Cognitive Biases

Front 1

Actor–observer bias

Back 1

Social Bias - tendency for explanations of other individuals' behaviors to overemphasize the influence of their personality and underemphasize the influence of their situation (opposite for self).

Front 2

Ambiguity effect

Back 2

Probability / Belief - the tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown."

Front 3

Anchoring

Back 3

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.

Front 4

Anchoring effect

Back 4

Probability / Belief - the tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on a past reference or on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (also called "insufficient adjustment").

Front 5

Attentional bias

Back 5

Probability / Belief - the tendency to neglect relevant data when making judgments of a correlation or association.

Front 6

Authority bias

Back 6

Probability / Belief - the tendency to value an ambiguous stimulus (e.g., an art performance) according to the opinion of someone who is seen as an authority on the topic.

Front 7

Availability cascade

Back 7

Probability / Belief - a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse.

Front 8

Availability heuristic

Back 8

Probability / Belief - estimating what is more likely by what is more available in memory, which is biased toward vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged examples.

Front 9

Bandwagon effect

Back 9

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.

Front 10

Base rate fallacy

Back 10

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to ignore available statistical data in favor of particulars.

Front 11

Belief bias

Back 11

Probability / Belief - an effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.

Front 12

Bias blind spot

Back 12

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people.[2]

Front 13

Bystander effect

Back 13

Social Biases - The tendency to not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present.

Front 14

Capability bias

Back 14

Probability / Belief - the tendency to believe that the closer average performance is to a target, the tighter the distribution of the data set.

Front 15

Choice-supportive bias

Back 15

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.

Front 16

Clustering illusion

Back 16

Probability / Belief - the tendency to see patterns where actually none exist.

Front 17

Confirmation bias

Back 17

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Front 18

Congruence bias

Back 18

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, in contrast to tests of possible alternative hypotheses.

Front 19

Conjunction fallacy

Back 19

Probability / Belief - the tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.

Front 20

Consistency bias

Back 20

Memory Errors - incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behavior as resembling present attitudes and behavior.

Front 21

Contrast effect

Back 21

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the enhancement or diminishing of a weight or other measurement when compared with a recently observed contrasting object.

Front 22

Cryptomnesia

Back 22

Memory Errors - a form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination.

Front 23

Denomination effect

Back 23

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g. coins) rather than large amounts (e.g. bills).[3]

Front 24

Disposition effect

Back 24

Probability / Belief - the tendency to sell assets that have increased in value but hold assets that have decreased in value.

Front 25

Disregard of: Regression toward the mean

Back 25

Probability / Belief - the tendency to expect extreme performance to continue.

Front 26

Distinction bias

Back 26

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.[4]

Front 27

Dunning–Kruger effect / Illusory superiority

Back 27

Social Biases - a two-fold bias. Lack of metacognitive ability deludes people, who overrate their capabilities. Also, skilled people underrate their own abilities.

Front 28

Egocentric bias

Back 28

Memory Errors - recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g. remembering one's exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as being bigger than it was.

Front 29

Egocentric bias

Back 29

Social Biases - occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would.

Front 30

Endowment effect

Back 30

Decision-Making / Behavioral - "the fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it".[5]

Front 31

Experimenter's / Expectation bias

Back 31

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment (opposite for conflicting data).

Front 32

Extraordinarity bias

Back 32

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to value an object more than others in the same category as a result of an extraordinarity of that object that does not, in itself, change the value.[citation needed]

Front 33

False consensus effect

Back 33

Social Biases - the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.

Front 34

False memory

Back 34

Memory Errors - confusion of imagination with memory, or the confusion of true memories with false memories.

Front 35

Focusing effect

Back 35

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.

Front 36

Forer effect / Barnum effect

Back 36

Social Biases - the tendency to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general (e.g. horoscopes).

Front 37

Framing

Back 37

Decision-Making / Behavioral - using an approach or description of the situation or issue that is too narrow. Also framing effect

Front 38

Fundamental attribution error

Back 38

Social Biases - the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior.

Front 39

Gambler's fallacy

Back 39

Probability / Belief - the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. Results from an erroneous conceptualization of the Law of large numbers.

Front 40

Halo effect

Back 40

Social Biases - the tendency for a person's positive or negative traits to "spill over" from one area of their personality to another in others' perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype).

Front 41

Hawthorne effect

Back 41

Probability / Belief - the tendency to perform or perceive differently when one knows they are being observed.

Front 42

Herd instinct

Back 42

Social Biases - common tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict.

Front 43

Hindsight bias

Back 43

Memory Errors - filtering memory of past events through present knowledge, so that those events look more predictable than they actually were; also known as the "I-knew-it-all-along effect."

Front 44

Hindsight bias

Back 44

Probability / Belief - sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable.

Front 45

Hyperbolic discounting

Back 45

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, where the tendency increases the closer to the present both payoffs are.

Front 46

Illusion of asymmetric insight

Back 46

Social Biases - people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them.

Front 47

Illusion of control

Back 47

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to believe that outcomes can be controlled, or at least influenced, when they clearly cannot.

Front 48

Illusion of transparency

Back 48

Social Biases - people overestimate others' ability to know them, and they also overestimate their ability to know others.

Front 49

Illusory correlation

Back 49

Probability / Belief - beliefs that inaccurately suppose a relationship between a certain type of action and an effect.[11]

Front 50

Impact bias

Back 50

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.

