50 Cognitive Biases From TitleMAX
by Sinan Sensivas
1. Spotlight effect
1.1. Spotlight effect
1.2. Spotlight Effect: We overestimate how much people are paying attention to our behavior and appearance.
2. Automation Bias
2.1. Automation Bias
2.2. Automation Bias: We rely on automated systems, sometimes trusting too much in the automated correction of actually correct decisions.
3. Google Effect (Digital Amnesia)
3.1. Google Effect
3.2. Google Effect (aka Digital Amnesia): We tend to forget information that’s easily looked up in search engines.
3.3. Learning
3.4. Belief
3.5. Memory
4. Backfire effect
4.1. Backfire Effect
4.2. Backfire Effect: Disproving evidence sometimes has the unwarranted effect of confirming our beliefs.
5. Declinisim
5.1. Declinism
5.2. Declinism: We tent to romanticize the past and view the future negatively, believing that societies/institutions are by and large in decline.
6. Belief Bias
6.1. Belief Bias
6.2. Belief Bias: We judge an argument’s strength not by how strongly it supports the conclusion but how plausible the conclusion is in our own minds.
7. Availability Cascade
7.1. AC
7.2. Availability Cascade: Tied to our need for social acceptance, collective beliefs gain more plausibility through public repetition.
8. Anchoring
8.1. Anchoring
8.2. Anchoring: We rely heavily on the first piece of information introduced when making decisions.
9. Confirmation Bias
9.1. Confirmation Bias
9.2. Confirmation Bias: We tend to find and remember information that confirms our perceptions.
10. Availability Cascade
10.1. AC
10.2. Availability Cascade: Tied to our need for social acceptance, collective beliefs gain more plausibility through public repetition.
11. Fundamental Attribution Error
11.1. FAE
11.2. Fundamental Attribution Error: We judge others on their personality or fundamental character, but we judge ourselves on the situation.
12. Self serving Bias
12.1. Self serving Bias
12.2. Self-Serving Bias: Our failures are situational, but our successes are our responsibility.
13. In group bias
13.1. in group bias
13.2. In-Group Favoritism: We favor people who are in our in-group as opposed to an out-group.
13.3. Social
13.4. Belief
13.5. Politics
14. Band Wagon Effect
14.1. BWE
14.2. Bandwagon Effect: Ideas, fads, and beliefs grow as more people adopt them.
15. Group think
15.1. Group Think
15.2. Groupthink: Due to a desire for conformity and harmony in the group, we make irrational decisions, often to minimize conflict.
15.3. Social
15.4. Belief
15.5. Politics
16. Halo Effect
16.1. Hallo Effect
16.2. Halo Effect: If you see a person as having a positive trait, that positive impression will spill over into their other traits. (This also works for negative traits.)
16.3. Social
16.4. Belief
16.5. Politics
17. Moral Luck
17.1. Moral Luck
17.2. Moral Luck: Better moral standing happens due to a positive outcome; worse moral standing happens due to a negative outcome.
17.3. Social
17.4. Belief
17.5. Memory
17.6. Politics
18. False Consensus
18.1. False Consencus
18.2. False Consensus: We believe more people agree with us than is actually the case.
19. Curse of knowledge
19.1. Curse of knowledge
19.2. Curse of Knowledge: Once we know something, we assume everyone else knows it, too.
20. Dunning Kruger Effect
20.1. DKE
21. Reactance
21.1. Reactance
22. Declinisim
22.1. Declinism
22.2. Declinism: We tent to romanticize the past and view the future negatively, believing that societies/institutions are by and large in decline.
23. Status Quo
23.1. Status Quo
23.2. Status Quo Bias: We tend to prefer things to stay the same; changes from the baseline are considered to be a loss.
24. Forer Effect (Barnum Effect)
24.1. Barnum Effect
24.2. Forer Effect (aka Barnum Effect): We easily attribute our personalities to vague statements, even if they can apply to a wide range of people.
25. Anchoring
25.1. Anchoring
25.2. Anchoring: We rely heavily on the first piece of information introduced when making decisions.
26. Third Person Effect
26.1. TPE
26.2. Third-Person Effect: We believe that others are more affected by mass media consumption than we ourselves are.
27. Sunk Cost Fallacy (Escalation of Commitment)
27.1. SCF
27.2. Sunk Cost Fallacy (aka Escalation of Commitment): We invest more in things that have cost us something rather than altering our investments, even if we face negative outcomes.
