Cognative Biases

Question 1

Availability heuristic

Answer 1

A mental short cut that relies on immoderate examples that come to mind

When you are trying to make a decision, a number of related events or situations might immediately spring to the forefront of your thoughts - as a result you might judge that those events are more frequent and possible than others

You will give greater credence to this info and tend to overestimate the probability and likely hood of similar things happening in the future

E.g. Loosing your job example

Question 2

Cognitive dissonance

Answer 2

The mental stress experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas or values at the same time; or is confronted with new info which challenges their strong beliefs

For example a uni student who is right wing but sympathises with the left, the pressures of uni and new info intensify these sympathies

Question 3

Confirmation bias

Answer 3

Involves favouring info that conforms to already held beliefs

E.g. Imagine someone believes that left handed people are more creative than right handed people. Whenever this person encounters a left handed creative person this will be seen as evidence for their belief

They will discount anomalies

Question 4

Fundamental attribution error

Answer 4

The tendency to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent, rather than external factors, in explaining another’s behaviour

E.g. Claiming a member of the westboro baptist church was born with hateful inherent views; disregarding the external influences if the environment they grew up in

Question 5

Herd instinct

Answer 5

A herd instinct is an emotional pressure to agree with other members of a group. The herd instinct results in calories to think critically about an issue situation or decision

E.g. The john Jane and Jeff investment example

Question 6

Groupthink

Answer 6

Occurs when a group makes a faulty decision because group pressures lead to a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgment

Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions which dehumanise other groups

A group is especially vulnerable to group thinknwhen its members are similar in background and insulated from outside opinions.

For example the decision of the us and U.K. To go to war in Iraq

Question 7

Hindsight bias

Answer 7

The inclination after an event has occurred an event has occurred to see the event as having been predictable, despite there having been little or not objective basis for predicting it

E.g. After viewing the outcome of an event claiming you knew it all along
- the people the claimed they knew trump was going to win eventhough all the polls said Hillary

Question 8

Loss aversion

Answer 8

The human tendency to strongly prefer avoiding a loss to receiving a gain

• this particular objective bias consistently explains cognitive bias explains why so many of us make the same irrational decision over and over

E.g. We would prefer not to lose £50 than gain £50