CBT Cognitive Distortions

Question 1

We judge others on their personality or fundamental character, but we judge ourselves on the situation.

Sally is late to class; she’s lazy. You’re late to class; it was a bad morning.

Answer 1

Fundamental Attribution Error

Question 2

Our failures are situational, but our successes are our responsibility.

You won that award due to hard work rather than help or luck. Meanwhile, you failed a test because you hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

Answer 2

Self-Serving Bias

Question 3

We favor people who are in our in-group as opposed to an out-group.

Francis is in your church, so you like Francis more than Sally.

Answer 3

In-Group Favoritism

Question 4

Ideas, fads, and beliefs grow as more people adopt them.

Sally believes fidget spinners help her children. Francis does, too.

Answer 4

Bandwagon Effect

Question 5

Due to a desire for conformity and harmony in the group, we make irrational decisions, often to minimize conflict.

Sally wants to go get ice cream. Francis wants to shop for T-shirts. You suggest getting T-shirts with pictures of ice cream on them.

Answer 5

Groupthink

Question 6

If you see a person as having a positive trait, that positive impression will spill over into their other traits. (This also works for negative traits.)

“Taylor could never be mean; she’s so cute!”

Answer 6

Halo Effect

Question 7

Better moral standing happens due to a positive outcome; worse moral standing happens due to a negative outcome.

X culture won X war because they were morally superior to the losers.

Answer 7

Moral Luck

Question 8

We believe more people agree with us than is actually the case.

“Everybody thinks that!”

Answer 8

False Consensus

Question 9

Once we know something, we assume everyone else knows it, too.

Alice is a teacher and struggles to understand the perspective of her new students.

Answer 9

Curse of Knowledge

Question 10

We overestimate how much people are paying attention to our behavior and appearance.

Sally is worried everyone’s going to notice how lame her ice cream T-shirt is.

Answer 10

Spotlight Effect

Question 11

We rely on immediate examples that come to mind while making judgments.

When trying to decide on which store to visit, you choose the one you most recently saw an ad for.

Answer 11

Availability Heuristic

Question 12

As a witness who secretly fears being vulnerable to a serious mishap, we will blame the victim less and attacker more if we relate to the victim.

Sally sat too long at a green light because she was playing with her phone. She got rear-ended. Greg, who is known to text and drive, got out and yelled at the person who smacked into her.

Answer 12

Defensive Attribution

Question 13

We tend to believe the world is just, therefore, we assume acts of injustice are deserved.

Sally’s purse was stolen because she was mean to Francis about their T-shirt and had bad karma.

Answer 13

Just-World Hypothesis

Question 14

We believe that we observe objective reality and that other people are irrational, uninformed, or biased.

“I see the world as it really is other people are dumb.”

Answer 14

Naïve Realism

Question 15

We believe that we observe objective reality and that other people have a higher egocentric bias than they actually do in their intentions/actions.

“The only reason this person is doing something nice is to get something out of me.”

Answer 15

Naïve Cynicism

Question 16

We easily attribute our personalities to vague statements, even if they can apply to a wide range of people.

“This horoscope is so accurate!”

Answer 16

Forer Effect (aka Barnum Effect)

Question 17

The less you know, the more confident you are. The more you know, the less confident you are.

Francis confidently assures the group that there’s no kelp in ice cream. They do not work in the dairy industry.

Answer 17

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Question 18

We rely heavily on the first piece of information introduced when making decisions.

“That’s 50% off? It must be a great deal.”

Answer 18

Anchoring

Question 19

We rely on automated systems, sometimes trusting too much in the automated correction of actually correct decisions.

Your phone auto-corrects “its” to “it’s,” so you assume it’s right.

Answer 19

Automation Bias

Question 20

We tend to forget information that’s easily looked up in search engines.

“What was the name of that actor in that funny movie? I’ve looked it up like eight times.”

Answer 20

Google Effect (aka Digital Amnesia)

Question 21

We do the opposite of what we’re told, especially when we perceive threats to personal freedoms.

One of Alice’s students refuses to do his homework, even though both she and his parents tell him to.

Answer 21

Reactance

Question 22

We tend to find and remember information that confirms our perceptions.

You can confirm a conspiracy theory based on scant evidence while ignoring contrary evidence.

Answer 22

Confirmation Bias

Question 23

Tied to our need for social acceptance, collective beliefs gain more plausibility through public repetition.

A story about razor blades appearing in candy eventually led to many people no longer offering homemade treats on Halloween in America.

Answer 23

Availability Cascade

Question 24

We tend to romanticize the past and view the future negatively, believing that societies/institutions are by and large in decline.

“In my day, kids had more respect!”

Answer 24

Declinism

Question 25

Disproving evidence sometimes has the unwarranted effect of confirming our beliefs.

