Decisionmaking-Belief-Behavioral Biases Flashcards
Ambiguity effect
The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem “unknown”.[9]
Anchoring or focalism
The tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor”, on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject)[10][11]
Anthropomorphism or personification
The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions.[12]
Attentional bias
The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts.[13]
Automation bias
The tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions.[14]
Availability heuristic
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.[15]
Availability cascade
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 and it will become true”).[16]
Backfire effect
The reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one’s previous beliefs.[17] cf. Continued influence effect.
Bandwagon effect
The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.[18]
Base rate fallacy or Base rate neglect
The tendency to ignore base rate information (generic, general information) and focus on specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case).[19]
Belief bias
An effect where someone’s evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.[20]
Ben Franklin effect
A person who has performed a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than they would be if they had received a favor from that person.
Berkson’s paradox
The tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities.
Bias blind spot
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.[21]
Cheerleader effect
The tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.[22]
Choice-supportive bias
The tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.[23]
Clustering illusion
The tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).[11]
Confirmation bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.[24]
Congruence bias
The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.[11]
Conjunction fallacy
The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.[25]
Conservatism (belief revision)
The tendency to revise one’s belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.[4][26][27]
Continued influence effect
The tendency to believe previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected. Misinformation can still influence inferences one generates after a correction has occurred.[28] cf. Backfire effect
Contrast effect
The enhancement or reduction of a certain perception’s stimuli when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.[29]
Courtesy bias
The tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one’s true opinion, so as to avoid offending anyone.[30]
Curse of knowledge
When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.[31]
Declinism
The belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition to view the past favourably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.[32]
Decoy effect
Preferences for either option A or B change in favor of option B when option C is presented, which is similar to option B but in no way better.
Denomination effect
The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g., coins) rather than large amounts (e.g., bills).[33]
Disposition effect
The tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.
Distinction bias
The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.[34]
Dunning–Kruger effect
The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.[35]
Duration neglect
The neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value
Empathy gap
The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.
Endowment effect
The tendency for people to demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.[36]
Exaggerated expectation
Based on the estimates, real-world evidence turns out to be less extreme than our expectations (conditionally inverse of the conservatism bias).[unreliable source?][4][37]
Experimenter’s or expectation bias
The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.[38]
Focusing effect
The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.[39]
Forer effect or Barnum effect
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.
Framing effect
Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented
Frequency illusion
The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias).[40] This illusion may explain some examples of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, whereby someone hears a new word or phrase repeatedly in a short span of time.
Functional fixedness
Limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.