Biases Flashcards
Survivorship
Tendency to overestimate your success. Guard against it by visiting the graves of the ones who didn’t make it.
Swimmers body illusion
Tendency to confuse the factor for selection with the result. Swimmers look like they do not because they’re swimmers but because they looked that way and then became swimmers. So, before you think to do sth for a certain result, reflect on weather selection was at hand.
Clustering illusion
Tendency to discover a pattern in what we see.
Consider a pattern first as pure chance.
Ex Jesus face in pancakes
Social proof
Aka herd instinct
Tendency to think you act correctly because the mass is acting the same way.
The more people follow Action A the truer we deem this idea.
Sunk cost fallacy
Tendency to keep on investing energy, money, time because you came so far.
Ex we’ve come so far..I’ve already invested so much…
Reciprocity
Tendency to not want to be in others people’s debt.
Ex they give you something and then wants something in return and you’ll give it to them
Ex church gives postcards and then ask you later to donate - dinner invitations going back and forth bc you feel you owe it
Confirmation bias I
Tendency to interpret new info so that it becomes compatible with our existing beliefs theories and convictions . This leads to ignoring and filtering out facts that disconfirm what we belief.
Ex prior solutions remain intact to fit existing belief
Ex diet success
Tip when exception comes up it’s usually disconfirming evidence
Confirmation bias II examples
- journalists only mentioning evidence that proofs their point
- Google marked as successful bc of creativity
- think People are good and then see it everywhere
Authority bias
Tendency to be influenced and withhold opinions or beliefs due to unconscious influence of an alleged authority
Ex co pilots afraid of pilots decreases safety. Now they have crew resource mngt to discuss any reservations
Contrast effect
Tendency to not be able to make absolute judgement and value things more/less in contrast to sth else
Ex walking back for saving 10eur on groceries but not 10eur on 1000 dollar suit.
Ex people find you less attractive when you’re out with your relatively prettier friends
Availability bias
Tendency to create a picture of the world based on what comes most easily to mind. Overestimate probability that sth happens to us that’s flashy.
Ex overestimate showstoppers in life
Ex consultants give you an answer that they most often do
Ex ideas we hear or say often are at forehead and become real even though they aren’t
Ex more word start that k rather thank k in third position (wrong but k start words are more available in mind)
Sol spend time with people who think differently than you do
It’ll get worse before it gets better
Tendency to predict and for people to believe that after an action things go worse before they get better. The one using it will always for some time win because of nothing changes, people think the prediction is true; if it gets better, the advice was fixed faster than expected.
Ex politician predicted difficult years
Ex consultant predicting that things can’t change over night
Story bias
Tendency to want to find meaningful stories in everything around us. Tendency to filter out any facts that contradict the meaningful interpretation of a sequence of events. Narratives are irresistible. We therefore have a false sense of understanding - because contradictory facts are left out.
Ex you retain better the king died and the Wien too due to grief, rather than the factual story the king died the queen died.
Sol always ask yourself who’s the sender, what are intentions and what is hidden under the rug
Hindsight bias
Tendency to male sense of a sequence of events once it happened. I told you so bias. In hindsight it seems plausible that sth ended in what we know. Risk to think you are a better predictor than you are and take too much risk.
Ex they split up bc they spend too much time
Sol keep a Journale and write down your Predixtions. You’ll see how bad a precursor you are.
Overconfidence effect
Tendency to overestimate your knowledge and ability to predict. The difference between what people know and what they think they know.
Experts are even more off.
Ex Frenchman think the re great lovers
Ex not using statistical evidence as your benchmark to succeed or not
Ex higher in man
Insights be sceptical if experts , favor the pessimist example to get more realistic insights
Chauffeur knowledge
Knowledge From People who have learnt to put up a show about a certain topics, but don’t have real deep knowledge.
Ex news anchors
Ex ceos are expected to have real knowledge but usually have Chauffeur knowledge
Sol understand what’s in your circle of control and what isnt. Experts will say I don’t k ow. Chauffeurs won’t.
