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Cognitive bias

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A cognitive bias happens when someone makes a bad choice that they think is a good choice. This bias is an important part of the study of cognitive psychology.[1]

Cognitive biases do happen. Primitive humans and animals do things which seem foolish later. The scientific method limits the results of cognitive bias.

Cognitive bias is a natural consequence of our using "gut feelings" to make decisions when those decisions cannot be made rational because the evidence is not available.

The notion of cognitive biases was introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972.[2] It grew out of their experience of people's inability to reason with numbers. Tversky, Kahneman, and colleagues showed several repeatable ways in which human judgments and decisions differ from rational choice. The heuristics people use are mental shortcuts which provide swift estimates.[3] Heuristics are simple for the brain to compute but sometimes introduce "severe and systematic errors".

List of biases

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These are some of the cognitive biases that are often studied:

Name Information
Fundamental attribution error (FAE, aka correspondence bias[4]) [5]
Implicit bias (aka implicit stereotype, unconscious bias)
Priming bias
Confirmation bias [6] [7]
Affinity bias [8]
Self-serving bias
Belief bias
Framing
Hindsight bias
Embodied cognition
Anchoring bias An example of the anchoring effect, is that a person can be more likely to buy a car if it is placed next to a more expensive model (the anchor). During negotiations, prices that are lower than the price of the anchor, may seem reasonable, or can even seem cheap to the buyer, even if those prices are (still) relatively higher than the actual market value of the car.[9] [10]
Status quo bias [11] [12]
Overconfidence effect [13] Related page: Dunning–Kruger effect.
Physical attractiveness stereotype (A habit or) tendency to (think or) assume that people who are

physically attractive, are desirable for other reasons, too.[14]

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References

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  1. Haselton MG, Nettle D, Andrews PW (2005). "The evolution of cognitive bias.". In Buss D.M. (ed). The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Hoboken, NJ, US: John Wiley & Sons Inc. pp. 724–746.
  2. Kahneman D, Frederick S (2002). "Representativeness Revisited: Attribute Substitution in Intuitive Judgment". In Gilovich T, Griffin DW, Kahneman D (eds.). Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 51–52. ISBN 978-0-521-79679-8.
  3. Baumeister RF, Bushman BJ (2010). Social psychology and human nature: International Edition. Belmont, USA: Wadsworth. p. 141.
  4. Cite error: The named reference Baumeister was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
  5. Jones EE, Harris VA (1967). "The attribution of attitudes". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 3: 1–24. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(67)90034-0.
  6. Mahoney MJ (1977). "Publication prejudices: An experimental study of confirmatory bias in the peer review system". Cognitive Therapy and Research. 1 (2): 161–175. doi:10.1007/bf01173636. S2CID 7350256.
  7. Jermias J (2001). "Cognitive dissonance and resistance to change: The influence of commitment confirmation and feedback on judgement usefulness of accounting systems". Accounting, Organizations and Society. 26 (2): 141–160. doi:10.1016/s0361-3682(00)00008-8.
  8. Thakrar, Monica. "Council Post: Unconscious Bias And Three Ways To Overcome It". Forbes.
  9. Anchoring Definition, Investopedia, retrieved September 29, 2015
  10. Cho, I. et al. (2018) 'The Anchoring Effect in Decision-Making with Visual Analytics', 2017 IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology, VAST 2017 - Proceedings. IEEE, pp. 116–126. doi:10.1109/VAST.2017.8585665.
  11. Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L. and Thaler, R. H. (1991) Anomalies The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias, Journal of Economic Perspectives.
  12. Dean, M. (2008) 'Status quo bias in large and small choice sets', New York, p. 52. Available at: http://www.yorkshire-exile.co.uk/Dean_SQ.pdf Archived 2010-12-25 at the Wayback Machine.
  13. Gimpel, Henner (2008), Gimpel, Henner; Jennings, Nicholas R.; Kersten, Gregory E.; Ockenfels, Axel (eds.), "Cognitive Biases in Negotiation Processes", Negotiation, Auctions, and Market Engineering, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 2, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 213–226, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-77554-6_16, ISBN 978-3-540-77553-9, retrieved 2020-11-25
  14. Lorenz, Kate. (2005). "Do Pretty People Earn More?" http://www.CNN.com.