Bias

Question 1

What is confirmation bias

Answer 1

— 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.

Question 2

What is in-group bias

What has this got to do with oxytoxin

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

What is positive expectation bias

What is the related hot-hand fallacy

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

What is post-purchase rationalisation

What is it otherwise known as?

What concept does it relate to

Answer 4

— 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.

Question 5

What is neglected probability

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

what is observational selection bias

Answer 6

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).

Question 7

What is status quo bias

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

What is negative bias

What is the example relating to Steven Pinker

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

What is the Bandwagon effect

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

What is projection bias

What related bias does this often lead to

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What is the current moment bias

What else is it known as

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

What is the anchoring effect

what is it otherwise known as

Answer 12

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)

Question 13

What is the ambiguity effect

Answer 13

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

Question 14

What is attention bias

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

What is an availability cascade

What else is it known as

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What is the backfire effect

Answer 16

When people react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening their beliefs

Question 17

What is belief bias

Answer 17

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

Question 18

What is the bias blind spot

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

What is congruence bias

Answer 19

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

Question 20

What is the curse of knowledge

Answer 20

When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people

Question 21

What is the decoy effect

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What is the distinction bias?

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

What is the ‘Peak end Rule’ or Duration neglect

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

What is the focusing effect

Answer 24

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

Question 25

What is the framing effect

Answer 25

Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how or by whom that information is presented.

Question 26

What is known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

Answer 26

A Frequency illusion

The illusion in which a word, a name or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards

Question 27

What is information bias

Answer 27

The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action

An example of information bias is believing that the more information that can be acquired to make a decision, the better, even if that extra information is irrelevant for the decision

Question 28

What is the escalation of commitment

What else is it known as

What proverb encapsulates it

Answer 28

Aka sunk cost fallacy

Describes the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the cost, starting today, of continuing the decision outweighs the expected benefit.

“Throwing good money after bad”, “In for a dime, in for a dollar”, or “In for a penny, in for a pound”.

The term has been used to describe the United States commitment to military conflicts including Vietnam in the 1960s - 1970s and in Iraq in the 2000s, where sunk costs in terms of dollars spent and lives lost were taken as justifying continued involvement

Question 29

What is the ‘less is better’ effect

Answer 29

The tendency to prefer a smaller set to a larger set judged separately, but not jointly (this is key)

Christopher Hsee demonstrated the effect in a number of experiments, including some which found that when offered separately:

seven ounces of ice cream overflowing in a small cup was preferred over eight ounces of ice cream in a much larger cup

a dinnerware set with 24 intact pieces was preferred over a dinnerware set of 31 pieces with a few broken pieces

a smaller dictionary was preferred over a larger dictionary with a torn cover

participants perceived people giving away a $45 scarf as more generous than those who gave a cheap $55 coat.

Question 30

What is the neglect of probability

Answer 30

The tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty and is one simple way in which people regularly violate the normative rules for decision making.

Small risks are typically either neglected entirely or hugely overrated, the continuum between the extremes is ignored.

Question 31

What is normalcy bias

Answer 31

The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.

It is often used to refer to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects.

This may results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations.

Question 32

What is risk compensation

Answer 32

Risk compensation is a theory which suggests that people typically adjust their behavior in response to the perceived level of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected.

By way of example, it has been observed that motorists drove faster when wearing seatbelts and closer to the vehicle in front when the vehicles were fitted with anti-lock brakes.

Question 33

What is the Semmelweis reflex

Answer 33

It is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.

The term originated from the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, who discovered that childbed fever mortality rates reduced ten-fold when doctors washed their hands with a chlorine solution between patients. His hand-washing suggestions were rejected by his contemporaries, often for non-medical reasons. For instance, some doctors refused to believe that a gentleman’s hands could transmit disease

Question 34

What is the representativeness heuristic

Answer 34

The representativeness heuristic is used when making judgments about the probability of an event under uncertainty.

This faulty heuristic is based on the presumption that once people or events are categorized, they share all the features of others members in that category.

“the degree to which [an event] (i) is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population, and (ii) reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated”.[4][5] When people rely on representativeness to make judgments, they are likely to judge wrongly because the fact that something is more representative does not make it more likely.

Question 35

What are the big three biases to look out for:

Answer 35

Framing

Confirmation

Representativeness

Question 36

What is the Halo effect

Answer 36

The halo effect is a cognitive bias in which an observer’s overall impression of a person influences the observer’s feelings and thoughts about that person’s character. It was named by psychologist Edward Thorndike in reference to a person being perceived as having a halo. Subsequent researchers have studied it in relation to attractiveness and its bearing on the judicial and educational systems.

The relation of a crime to attractiveness is also subject to the halo effect. A study presented two hypothetical crimes: a burglary and a swindle. The burglary involved a woman illegally obtaining a key and stealing $2,200; the swindle involved a woman manipulating a man to invest $2,200 in a nonexistent corporation. The results showed that when the offense was not related to attractiveness (as in the burglary) the unattractive defendant was punished more severely than the attractive one. However, when the offense was related to attractiveness (the swindle), the attractive defendant was punished more severely than the unattractive one. The study imputes that the usual leniency given to the attractive woman (as a result of the halo effect) was negated or reversed when the nature of the crime involved her looks.

Question 37

What is deductive reasoning

What is inductive reasoning

What is the difference in truth in the conclusions of each set of reasing

Answer 37

Deductive reasoning is starting with the bigger picture and breaking it down into smaller segments in order to derive a theory.

(in another way - is the process of reasoning from one or more general statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion.) - ie. reasoning based on homing in on something from a shrinking circle of known facts and logical inferences

inductive reasoning, involves beginning with a small segment of information and growing into a more complex, bigger picture. (e.g. in history, building up an opinion on society from small fragments - i.e. its reasoning based on extrapolating)

The conclusion of a deduction argument must be true, but the conclusion of an induction argument is only probable - on evidence provided