

venting anger does not release it. Rather, it actually makes us angrier over time. Venting keeps you angry. It feels good, but it doesn't deal with the source of your emotion. Instead, try cooling off—focus on something else.

propinquity effect

we are more likely to become friends with those people that we interact with on a regular basis. We are more likely to become friends with our neighbors than we are people who live a mile away because we see our neighbors more often. Friends are not chosen logically, but on the basis of a huge number of factors, the first of which being how much time you have to actually get to know them to make a decision. Related to the mere exposure effect.

Humor Bias

we are more likely to remember humorous information than dry, boring sentences. The humor both draws our attention more and causes us to "rehearse" the information (i.e., we think about it more).

Subjective Validation

we believe vague statements, even though they can apply to practically anyone and anything, even more so if the statements apply directly to us. E.g., horoscopes. A.k.a. Forer effect. Related to confirmation bias

In Group Bias

we come to regard those people who are not part of our social group(s) with disdain and suspicion and fear

Self-Serving Bias

we do not evaluate our lives logically, but think we are better than we are. Our egos our fragile things, and we have plenty of rationalizing devices at our disposal. After they all go to work, we tend to see ourselves as above average. Also relates to responsibility—we take responsibility for our successes but place blame on other people/forces. Related to Dunning-Kruger effect and illusory superiority effect—believe that I am not average, but everyone else is—, hard-easy effect

Hard-easy bias

we have difficulty predicting the actual difficulty of a task. We tend to overestimate our ability to complete simple tasks and underestimate our ability to complete difficult tasks. Related to Dunning-Kruger.

Confabulation

we lie to ourselves without realizing. We don't always know what our true motivations are. Similar to priming, except this refers to the conscious creation of an explanation to explain an act motivated by unconscious desires. We don't know how our minds really work, but we struggle to come up with reasons anyway.

Alternate related bias / Identifiable Victim Effect:

we more readily identify with a name and a face than we do a number, so we respond more readily to an identifiable victim (or a representative schema) than we do an impersonal number, regardless of the actual need involved.

Recency Bias

we place more weight on recent events, even if those events are not representative of the long-run record of events.

Gambler's Fallacy

we put too much weight on previous events and detect statistical patterns where there are none. Statistically independent events do not affect one another. Previous events do not affect independent future events, e.g., coin flipping

Positive Expectation Bias

we put too much weight on previous events and detect statistical patterns where there are none. Statistically independent events do not affect one another. Previous events do not affect independent future events, e.g., coin flipping

Hindsight Bias

we rationalize away our previous ignorances by believing that we knew the truth all along. Related to availability heuristic

Egocentric Bias (memory)

we remember ourselves as being a little better than we actually were, whether we're relating the size of a fish we caught or the number of pushups we could do back in high school. Related to the self-serving bias.

Recency effect

we remember those things that we have recently experienced better than older things. Combines with the primacy effect for the serial position effect—we remember the beginnings and ends of lists/events best, with poor recall for the middle bits. Related to primacy and serial position effect, obviously.

Supernormal Releasers

we respond to specific stimuli that occur naturally in certain proportions that were crucial to survival. When those proportions are exceeded, even though the significance of the stimuli is not increased, our reaction to increases in proportion. These stimuli are better than the real thing

illusory correlation

we sometimes see correlations between unrelated events. Also known as "pigeon superstition." Think of sports players and their lucky charms. Because one player didn't wash his socks before playing and won, he continues to not wash his socks before games in hopes that it will cause him to win more, even though there is no substantial link between his socks and the outcome of the game. Related to apophenia

false uniqueness

we tend believe that we are special snowflakes. Sure, others might share our opinions, and maybe our lack of talent for juggling, but our special talents are our talents. Not so, Billy Joe. There are many other people like us out there with similar—or even better—abilities. We are not so unique.

Obsequiousness Bias

we tend to change our answers to reflect what we think others (esp. superiors) want. Is especially present during scientific testing, which can skew results in a major way. Related to acquiescence bias.

Egocentric Bias (social)

we tend to claim more responsibility for group actions/decisions than an outside observer would accord us. Related to availability heuristic, as our own actions are more accessible to us than those of others. That is, we can see all the little things we did, but not all of the small ways our neighbors contributed to the outcome.

Outcome Bias

we tend to judge past actions by their results rather than by the quality of decision-making. E.g., if you get up to shenanigans and don't get caught, you're less likely to denounce those shenanigans than if you had been caught. More likely for negative events. Related to hindsight and negativity

Bandwagon Effect

we tend to move with the crowd's views and actions, regardless of our personal motivations. What separates this from groupthink is that groupthink is a conscious avoidance of disharmony, whereas bandwagon is more unconscous. Both are manifestations of conformity

Tragedy of the Commons

we tend to overuse and abuse public resources because it is not in the interest of any individual to conserve them. Another name for the public goods game, or is it similar but slightly different?

