Decision-making, belief and behavioral

Question 1

Ambiguity effect

Answer 1

The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem “unknown”.

Question 2

Anchoring or focalism

Answer 2

The tendency to rely too heavily or “anchor”, on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information that we acquire on that subject.)

Question 3

Attentional bias

Answer 3

The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts.

Question 4

Availability heuristic

Answer 4

The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater “availability” in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.

Question 5

Availability cascade

Answer 5

A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or “repeat something long enough that it will become true”).

Question 6

Backfire effect

Answer 6

When people react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening their beliefs.

Question 7

Bandwagon effect

Answer 7

The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink or herd behavior.

Question 8

Base rate fallacy or base rate neglect

Answer 8

The tendency to ignore base rate information (generic, general information) and focus on specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case).

Question 9

Belief bias

Answer 9

An effect where someone’s evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.

Question 10

Bias blind spot

Answer 10

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 11

Cheerleader effect

Answer 11

The tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.

Question 12

Choice-supportive bias

Answer 12

The tendency to remember one’s choice as better than they actually were.

Question 13

Clustering illusion

Answer 13

The tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).

Question 14

Confirmation bias

Answer 14

The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.

Question 15

Congruence bias

Answer 15

The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.

Question 16

Conjunction fallacy

Answer 16

The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.

Question 17

Conservatism or regressive bias

Answer 17

A certain state or mind wherein high values and high likelihoods are overestimated while low values and low likelihoods are underestimated.

Question 18

Conservatism (Bayesian)

Answer 18

The tendency to revise one’s belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.

Question 19

Contrast effect

Answer 19

The enhancement or reduction of a certain perception’s stimuli when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.

Question 20

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

Decoy effect

Answer 21

Preferences for either option A or option B changes when option C is presented, which is similar to option B but in no way better.

Question 22

Denomination effect

Answer 22

The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g. coins) rather than large amounts (e.g. bills).

Question 23

Distinction bias

Answer 23

The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluation them separately.

Question 24

Duration neglect

Answer 24

The neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value.

Question 25

Empathy gap

Answer 25

The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.

Question 26

Endowment effect

Answer 26

The fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.

Question 27

Essentialism

Answer 27

Categorizing people and things according to their essential nature, in spite of variations.

Question 28

Exaggerated expectation

Answer 28

Based on the estimates, real-world evidence turns out to be less extreme than our expectations (conditionally inverse of the conservatism bias).

Question 29

Experimenter’s or expectation bias

Answer 29

The tendency for experiments to believe, certify and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome for an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.

Question 30

Focusing effect

Answer 30

The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.

Question 31

Forer effect or Barnum effect

Answer 31

The observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology and some types of personality tests.

Question 32

Framing effect

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Frequency illusion or Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

Answer 33

The illusion in which a word, a name or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbably frequency shortly afterwards (see also recency illusion). Colloquially, this illusion is also known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.