The evidence that disproves your conspiracy theory was probably faked by the government.

Answer 25

Backfire Effect

Question 26

We tend to prefer things to stay the same; changes from the baseline are considered to be a loss.

Even though an app’s terms of service invade Sally’s privacy, she’d rather not switch to another app.

Answer 26

Status Quo Bias

Question 27

We believe that others are more affected by mass media consumption than we ourselves are.

“You’ve clearly been brainwashed by the media!”

Answer 27

Third-Person Effect

Question 28

We judge an argument’s strength not by how strongly it supports the conclusion but how plausible the conclusion is in our own minds.

Sally mentions her supporting theory about your conspiracy theory, which you adopt wholeheartedly despite the fact that she has very little evidence for it.

Answer 28

Belief Bias

Question 29

We invest more in things that have cost us something rather than altering our investments, even if we face negative outcomes.

“In for a penny, in for a pound!”

Answer 29

Sunk Cost Fallacy (aka Escalation of Commitment)

Question 30

We think future possibilities are affected by past events.

Alice has lost nine coin tosses in a row, so she’s sure to win the next one!

Answer 30

Gambler’s Fallacy

Question 31

We prefer to reduce small risks to zero, even if we can reduce more risk overall with another option.

“You should probably buy the warranty.”

Answer 31

Zero-Risk Bias

Question 32

We often draw different conclusions from the same information depending on how it’s presented.

Alice hears that her favorite candidate is “killing it” with a 45% approval rating. Sally hears that the candidate is “disappointing the country” with a 45% rating. They have wildly different interpretations of the same statistic.

Answer 32

Framing Effect

Question 33

If we believe a treatment will work, it often will have a small physiological effect.

Alice was given a placebo for her pain, and her pain decreased.

Answer 33

Placebo Effect

Question 34

We tend to focus on those things that survived a process and overlook ones that failed.

Greg tells Alice her purse business is going to be great because a successful fashion company had the same strategy. (But 10 other failed companies also had the same strategy.)

Answer 34

Survivorship Bias

Question 35

We adopt generalized beliefs that members of a group will have certain characteristics, despite not having information about the individual.

“That guy with the fancy mustache is a hipster. He probably has a vinyl collection.”

Answer 35

Stereotyping

Question 36

Our perceptions of time shift depending on trauma, drug use, and physical exertion.

“When the car almost hit me, time slowed down.”

Answer 36

Tachypsychia

Question 37

We perceive out-group members as homogeneous and our own in-groups as more diverse.

Alice is not a gamer, but she believes “all gamers are the same.”

Answer 37

Outgroup Homogeneity Bias

Question 38

We trust and are more often influenced by the opinions of authority figures.

“My teacher told me this was fine.”

Answer 38

Authority Bias

Question 39

We give disproportionate weight to trivial issues, often while avoiding more complex issues.

Rather than figuring out how to help the homeless, a local city government spends a lot of time discussing putting in a bike path and bike sheds.

Answer 39

Law of Triviality (aka “Bike-Shedding”)

Question 40

We remember incomplete tasks more than completed ones.

Greg feels guilty for never getting anything done, until he sees all of the tasks he’s checked off on his task list.

Answer 40

Zeigarnik Effect

Question 41

We place higher value on things we partially created ourselves.

“Don’t you love this pot I spent $20 on? I painted it myself!”

Answer 41

IKEA Effect

Question 42

We like doing favors; we are more likely to do another favor for someone if we’ve already done a favor for them than if we had received a favor from that person.

Greg loaned Francis a pen. When Francis asked to borrow $5, Greg did it readily.

Answer 42

Ben Franklin Effect

Question 43

We find patterns and “clusters” in random data.

“That cloud looks like your cat, Alice!”

Answer 43

Cryptomnesia

Question 44

We mistake real memories for imagination.

Greg thinks he visited a graveyard, but he’s pretty sure he just had a spooky dream.

Answer 44

Clustering Illusion

Question 45

The more other people are around, the less likely we are to help a victim.

In a crowd of students, no one called 911 when someone got hurt in a fight.

Answer 45

Bystander Effect

Question 46

We sometimes overestimate the likelihood of bad outcomes.

“Nothing will ever get better.”

Answer 46

Pessimism Bias

Question 47

We, especially children, sometimes mistake ideas suggested by a questioner for memories.

“So did you fall off the couch before or after your mom hit you?”

Answer 47

Suggestibility

Question 48

We sometimes are over-optimistic about good outcomes.

“It’s going to turn out great!”

Answer 48

Optimism Bias

Question 49

We mistake imagination for real memories.

Greg is certain Sally said a really funny joke about pineapples, when that joke actually came from a TV show.

Answer 49

False Memory

Question 50

We don’t think we have bias, and we see it in others more than ourselves.

“I am not biased!”

Answer 50

Blind Spot Bias