19 June 2007

Cognitive Biases: A Short List

The Big Picture | Cognitive Biases: A Short List: "# Bandwagon effect - the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour, and manias. Carl Jung pioneered the idea of the collective unconscious which is considered by Jungian psychologists to be responsible for this cognitive bias.
# Bias blind spot - the tendency not to compensate for one’s own cognitive biases.
# Choice-supportive bias - the tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.
# Congruence bias - the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing.
# Contrast effect - the enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.
# Disconfirmation bias - the tendency for people to extend critical scrutiny to information which contradicts their prior beliefs and uncritically accept information that is congruent with their prior beliefs.
# Endowment effect - the tendency for people to value something more as soon as they own it.
# Focusing effect - prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
# Hyperbolic discounting - the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, the closer to the present both payoffs are.
# Illusion of control - the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes which they clearly cannot.
# Impact bias - the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
# Information bias - the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
# Loss aversion - the tendency for people to strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains (see also sunk cost effects)
# Mere exposure effect - the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
# Outcome bias - the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
# Planning fallacy - the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
# Selective perception - the tendency for expectations to affect perception.
# Status quo bias - the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same.
# Von Restorff effect - the tendency for an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” to be more likely to be remembered than other items.

No comments: