Bias Flashcards
(37 cards)
What is confirmation bias
— the often unconscious act of referencing only those perspectives that fuel our pre-existing views, while at the same time ignoring or dismissing opinions — no matter how valid — that threaten our world view.
What is in-group bias
What has this got to do with oxytoxin
Ultimately, the ingroup bias causes us to overestimate the abilities and value of our immediate group at the expense of people we don’t really know.
The neurotransmitter oxytocin while helping us to forge tighter bonds with people in our ingroup, performs the exact opposite function for those on the outside — makes us suspicious, fearful, and even disdainful of others.
What is positive expectation bias
What is the related hot-hand fallacy
It’s the sense that our luck has to eventually change and that good fortune is on the way. It also contribues to the “hot hand” misconception. Similarly, it’s the same feeling we get when we start a new relationship that leads us to believe it will be better than the last one.
The “hot-hand fallacy” (also known as the “hot hand phenomenon” or “hot hand”) is the fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts.
What is post-purchase rationalisation
What is it otherwise known as?
What concept does it relate to
— a kind of built-in mechanism that makes us feel better after we make crappy decisions
Also known as Buyer’s Stockholm Syndrome, it’s a way of subconsciously justifying our purchases — especially expensive ones. Social psychologists say it stems from the principle of commitment, our psychological desire to stay consistent and avoid a state of cognitive dissonance.
What is neglected probability
It’s the same phenomenon that makes us worry about getting killed in an act of terrorism as opposed to something far more probable, like falling down the stairs or accidental poisoning.
Or daying in a plane crash rather than a car crash
It probably relates to activities that feel more natural or familiar that we underestimate the risks
in other words:
— our inability to properly grasp a proper sense of peril and risk — which often leads us to overstate the risks of relatively harmless activities, while forcing us to overrate more dangerous ones.
what is observational selection bias
This is that effect of suddenly noticing things we didn’t notice that much before — but we wrongly assume that the frequency has increased.
It’s also a cognitive bias that contributes to the feeling that the appearance of certain things or events couldn’t possibly be a coincidence (even though it is).
What is status quo bias
The tendency to be apprehensive of change, which often leads us to make choices that guarantee that things remain the same, or change as little as possible.
Part of the perniciousness of this bias is the unwarranted assumption that another choice will be inferior or make things worse. The status-quo bias can be summed with the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — an adage that fuels our conservative tendencies.
What is negative bias
What is the example relating to Steven Pinker
People tend to pay more attention to bad news
Social scientists theorize that it’s on account of our selective attention and that, given the choice, we perceive negative news as being more important or profound.
We also tend to give more credibility to bad news, perhaps because we’re suspicious (or bored) of proclamations to the contrary.
Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, argues that crime, violence, war, and other injustices are steadily declining, yet most people would argue that things are getting worse — what is a perfect example of the negativity bias at work.
What is the Bandwagon effect
The preference for going with the flow of the crowd (e.g. group think)
It doesn’t have to be a large crowd or the whims of an entire nation; it can include small groups, like a family or even a small group of office co-workers.
What is projection bias
What related bias does this often lead to
The tendency to assume that most people think just like us — though there may be no justification for it.
It often leads to the related false concensus bias in which we tend to believe that people not only think like us, but that they also agree with us
It’s a bias where we overestimate how typical and normal we are, and assume that a consensus exists on matters when there may be none.
It can also create the effect where the members of a radical or fringe group assume that more people on the outside agree with them than is the case.
What is the current moment bias
What else is it known as
Aka hyperbolic discounting
Most of us would rather experience pleasure in the current moment, while leaving the pain for later.
This is a bias that is of particular concern to economists (i.e. our unwillingness to not overspend and save money) and health practitioners.
I.e. you’d prefer to eat cake and do no exercise now, because the health effects come in the future not the present
Anecdote: a 1998 study showed that, when making food choices for the coming week, 74% of participants chose fruit. But when the food choice was for the current day, 70% chose chocolate.
What is the anchoring effect
what is it otherwise known as
The tendency we have to compare and contrast only a limited set of items. It’s called the anchoring effect because we tend to fixate on a value or number that in turn gets compared to everything else. It is often the first piece of information offered
It is also known as the relativity trap
The classic example is an item at the store that’s on sale; we tend to see (and value) the difference in price, but not the overall price itself. This is why some restaurant menus feature very expensive entrees, while also including more (apparently) reasonably priced ones. It’s also why, when given a choice, we tend to pick the middle option — not too expensive, and not too cheap.
Another example:
Participants observed a roulette wheel that was predetermined to stop on either 10 or 65. Participants were then asked to guess the percentage of the United Nations that were African nations. Participants whose wheel stopped on 10 guessed lower values (25% on average) than participants whose wheel stopped at 65 (45% on average)
What is the ambiguity effect
The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem “unknown.”
An example might be the way people invest money. A risk-averse investor might tend to put their money into “safe” investments such as government bonds and bank deposits, as opposed to more volatile investments such as stocks and funds. Even though the stock market is likely to provide a significantly higher return over time, the investor might prefer the “safe” investment in which the return is known, instead of the less predictable stock market in which the return is not known. The ambiguity effect is a possible explanation why people are reluctant to adopt new practices in the work place
What is attention bias
The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts.
For example, people who frequently think about the clothes they wear, pay more attention to the clothes of others.
What is an availability cascade
What else is it known as
the tendency to believe information to be correct because we are exposed to it more times
It is also known as the truth effect, the illusory truth effect or the illusion of truth effect
What is the backfire effect
When people react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening their beliefs
What is belief bias
An effect where someone’s evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion
in other words:
he tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the plausibility of their conclusion rather than how strongly they support that conclusion
What is the bias blind spot
The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.
What is congruence bias
Congruence bias occurs due to people’s overreliance on directly testing a given hypothesis as well as neglecting indirect testing.
In an experiment, a subject will test his own usually naive hypothesis again and again instead of trying to disprove it. Essentially the root of congruence bias is the failure to consider alternative hypotheses
What is the curse of knowledge
When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people
What is the decoy effect
The phenomenon whereby consumers will tend to have a specific change in preference between two options when also presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated ( In other words, in terms of specific attributes determining preferability, it is completely dominated by (i.e., inferior to) one option and only partially dominated by the other. )
For example, if there is a consideration set involving MP3 players, consumers will generally see higher storage capacity (number of GB) and lower price as positive attributes; while some consumers may want a player that can store more songs, other consumers will want a player that costs less. In Consideration Set 1, two devices are available:
Consideration Set 1
A:
price $400
storage 30GB and B: price $300 storage20GB
In this case, some consumers will prefer A for its greater storage capacity, while others will prefer B for its lower price. Now suppose that a new player, C, is added to the market; it is more expensive than both A and B and has more storage than B but less than A:
C: $450 storage 25GB
The addition of C—which consumers would presumably avoid, given that a lower price can be paid for a model with more storage—causes A, the dominating option, to be chosen more often than if only the two choices in Consideration Set 1 existed. This is because as a comparison A is better than C in two respects, whilst B is only better in one respect
What is the distinction bias?
The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.
Research shows that evaluation mode affects the evaluation of options, such that options presented simultaneously are evaluated differently from the same options presented separately.
For example, when televisions are displayed next to each other on the sales floor, the difference in quality between two very similar, high-quality televisions may appear great. A consumer may pay a much higher price for the higher-quality television, even though the difference in quality is imperceptible when the televisions are viewed in isolation.
What is the ‘Peak end Rule’ or Duration neglect
It is the psychological observation that people’s judgments of the unpleasantness of painful experiences depend very little on the duration of those experiences
This heuristic process leads people to judge an experience by its most intense point and its end, as opposed to the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. It occurs regardless of whether a ‘peak’ is pleasant or unpleasant, and regardless of the duration of the experience.
What is the focusing effect
The focusing effect (or focusing illusion) is a cognitive bias that occurs when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event, causing an error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
For example, when people were asked how much happier they believe Californians are compared to Midwesterners, Californians and Midwesterners both said Californians must be considerably happier, when, in fact, there was no difference between the actual happiness rating of Californians and Midwesterners. The bias lies in that most people asked focused on and overweighed the sunny weather and ostensibly easy-going lifestyle of California and devalued and underrated other aspects of life and determinants of happiness, such as low crime rates and safety from natural disasters like earthquakes
