Fallacies and Cognitive Biases Flashcards
Ad Fidentia
Person 1 claims that y is true, but is person 1 really sure about that?
Therefore y is false.
Accident Fallacy
X is a common and accepted rule
therefore, there are no exceptions to x
Ad Hoc Rescue
Claim X is true because of evidence Y
Evidence Y is demonstrated to no be acceptable evidence
Therefore guess Z then, even though there is no evidence for guess Z
Ad Hominem (Abusive)
Person 1 is claiming Y
Person 1 is a moron
Therefore, Y is not true
Ad Hominem (Circumstantial)
Person 1 is claiming Y
Person 1 has a vested interest in Y being true
Therefore, Y is false
Ad Hominem (Guilt by association)
Person 1states that Y is true
Person 2 states that Y is true, and person 2 is a moron
therefore, person 1 must be a moron
Ad Hominem (Tu Quoque)
Person 1 is claiming that Y is true, but person 1 is acting as if Y is not true
Therefore, Y must not be true
Affirming a Disjunct
P or Q
P.
Therefore, not Q
P or Q
Q.
Therefore, not P
Affirming the Consequent
If P then Q
Q
Therefore P
Alleged Certainty
Everybody knows that x is true
therefore, X is true
Appeal to Accomplishment
Person 1 claims that Y is true
Person 1 is accomplished
Therefore, Y is true
Appeal to Anger
Person 1 claims that X is true
Person 1 is outraged
therefore, X is true
Appeal to Authority
According to person 1, Y is true
therefore Y is true
Appeal to education
Person 1 makes claim Y
Person 1 has no formal education
therefore, claim Y is false
Appeal to Celebrity
Celebrity 1 makes claim Y
Therefore, Y is true
Appeal to Common Belief
Many people believe X
therefore X must be true
Appeal to Common Folk
X is common folk wisdom
therefore you should accept X
Person 1 is a common man who proposes y
you are also a common man
therefore you should accept Y
Appeal to Coincidence
Evidence suggests that X is a result of Y
yet on insists that X is a result of chance
Appeal to Consequences
X is true/false because if people did not accept X as being true/false then there would be negative/positive consequences
Appeal to Definition
The dictionary definition X does not mention Y
Therefore, Y must not be a part of X
Appeal to Desperation
Something must be done
X is something
Therefore X must be done
Appeal to Emotion
X must be true
Imagine how sad it would be if it wasn’t true
Appeal to Extremes
If X is true, then Y must also be true
given that Y is the extreme of X
Appeal to Fear
If you don’t accept X as true/false, something terrible will happen to you
therefore X must be true
Appeal to Flattery
X is true
(flattery)
Therefore X is true
Appeal to Force
If you don’t accept X as true, I will hurt you
Appeal to the Moon
If we can put a man on the moon, we can do X
Appeal to Nature
X is natural
Y is not natural
Therefore X is better than Y
Appeal to Novelty
X has been around for years
Y is new
therefore Y is better than X
Appeal to Probability
takes something for granted because it would probably be the case (or might be the case).
Example of appeal to probability
Something can go wrong (premise). Therefore, something will go wrong (invalid conclusion).
Argument from Fallacy
assumes that if an argument for some conclusion is fallacious, then the conclusion itself is false
logic of argument from fallacy
If P, then Q. P is a fallacious argument. Therefore, Q is false
Base Rate Fallacy
making a probability judgment based on conditional probabilities, without taking into account the effect of prior probabilities. If presented with related base rate information (i.e. generic, general information) and specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case), the mind tends to ignore the former and focus on the latter. This is what the base rate fallacy refers to.[
John is a man who wears gothic inspired clothing, has long black hair, and listens to death metal. How likely is it that he is a Christian and how likely is it that he is a Satanist?
If people were asked this question, they would likely underestimate the probability of him being a Christian, and overestimate the probability of him being a Satanist. This is because they would ignore that the base rate of being a Christian (there are about 2 billion in the world) is vastly higher than that of being a Satanist (estimated to be in the thousands).[
Example of Base Rate Fallacy
Conjunction Fallacy
it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one.
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Which is more probable?
- Linda is a bank teller.
- Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
The majority of those asked chose option 2.
Example of the conjunction fallacy
Masked Man Fallacy
the substitution of identical designators in a true statement can lead to a false one
Logic of Masked Man Fallacy
Premise 1: I know who X is.
Premise 2: I do not know who Y is.
Conclusion: Therefore, X is not Y.
Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly.
Lois Lane does not believe that Clark Kent can fly.