Negativity Bias

we tend to pay more attention to bad news than good news. It's not that bad news appears more, but that we pay more attention to it. May have evolutionary value, maybe we perceive bad news as more interesting/relevant for some reason. Related to availability heuristic

Primacy Effect

we tend to remember better and judge as more important things at the beginning of lists or events than things in the middle or later on. The effect happens very quickly—in a list of words, the first word will be best remembered and have a larger impact on one's judgment, with decreasing importance for the next two words and negligible importance for the 4th word on.

IKEA Effect

we tend to value things that we put some labor into assembling higher than things that we don't put our own labor into, regardless of the actual worth of the finished progress (although research has shown that the effect dissipates if the labor is a complete failure). Related to sunk cost (irrational escalation) fallacy, endowed progress.

Groupthink

we think groups of people will solve problems easier, but we often get in each other's ways. Has to do with social standing and conformity. "Desire for unanimity overrides motivation to assess all courses of action." People decide to agree because there are potential consequences to disagreeing, so everybody agrees to something that they don't believe. Requires a group of people who care about each other's opinions, isolation, and time constraint.

Spotlight Effect

we think other people are paying attention to us, but they really aren't. Relates to our egoism. Is there a way I can tie together all of these ego-centered biases?

fundamental attribution error

we think people's actions are representative of some core internal state of being, but our actions are very situational. In other words, we tend to think that the locus of control (or responsibility) for the actions of others is internal, not external

hot hand phenomenon

we think that "success breeds success"--that is, people who succeed now or recently in the past are more likely to succeed again in the future. This isn't quite true—while they might have some inherent advantage that caused them to succeed in the first place, they are still subject to the laws of chance and fortune, and any statistical forecast of their chances to succeed at future tasks is likely to be largely inaccurate compared with their actual rates of success. This is a statistical phenomenon: it largely applies to some situations; of course, there are notable exceptions.

Just World Hypothesis

we think that just actions bring just rewards and morally reprehensible actions too receive their just desserts. It's a belief in some sort of universal force that balances the moral scales of action and consequence. Unfortunately, our world is not necessarily so nice and neat. Should this one be included either?

Illusion of Transparency

we think that others can tell what we're feeling or thinking, but they can't. Our emotions and thoughts are not transmitted as forcefully or clearly as we feel them. Other people don't necessarily know when we're scared, nor do we necessarily make our ideas clear during communication. But no—our internal world does not translate so easily to the outside world. The thought that we appear nervous often results in a feedback loop, wherein we become more and more nervous. The trick is to know that others can't easily tell what you're feeling. Also, we much be more explicit in communication. Others cannot read your mind, and you are not as clear as you think you are.

Conformity

we think we are independent individuals, but we are much more affected by others than we think, vis-à-vis the Asch experiments (social pressure) or arguments from authority. Conformity is not a bad thing inherently, but only in excess and when we don't realize we're doing it. Related to social biases that prize social standing, and those biases that are about ego protection

illusory superiority

we think we are much better than we are. Most people believe they are better than average.

Illusion of Control

we think we have much more control over our surroundings than we actually do. Which isn't to say that we have no control, just not very much.

Attention

we think we see everything before us like a camera, but we filter out most of it and focus only on a small part, of which only an even smaller portion is processed consciously and remembered. Part of this is inattentional blindness: we don't see things that we're not paying attention to. What we expect to see often changes what we actually do see. To fight it, try to "expect the unexpected." Related to Misinformation effect

Present Bias

what we want changes over time. What you want now it not necessarily the same thing you will want later. Related to procrastination.

Acquiescence bias

when confronted with a leading question (especially one that has a positive spin), we tend to say yes, especially if the person asking is a superior or the question is overly complex. When in doubt, we tend to say "yes."

Backfire effect (attitude polarization)

when presented with ambiguous information about a subject, one's beliefs may become more potent instead of changing. We interpret ambiguous information in favor of what we already believe. Related to confirmation bias.

Observer-expectancy bias

when we are expecting something, we sometimes inadvertently (or unconsciously) change or interpret the results to favor what we were expecting. "Expectations change how we perceive the outcome." <--Not your words, don't use them. Related to confirmation bias

Social Desirability Bias (a.k.a. Hawthorne effect)

when we think that we are being observed, we are more likely to engage in those behaviors that we think are socially desirable. For example, people are much more likely to wash their hands in the bathroom if there is somebody else there, whereas they are less likely if they are alone.