Illusion of control
Tendency to believe that a person can influence something by doing something over which they have absolutely no sway. Placebo buttons nidge People into thinking they’re in control.
Ex throwing dice harder of you need a high number
Ex sending out good energy for good vibes
Ex you can influence your destiny
Ex button at traffic ligjts - making us think we have control over light makes us wait more patiently
Sol Focus on what’s you can rally I fluency
Incentive super response
Tendency to respond to incentives by doing what’s in your best interest. People respond quickly to changes in incentives, and respond to the incentives themselves not to grander intentions of them. Good incentives think about intent and reward.
Ex managers invest more time into lowering targets than growing business.
Ex farmers break dino bones into halves to get more rewards.
Ex good: making engineers stand under their own bridge. Bad ones overlook the underlying aim. (Rewarding Bank employees for each loan makes credit rating shit).
Regression to mean delusion
Insight that every extreme performance will be followed by less extreme performances that are close to the mean.
Insight: of you believe this you might tend to conclude that a certain action caused improvement in behaviors even though the action had nothing to do with it.
Sol when you hear sth got better after it was bad look out for regression to mean.
Ex bad school that enter a program will become better next year not because of the program but because of this insight.
Outcome bias
Tendency to evaluate decisions based on the result rather than on the decision process. Only in hindsight do signals seem clear (bc you make sense of outcomes) , at the time info might have been different
Ex judging doctor A as the best because no one died on his table.
Sol base judgement on looking at decision made at the time and filter out any information about outcome. Was the decision rational at the time- then good, continue doing so even if the outcome didn’t get you lucky.
Choice paradox
Insight That higher number of options destroys quality of life.
Inner paralysis - too many items will leave with no decision
Poorer selection - too many options let you decide based on one default marker and you don’t take into consideration other aspects
Unhappy - too many items make you always think that your choice wasnt a good one
Sol wrote down what you want and then stick to it. Be ok that you can never make the right decisions - good enough is great.
Liking bias
Tendency to buy something because you like the person selling it.
Liking is caused by
A - atttactiveness
B - similarity to me
C - if they like me and show me this
Ex advertising show Koalas over spiders, despite both are endangered
Sol pretend you don’t like the buyer when evaluating purchasing decision
Endowment effect
Tendency to consider things more valuable once we own them. Aka when we sell something we charge more for it than we initially thought it was worth - ownership makes us add zeros.
Ex you buy c for 10 someone offer you 20 and you say no.
Ex being more disappointed when not getting the job in the final round than not getting it in the first round. Outcome. Is the same.
Coincidence
Tendency to over interpret the occasion of one very improbable event as more than what it is - an improbable but still probable event occurring.
Ex thinking of someone and then they call
Ex people being delayed and then church explodes
Sol when something occurs draw out the other scenarios and reflect how likely they are to be true.
Groupthink
Tendency to make reckless decisions as a group because everyone aligns their opinions with the supposed consensus
This means motions are passed that wouldn’t have if only everybody would have been asked individually . This leads to filtering out any evidence contradictory to group belief.
Ex No one wants to be naysayer who destroys group spirit; everyone is happy to be part of the group
Sol if you’re ever in a tight unanimous group then speak your mind no matter what. A devils advocate is key to team success.
Neglect of probability
Tendency to lack an intuitive grasp of probability. We react to the magnitude of the outcome of an event and not its risk/probability of occurring.
Ex 2percent vs 50percent chance of getting electric shocks; people react the same way. Only at 0percent do they chill. „Zero Risk bias“.
Ex we like the solution than Brings 1percent reduction to zero percent of bad thing occurring more than an overall 4 percent reduction bringing it down to 2 percent.
Scarcity error
Tendency to overvalue things that seem to be rare or one of a kind . If we are deprived of an option we Suddenly seem it more valuable.
Ex choosing to close a deal because of an invented second buyer who want it. You’ll see the opportunity leave before your eyes.
Ex two groups receive many vs two boxes of cookies and are asked to rate the quality. The group with two boxes rate dir much higher.
Ex only two left!
Sol assess the value of a product only based on price and it’s benefits not on its availability