Therefore Superman and Clark Kent are not the same person.
Masked Man Fallacy
Ambiguity Effect
The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem “unknown”. The effect implies that people tend to select options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is known, over an option for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.
A risk-averse investor might tend to put their money into “safe” investments such as government bonds and bank deposits, as opposed to more volatile investments such as stocks and funds. Even though the stock market is likely to provide a significantly higher return over time, the investor might prefer the “safe” investment in which the return is known, instead of the less predictable stock market in which the return is not known.
Example of the Ambiguity Effect
Anchoring
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)[
the initial price offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of the negotiations, so that prices lower than the initial price seem more reasonable even if they are still higher than what the car is really worth.
example of achoring
Attentional Bias
the tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts
people who frequently think about the clothes they wear, pay more attention to the clothes of others.
Example of Attentional bias
Availability heuristic
a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important. Subsequently, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.
A person claims to a group of friends that those who drive red cars receive more speeding tickets. The group agrees with the statement because a member of the group drives a red car and frequently receives speeding tickets.
Example of the Availability heuristic
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”).
Backfire Effect
When people react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening their beliefs
Confirmation Bias
tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses
Belief Bias
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
Cheerleader Effect
The tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation
Choice-Supportive Bias
The tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were
if a person buys a computer from Apple instead of a computer (PC) running Windows, he is likely to ignore or downplay the faults of Apple computers while amplifying those of Windows computers. Conversely, he is also likely to notice and amplify advantages of Apple computers and not notice or de-emphasize those of Windows computers.
Example of Choice-Supportive Bias
Clustering Illusion
The tendency to over-expect small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).
Conservatism
The tendency to revise one’s belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence
Contrast Effect
The enhancement or reduction of a certain perception’s stimuli when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.
A person will appear more or less attractive than that person does in isolation when immediately preceded by, or simultaneously compared to, respectively, a less or more attractive person.
Contrast Effect
Decoy Effect
Preferences for either option A or B changes 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).
Distinction Bias
The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately
A consumer may pay a much higher price for the higher-quality television, even though the difference in quality is imperceptible when the televisions are viewed in isolation. Because the consumer will likely be watching only one television at a time, the lower-cost television would have provided a similar experience at a lower cost
Distinction bias
Duration Neglect
people’s judgments of the unpleasantness of painful experiences depend very little on the duration of those experiences
subjects place their hands in painfully cold water. Under one set of instructions, they had to keep their hand in the water for an additional 30 seconds as the water was slowly heated to a warmer but still uncomfortably cold level, and under another set of instructions they were to remove their hand immediately. Otherwise both experiences were the same. Most subjects chose to repeat the longer experience.
Duration Neglect
Essentialism
Categorizing people and things according to their essential nature, in spite of variations
Exaggerated Expectation
Based on the estimates, real-world evidence turns out to be less extreme than our expectations (conditionally inverse of the conservatism bias).
Focusing Effect
The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.[
Forer Effect
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.
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.
Forer Effect
Endowment Effect
The fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.[
Experimenter’s/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.[
Framing Effect
Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how or by whom that information is presented.
Recency Illusion
the belief that things you have noticed only recently are in fact recent”
Functional Fixedness
limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.
if someone needs a paperweight, but they only have a hammer, they may not see how the hammer can be used as a paperweight.
Functional Fixedness
Gambler’s Fallacy
The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. Results from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers.
“I’ve flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads.”
Gambler’s Fallacy
hard-easy effect
occurs when, based on a specific level of difficulty of a given task, subjective judgements do not accurately reflect the true difficulty of that task. This manifests as a tendency to overestimate the probability of success in difficult tasks, and to underestimate the probability of success in easy tasks.[
Hindsight Bias
Sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable[42] at the time those events happened.
Hostile Media Effect
The tendency to see a media report as being biased, owing to one’s own strong partisan views.
Hot-Hand Fallacy
The “hot-hand fallacy” (also known as the “hot hand phenomenon” or “hot hand”) is the fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts.
Hyperbolic discounting
Given two similar rewards, humans show a preference for one that arrives sooner rather than later. Humans are said to discount the value of the later reward, by a factor that increases with the length of the delay.
Identifiable Victim Effect
The tendency to respond more strongly to a single identified person at risk than to a large group of people at risk
IKEA Effect
The tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects that they partially assembled themselves, such as furniture from IKEA, regardless of the quality of the end result
Illusion of Control
The tendency to overestimate one’s degree of influence over other external events