28. Gambler's Fallacy
28.1. Gambler's Fallacy
28.2. Gambler’s Fallacy: We think future possibilities are affected by past events.
29. Zero Risk Bias
29.1. Zero Risk Bias
29.2. Zero-Risk Bias: We prefer to reduce small risks to zero, even if we can reduce more risk overall with another option.
30. Framing Effect
30.1. Framing Effect
30.2. Framing Effect: We often draw different conclusions from the same information depending on how it’s presented.
31. Stereotyping
31.1. Stereotyping
31.2. Stereotyping: We adopt generalized beliefs that members of a group will have certain characteristics, despite not having information about the individual.
32. Outgroup Homogeneity Bias
32.1. OHB
32.2. Outgroup Homogeneity Bias: We perceive out-group members as homogeneous and our own in-groups as more diverse.
32.3. Social
32.4. Learning
32.5. Belief
32.6. Money
32.7. Memory
32.8. Politics
33. Authority Bias
33.1. Authority Bias
33.2. Authority Bias: We trust and are more often influenced by the opinions of authority figures.
34. Placebo Effect
34.1. Placebo Effect
34.2. Placebo Effect: If we believe a treatment will work, it often will have a small physiological effect.
35. Survivorship Bias
35.1. Survivorship Bias
35.2. Survivorship Bias: We tend to focus on those things that survived a process and overlook ones that failed.
36. Tachypsychia
36.1. Tachypsychia
36.2. Tachypsychia: Our perceptions of time shift depending on trauma, drug use, and physical exertion.
37. Law of Triviality (Bike Shedding)
37.1. Law of Triviality
37.2. Law of Triviality (aka “Bike-Shedding”): We give disproportionate weight to trivial issues, often while avoiding more complex issues.
37.3. Social
37.4. Money
37.5. Memory
37.6. Politics
38. Zeigarnik Effect
38.1. Zeigarnik Effect
38.2. Zeigarnik Effect: We remember incomplete tasks more than completed ones.
39. Ikea Effect
39.1. Ikea Effect
39.2. IKEA Effect: We place higher value on things we partially created ourselves.
39.3. Social
39.4. Belief
39.5. Money
40. Ben Franklin Effect
40.1. Ben Franklin Effect
40.2. Ben Franklin Effect: We like doing favors; we are more likely to do another favor for someone if we’ve already done a favor for them than if we had received a favor from that person.
41. Bystander effect
41.1. Bystander effect
41.2. Bystander Effect: The more other people are around, the less likely we are to help a victim.
42. Suggestibility
42.1. Suggestibility
42.2. Suggestibility: We, especially children, sometimes mistake ideas suggested by a questioner for memories.
43. False Memory
43.1. False Memory
43.2. False Memory: We mistake imagination for real memories.
44. Cryptomnesia
44.1. Cryptomnrsia
44.2. Cryptomnesia: We mistake real memories for imagination.
45. Clustering Illusion
45.1. Clustering Illusion
45.2. Clustering Illusion: We find patterns and “clusters” in random data.
46. Pessimism Bias
46.1. Pessimism Bias
46.2. Pessimism Bias: We sometimes overestimate the likelihood of bad outcomes.
47. Optimism Bias
47.1. Optimism Bias
47.2. Optimism Bias: We sometimes are over-optimistic about good outcomes.
47.3. Belief
47.4. Memory
48. Blind Spot Bias
48.1. Blind Spot Bias
48.2. Blind Spot Bias: We don’t think we have bias, and we see it others more than ourselves.
49. Defensive Attribution
49.1. Defensive Attribution
49.2. Defensive Attribution: As a witness who secretly fears being vulnerable to a serious mishap, we will blame the victim less if we relate to the victim.
50. Just World Hypothesis
50.1. Just World Hypothesis
50.2. Just-World Hypothesis: We tend to believe the world is just; therefore, we assume acts of injustice are deserved.
50.3. Social
50.4. Belief
50.5. Memory
50.6. Politics
51. Naive Realism
51.1. Naive Realism
51.2. Naïve Realism: We believe that we observe objective reality and that other people are irrational, uninformed, or biased.
51.3. Social
51.4. Belief
51.5. Memory
51.6. Politics
52. Naive Cynicism
52.1. Naive Cynicism
52.2. Naïve Cynicism: We believe that we observe objective reality and that other people have a higher egocentric bias than they actually do in their intentions/actions.
52.3. Social
52.4. Belief
52.5. Memory
52.6. Politics