Cognitive Biases

What they are

Humans use cognitive biases and heuristics, or mental shortcuts, to make judgments. These are essential for human function, and humans would not have survived as a species without them. However, these automatic unconscious guesses have margins of error and often lead to misperceptions and mistakes. Visual illusions demonstrate how cognitive biases distort even our visual perception.

Cognitive biases are a source of all sorts of societal problems, from racism and xenophobia to bad public policies and the effectiveness of propaganda.

The following are some standard cognitive biases that distort our judgments. Realize that these are often automatic and unconscious.

Confirmation bias: This is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, and to ignore or discredit information that does not. An example of confirmation bias includes following only news sources and people on social media that support your views. and avoiding sources with countering views.

Due to confirmation bias, people with opposing views can read the same information and feel that it validates their point of view.

Affinity bias: This is the tendency to be favorably biased towards people most like us. A well-known example is when employers unconsciously favor employee candidates who are most like them.

Anchoring Bias: This is the tendency to be overly influenced by the first piece of information that we hear. For example, the first price offered in a price negotiation typically becomes the anchor from which all further negotiations are based. 

Misinformation Effect: This is the tendency for memories of an event to be influenced by things that happened after the event.

Witnesses to a crime may feel their recollection is objectively clear. However, research has shown how their memories are often distorted by later influences. Watching television coverage or hearing others’ stories often change how people recall the event. Courtroom eyewitness testimony is fallible.

False Consensus Effect: This is the tendency to overestimate how much other people agree with one’s beliefs. 

Self-Serving Bias: This is the tendency for people to give themselves credit for success and lay blame on outside causes for failure. When you win at a game you may give yourself the lion’s share of credit. When you lose you may blame it on bad luck or bad circumstances.

Availability Bias: This is the tendency to estimate the probability of something happening based on how many examples come to mind. An example is, after reading about airplane crashes in the news, you may believe that plane crashes are more common than they are.

Framing Effect: This is where an individual’s choice from a set of options is influenced more by the presentation than the substance of the information. Political ads, propaganda and product sales pitches exploit this bias.

Occam’s razor bias: This is the tendency to assume the most obvious or simplest decision or explanation is the best decision.

Apophenia: This is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. Science writer Michael Shermer coined the word patternicity, defining it as "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise." This is a common cause of conspiracy theories. Closely related is pareidolia. This is seeing patterns in random information, such as seeing animals or faces in clouds.

Dunning-Kruger bias: This is the tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their ability, and the tendency for experts to underestimate their ability.

Illusory truth effect: This is the tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to understand or if it has been stated multiple times.

Myside bias: This is the tendency for people to evaluate evidence and test hypotheses in a way that is biased towards their own previous beliefs and opinions. 

Bandwagon bias: Related to groupthink, crowd following and herd behavior, this is the tendency to do or believe things because many others do or believe them.  

Other side inferiority bias: This is the tendency to believe that one’s political and ideological opponents are morally inferior, less intelligent and less well-meaning.

Stereotyping: This is the tendency to see most members of a group as having particular qualities, tastes, ways of thinking, or beliefs. This includes overgeneralizing about a race, sex, nationality, and the members of a religion or political party.

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Cognitive biases cannot be eliminated. All humans have cognitive biases of which they are unaware. As they are automatic and unconscious, even being consciously aware that we have cognitive biases does not make them go away. The key is to be aware that we have them and that they influence our judgments and choices, and that our important choices and judgments must be double-checked by critical thinking, reason and empirical evidence.