Front 51

Information bias

Back 51

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

Front 52

Ingroup bias

Back 52

Social Biases - the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups.

Front 53

Interloper effect

Back 53

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to value third party consultation as objective, confirming, and without motive..

Front 54

Irrational escalation

Back 54

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong.

Front 55

Just-world phenomenon

Back 55

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to rationalize an inexplicable injustice by searching for things that the victim might have done to deserve it.

Front 56

Just-world phenomenon

Back 56

Social Biases - the tendency for people to believe that the world is just and therefore people "get what they deserve."

Front 57

Loss aversion

Back 57

Decision-Making / Behavioral - "the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it".[7] (see also Sunk cost effects and Endowment effect).

Front 58

Mere exposure effect

Back 58

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.

Front 59

Money illusion

Back 59

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to concentrate on the nominal (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power.

Front 60

Moral credential effect

Back 60

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency of a track record of non-prejudice to increase subsequent prejudice.

Front 61

Need for Closure

Back 61

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the need to reach a verdict in important matters; to have an answer and to escape the feeling of doubt and uncertainty.

Front 62

Negativity bias

Back 62

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to pay more attention and give more weight to negative than positive experiences or other kinds of information.

Front 63

Neglect of prior base rates effect

Back 63

Probability / Belief - the tendency to neglect known odds when reevaluating odds in light of weak evidence.

Front 64

Neglect of probability

Back 64

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.

Front 65

Normalcy bias

Back 65

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.

Front 66

Observer-expectancy effect

Back 66

Probability / Belief - when a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect).

Front 67

Omission bias

Back 67

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).

Front 68

Optimism bias

Back 68

Probability / Belief - the tendency to be over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions.

Front 69

Ostrich effect

Back 69

Probability / Belief - ignoring an obvious (negative) situation.

Front 70

Outcome bias

Back 70

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Front 71

Outgroup homogeneity bias

Back 71

Social Biases - individuals see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups.

Front 72

Overconfidence effect

Back 72

Probability / Belief - excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.[12][13]

Front 73

Pareidolia

Back 73

Probability / Belief - a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds.

Front 74

Pessimism bias

Back 74

Probability / Belief - the tendency to be over-pessimistic about the outcome of planned actions.

Front 75

Planning fallacy

Back 75

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.

Front 76

Positive outcome bias

Back 76

Probability / Belief - the tendency to overestimate the probability of good things happening to them (see also wishful thinking, optimism bias, and valence effect).

Front 77

Post-purchase rationalization

Back 77

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.

Front 78

Primacy effect

Back 78

Probability / Belief - the tendency to weigh initial events more than subsequent events.

Front 79

Projection bias

Back 79

Social Biases - the tendency to unconsciously assume that others (or one's future selves) share one's current emotional states, thoughts and values.[14]

Front 80

Pseudocertainty effect

Back 80

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.

Front 81

Reactance

Back 81

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.

Front 82

Recency effect

Back 82

Probability / Belief - the tendency to weigh recent events more than earlier events (see also peak-end rule).

Front 83

Reminiscence bump

Back 83

Memory Errors - the effect that people tend to recall more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than from other lifetime periods.

Front 84

Restraint bias

Back 84

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.

Front 85

Rosy retrospection

Back 85

Memory Errors - the tendency to rate past events more positively than they had actually rated them when the event occurred.

Front 86

Selective perception

Back 86

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency for expectations to affect perception.

Front 87

Self-fulfilling prophecy / behavioral confirmation

Back 87

Social Biases - the tendency to engage in behaviors that elicit results which will (consciously or not) confirm existing attitudes.[15]

Front 88

Self-serving bias

Back 88

Social Biases - the tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. Also a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests.

Front 89

Self-serving bias

Back 89

Memory Errors - perceiving oneself responsible for desirable outcomes but not responsible for undesirable ones.

Front 90

Semmelweis reflex

Back 90

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts an established paradigm.[9]

Front 91

Status quo bias

Back 91

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency to like things to stay relatively the same (see also loss aversion, endowment effect, and system justification).[10]

Front 92

Stereotyping

Back 92

Probability / Belief - expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.

Front 93

Subadditivity effect

Back 93

Probability / Belief - the tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.

Front 94

Subjective validation

Back 94

Probability / Belief - perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.

Front 95

Suggestibility

Back 95

Memory Errors - a form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.

Front 96

Survivorship bias

Back 96

Probability / Belief - the tendency to concentrate on the people or things that "survived" some process and ignoring those that didn't, or arguing that a strategy is effective given the winners.

Front 97

System justification

Back 97

Social Biases - the tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged.

Front 98

Telescoping effect

Back 98

Memory Errors - the effect that recent events appear to have occurred more remotely and remote events appear to have occurred more recently.

Front 99

Trait ascription bias

Back 99

Social Biases - the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable.

Front 100

Ultimate attribution error

Back 100

Social Biases - similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.

Front 101

Von Restorff effect

Back 101

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the tendency for an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" to be more likely to be remembered than other items.

Front 102

Well travelled road effect

Back 102

Probability / Belief - underestimation of the duration taken to traverse oft-traveled routes and over-estimate the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes.

Front 103

Wishful thinking

Back 103

Decision-Making / Behavioral - the formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is pleasing to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality.

Front 104

Zero-risk bias

Back 104

Decision-Making / Behavioral - preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.