Cognitive Bias Codex Flashcards
Learn more about cognitive errors; which are broken into four quadrants of memory, meaning, information overload, and need for speed
How noticing too-much-information work? (Roehampton Gate)
1 - We notice things that are already primed in memory.
2 - Visually-striking/anthropomorphic things stick out.
3 - We notice when something has changed.
4 - We are drawn to details that confirm our own existing beliefs; we ignore details that contradicts our own beliefs.
5 - We notice flaws in others more easily than flaws in ourselves.
Describe the availability heuristic? (Bike Station Next to the Main Gate)
Only immediate examples that come to mind first are taken for evaluating.
What is Attentional bias? (Roehampton Lake Next to Southlands)
Perception affected by the recurring thoughts at the time.
For example, attentional biases in anxiety are characterized by their intrinsic negativity, in particular, their consistency in selecting threatening stimuli instead of neutral or positive stimuli.
The illusory truth effect. (The Reef)
The tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure.
Mere exposure effect. (Laundry Room at Southlands)
A psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.
Retrieval failure. (Southlands Toilet)
It is the failure to recall information without memory cues.
Context Effect. (Lecture hall of Language & Power)
Describes the influence of environmental factors on one’s perception of a stimulus.
We have little trouble reading “H” and “A” in their appropriate contexts, even though they take on the same form in each word.
Mood-congruent memory bias. (Southlands Green Square at)
Not to be mistaken for mood-dependent memory, it is a bias of the current mood determining the affective association of the recalled memories.
Frequency illusion. (Southlands Parking Space)
After learning some bit of new information we start noticing it everywhere else.
Empathy gap. (Southlands Main Entrance)
The cognitive bias in which people underestimate the influences of visceral drives on their own attitudes, preferences, and behaviours.
The most important aspect of this idea is that human understanding is “state-dependent”. For example, when one is angry, it is difficult to understand what it is like for one to be calm, and vice versa
Omission bias. (Southlands Big Theatre)
It is the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral than equally harmful omissions (inactions) because actions are more obvious than inactions.
Base rate fallacy. (Southlands Inside-Building Park)
If presented with related base rate information (i.e. generic, general information) and specific information (information pertaining only to a certain case), the mind tends to ignore the former and focus on the latter.
Bizarreness effect. (Bede House)
Bizarre material to be better remembered than common material.
von Restorff effect. (Mail Room)
When homogeneous stimuli are presented, the stimulus that differs from the rest is more likely to be remembered.
Picture superiority effect.
Pictures and images are more likely to be remembered than words.
Negativity bias. (Digby Square)
Even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature have a greater effect on one’s psychological state and processes.
Self-reference effect. (The Den Diner)
The level on which the self is implicated in given information affects recall rate.
Anchoring Bias (Chadwick Entrance)
Human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered.
The Focusing Effect
(Chadwick Room)
Understanding and attributing actions to one or two outcomes to easily modify our behaviour correspondingly.
Money illusion
(Roehampton Statue)
The belief that money has a fixed value in terms of its purchasing power.
Consequently, changes in prices are seen to represent real gains and losses.
Framing effect
(Bus Station at Chadwick)
A tendency to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented.
Distinction bias
(Kitchen Chadwick)
The tendency to view two options as more distinctive when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.
Conservatism - belief revision -
(Anand’s Room)
The tendency to revise one’s belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.
It describes human belief revision in which persons over-weigh the prior distribution (base rate) and under-weigh new sample evidence when compared to Bayesian belief-revision.
Weber’s law
(Chadwick Pineapple)
A law quantifying perceptual changes stating a measurable constant ratio for it.
Confirmation bias
(Whitelands Main Gate)
Also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.
Congruence bias
(Reception Whitelands)
Overreliance and irrational confirmation bias on the first-thought solution whilst neglecting other alternatives.
Post-purchase rationalization
(Whitelands MayMonarchs Corridor)
The tendency to retroactively ascribe positive attributes to an option one has selected.
Selective perception
(Whitelands Canteen)
The tendency not-to-notice & more-quickly forget stimuli that cause emotional discomfort and contradict our prior beliefs.
Observer-expectancy effect
(Whitelands Psy-Labs)
Also known as experimenter effect, it is when the researcher’s cognitive bias causes them to subconsciously influence the participants of an experiment.
Ostrich effect
(Biology department, Whitelands)
the attempt made by investors to avoid negative financial information.
The name comes from the common (but false) legend that ostriches bury their heads in the sand to avoid danger.
Subjective validation
(Whitelands Green Field)
a cognitive bias by which a person will consider a statement or another piece of information to be correct if it has any personal meaning or significance to them.
Semmelweis reflex
(Whitelands Study Room)
a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.
Continued influence effect
(Paul’s office)
term refers to the way false claims enter memory and continue to influence beliefs even after they have been corrected.
Bias blind spot
(Froebel Line)
a tendency to recognize the impact of biases on the judgement of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one’s own judgment.
Naïve cynicism
(RSU)
basically, the idea that people naïvely believe they see things objectively and others do not
Naïve realism
(Bar)
is the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are
Confabulation
production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world without the conscious intention to deceive.
Clustering illusion
tendency to erroneously consider the inevitable “streaks” or “clusters” arising in small samples from random distributions to be non-random.
Insensitivity to sample size
a cognitive bias that occurs when people judge the probability of obtaining a sample statistic without respect to the sample size.
