Cognitive biases are irrational patterns that occur in our thought processing. At the surface, they only seem to misconstrue our perception of reality and hinder our ability to reach a logical conclusion when faced with a problem or situation. However, through further research and investigations, psychologists have discovered that this apparent flaw in our minds has been a necessary part of our evolution. These biases help us make sense of the vast, complex world around us by simplifying the information we receive. Instead of consciously thinking about every single situation we come across, our minds detect a pattern and we follow through with the actions programmed in our heads. Five prominent cognitive biases include the bandwagon effect,
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The confirmation bias is the propensity for humans to look for and interpret new evidence that supports their existing beliefs, hypotheses, or theories. It is also called selective collection of evidence. We hear what we want to hear, see what we want to see, and remember what we want to remember. This creates a greatly biased frame of mind. One should, however, note the difference between “deliberate and spontaneous case building”, as put by Raymond S. Nickerson, a psychologist and research professor at Tufts University. Deliberate case building is objectively evaluating all evidence and drawing a conclusion based on the evidence. Spontaneous case building is selectively acquiring evidence to support a conclusion that has already been drawn and ignoring all evidence that goes against it. Confirmation bias is in the spontaneous case building category, and it can either motivated or unmotivated. If it is motivated, the person may be doing it to protecting an important belief or value. When it is unmotivated, the person in indifferent to the claim. A study to prove the existence of this bias was created by Peter Cathcart Wason in 1960. The test asked people to come up with the rule that generated the three numbers given, say, 2, 4, and 6. The participants could then test whether or not their rule was correct by presenting another three numbers and the experimenter would tell them if those numbers fit with the rule. They usually only …show more content…
The placebo effect is produced when a patient is administered a placebo. A placebo is an inert pill, injection, device, or procedure that is used to provide mental relief rather than fix the issue. The history of this phenomenon is quite fuzzy. The word itself originated many centuries ago from a translation error of the bible. The first experiment with placebo groups was conducted by the navy doctor James Lind in the 1700s and published in A Treatise of the Scurvy, although he did not know this at the time. Lind chose 12 sailors that had scurvy and divided them into six groups of two. Each group received a different treatment. In the end, four out the six groups died, meaning those groups had gotten placebos. The man that actually discovered the placebo effect was Henry Beecher, a medic during World War II. When he ran out of morphine, a pain-killer, he decided to administer a saline solution to the soldiers, but continued telling them that it was morphine. He found that roughly 40% of the soldiers felt pain relief. This study, however, lacks a control group, which causes many scientists to deem it invalid. According to Donald D. Price, Damien G. Finniss, and Fabrizio Benedetti’s A Comprehensive Review of the Placebo Effect: Recent Advances and Current Thought, “Assessing the magnitude of the placebo analgesic effect is not an easy task, as the experimental conditions change across different
The confirmation bias is the propensity for humans to look for and interpret new evidence that supports their existing beliefs, hypotheses, or theories. It is also called selective collection of evidence. We hear what we want to hear, see what we want to see, and remember what we want to remember. This creates a greatly biased frame of mind. One should, however, note the difference between “deliberate and spontaneous case building”, as put by Raymond S. Nickerson, a psychologist and research professor at Tufts University. Deliberate case building is objectively evaluating all evidence and drawing a conclusion based on the evidence. Spontaneous case building is selectively acquiring evidence to support a conclusion that has already been drawn and ignoring all evidence that goes against it. Confirmation bias is in the spontaneous case building category, and it can either motivated or unmotivated. If it is motivated, the person may be doing it to protecting an important belief or value. When it is unmotivated, the person in indifferent to the claim. A study to prove the existence of this bias was created by Peter Cathcart Wason in 1960. The test asked people to come up with the rule that generated the three numbers given, say, 2, 4, and 6. The participants could then test whether or not their rule was correct by presenting another three numbers and the experimenter would tell them if those numbers fit with the rule. They usually only …show more content…
The placebo effect is produced when a patient is administered a placebo. A placebo is an inert pill, injection, device, or procedure that is used to provide mental relief rather than fix the issue. The history of this phenomenon is quite fuzzy. The word itself originated many centuries ago from a translation error of the bible. The first experiment with placebo groups was conducted by the navy doctor James Lind in the 1700s and published in A Treatise of the Scurvy, although he did not know this at the time. Lind chose 12 sailors that had scurvy and divided them into six groups of two. Each group received a different treatment. In the end, four out the six groups died, meaning those groups had gotten placebos. The man that actually discovered the placebo effect was Henry Beecher, a medic during World War II. When he ran out of morphine, a pain-killer, he decided to administer a saline solution to the soldiers, but continued telling them that it was morphine. He found that roughly 40% of the soldiers felt pain relief. This study, however, lacks a control group, which causes many scientists to deem it invalid. According to Donald D. Price, Damien G. Finniss, and Fabrizio Benedetti’s A Comprehensive Review of the Placebo Effect: Recent Advances and Current Thought, “Assessing the magnitude of the placebo analgesic effect is not an easy task, as the experimental conditions change across different