Cognitive Bias

9 articles

• How the Mind Protects Its Beliefs: Cognitive Dissonance, Confirmation Bias, Placebo, Normalcy Bias, Learned Helplessness and the Overview Effect The mind is uncomfortable when beliefs are shaken, looks first for the evidence it wants, and assumes 'it will be like usual' even in the face of danger. Six ways we protect our beliefs, with the original studies and later revisions.
• People Change in Situations: Authority, Social Proof, the Bystander Effect, Social Loafing, the Abilene Paradox and the Stanford Prison Experiment Ordinary people act differently in front of authority, in a crowd or in a meeting room. The classic studies by Milgram, Asch, Darley and Latané and others — plus the exaggerations and critiques that came later.
• How We Read People and Move Them: the Halo Effect, the Pygmalion Effect, the Ben Franklin Effect, Reactance and the Door-in-the-Face One good trait colours the whole impression, expectations change the people we hold them about, and someone who does us a favour comes to like us more. Five effects at work when we judge and persuade others, with the original studies and their limits.
• Mental Shortcuts: Availability, Anchoring, Base Rates, the Gambler's Fallacy, Framing and Hindsight We rarely calculate probabilities — we estimate them with shortcuts. Here are six judgment errors described by Tversky and Kahneman, where they come from, and how to be fooled by them a little less.
• Looking in the Wrong Place: the Streetlight Effect, Survivorship Bias, the Cobra Effect, Broken Windows and the Law of Triviality We search where it is easy, look only at what survived, and hit the number while missing the point. Five traps that make people and organisations look in the wrong place, with historical cases, research and critiques.
• Losses Hurt More, and More Choice Can Be Harder: Loss Aversion, the Endowment Effect, Choice Overload and the Peak-End Rule Losing ten dollars feels bigger than gaining ten. Here is what research says about loss aversion, the endowment effect, choice overload and the peak-end rule — including where the findings are weaker than their reputation.
• The Mind Has Limited Capacity: Stroop, Change Blindness, Pareidolia, the Frequency Illusion, Miller's Law, Hick's Law, Negativity Bias, the Zeigarnik Effect and Mere Exposure We miss changes right in front of us, see faces in clouds, and suddenly notice a word everywhere once we learn it. Nine effects that come from the limits of attention and memory, with the original studies and revised numbers.
• Seven Ways We Misread Ourselves and Others: Egocentric Bias, the Spotlight Effect, False Consensus, Self-Serving Bias, Dunning-Kruger, the Fundamental Attribution Error and the Just-World Belief Others notice us less than we think, our views are less common than we assume, and other people's mistakes have circumstances too. Seven misreadings of self and others, with the original studies and the later critiques.
• The Sunk Cost Fallacy: Knowing When to Quit We stay in bad jobs, bad relationships, and bad projects because we've already invested so much. But the money is gone. The time is gone. Only the future matters.