Neglect of probability
a tendency to disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
Small risks are typically either neglected entirely (having a car accident) or hugely overrated (dying from a terrorist attack).
Anecdotal fallacy
a tendency to assume that if one event happens after another, then the first must be the cause of the second.
Illusion of validity
a tendency to overestimates ability to interpret and predict accurately the outcome when analyzing a set of data—espeically when the data “tell” a coherent story.
Masked-man fallacy
The apples and oranges law–is committed when one makes an illicit use of Leibniz’s law in an argument.
Leibniz’s law states that, if one object has a certain property, while another object does not have the same property, the two objects cannot be identical.
Recency illusion
the belief that things you have noticed only recently are in fact recent.
Gambler’s fallacy
the mistaken belief that, if something happens more frequently than normal during a given period, it will happen less frequently in the future.
Hot-hand fallacy
the sometimes fallacious belief a person who experiences success with a random event has a greater probability of further success in additional attempts.
Illusory correlation
the phenomenon of perceiving a relationship between variables (typically people, events, or behaviors) even when no such relationship exists
Pareidolia
when the mind responds to a stimulus, usually an image or a sound, by perceiving a familiar pattern where none exists
Anthropomorphism
the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities.
How do we process things with not enough meaning?
- Find stories and patterns.
- Use stereotypes, generalities, and prior histories whenever there are new specific instances or gaps in information.
- Imagine things we’re fond of as better than things aren’t fond of.
- Simplify probabilities and numbers to make them easier to think about.
- Think that we know what others are thinking.
- Project our current mindset and assumptions onto the past and future.
Group attribution error
people’s tendency to believe either
(1) that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole
(2) that a group’s decision outcome must reflect the preferences of individual group members.
Ultimate attribution error
arises as a way to explain an outgroup’s negative behaviour as flaws in their personality, and to explain an outgroup’s positive behaviour as a result of chance or circumstance.
Stereotype
any thought widely adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals or behaviours as a whole.
Essentialism
the belief that people and/or phenomenon have an underlying and unchanging ‘essence’.
Functional fixedness
a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.
Moral credential effect
a bias that occurs when a person’s track record as a good egalitarian establishes in them an unconscious ethical certification that increases the likelihood of less egalitarian decisions later.
Just-world hypothesis
the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of—a universal force that restores moral balance.
Because people want to believe that the world is fair, they will look for ways to explain or rationalize away injustice, often irrationally blaming the person in a situation who is actually the victim.
Argument from fallacy
the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false.
In other words, rather than being a proposition that is false, is an entire argument that is fallacious.
Authority bias
the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure–regardless of their knowledge.
Automation bias
the propensity for humans to favor suggestions from automated decision-making systems and to ignore contradictory information made without automation, even if it is correct.
Bandwagon effect
As more people come to believe in something, others also “hop on the bandwagon” regardless of the underlying evidence.
Placebo
The realization of personal expectations upon false physical premises.
Halo effect
When the brain allows specific positive traits to positively influence the overall evaluation of a person.
In-group favouritism
a pattern of favouring members of one’s in-group over out-group members.
Out-group homogeneity
one’s perception of out-group members as more similar to one another than are in-group members:
e.g. “they are alike; we are diverse”
Cross-race effect
the tendency to more easily recognize faces of the race that one is most familiar with (which is most often one’s own race).
Cheerleader effect
a bias that causes people to think individuals are more attractive when they are in a group.
Well travelled road effect
a cognitive bias in which travellers will estimate the time taken to traverse routes differently depending on their familiarity with the route.
Frequently travelled routes are assessed as taking a shorter time than unfamiliar routes.
Self-serving bias
perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner.
Defensive attribution hypothesis
o a set of beliefs used as a shield against the fear that one will be the victim or cause of a serious mishap.
Risk compensation
“The safer skydiving gear becomes, the more chances skydivers will take, in order to keep the fatality rate constant”
Decoy Effect
a change in preference between two options when also presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated.
Social comparison bias
Tendecy to experience feelings of dislike and competitiveness with someone that is seen as physically or mentally better than yourself.
Bike-shedding effect
Parkinson’s law of triviality is an observation about the human tendency to devote a great deal of time to unimportant details while crucial matters go unattended.
Belief bias
tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the plausibility of their conclusion rather than how strongly they support that conclusion.
Conjunction fallacy
it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one.
Cryptomnesia
the belief that a thought is novel when in fact it is a memory.
False memory
where a person recalls something that did not happen.
Suggestibility
incorporation of misinformation into memory due to leading questions, deception and other causes.
Serial-position effect
tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst
Misinformation effect
happens when a person’s recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate because of post-event information
Leveling and Sharpening
Sharpening is an exaggeration of differences, Leveling a minimization of differences.
People who are levelers tend to select many memories from the past in an attempt to clarify and categorize newly acquired information. Sharpeners, on the other hand, seem to select fewer memories when processing new knowledge.
Peak–end rule
people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.
Levels of processing effect
describes memory recall of stimuli as a function of the depth of mental processing. Deeper levels of analysis produce more elaborate, longer-lasting, and stronger memory traces than shallow levels of analysis.
Absent-Mindedness
inattentive or forgetful behavior.
Next-in-line effect
Recall tended worst for the information that is immediately presented before being asked to perform.
The “tip of the tongue” (TOT) phenomenon
a state in which one cannot quite recall a familiar word but can recall words of similar form and meaning.
