The outcome bias (or outcome effect) is a cognitive bias that leads people to judge decisions mainly based on their outcomes, in a way that’s irrelevant to the true quality of those decisions. Accordingly, the outcome bias can cause people to judge good decisions as being bad if they lead to negative outcomes, and …
The action bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to favor action over inaction without properly considering the potential consequences of this. For example, the action bias can drive someone to make unnecessary changes to their investment portfolio when it would be better to do nothing. The action bias has major implications in …
The projection bias is the tendency to overestimate how much our future attributes (like beliefs and preferences) will resemble our current ones. Essentially, this bias leads people to engage in flawed self-forecasting, by projecting their current attributes onto their future self, and thus underestimating how much their attributes will likely change over time. The …
The bias blind spot is our tendency to underestimate and be less aware of our own biases compared to those of others. For example, the bias blind spot can cause someone to assume that other people’s political stance is influenced by various biases, whereas their own political stance is perfectly rational. The bias blind …
The belief bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to over-rely on preexisting beliefs and knowledge when evaluating an argument, instead of properly considering the argument itself. Accordingly, the belief bias means that people tend to: Accept arguments that align with their preexisting beliefs, even if those arguments are weak, invalid, or unsound. …
The zero-sum bias occurs when people mistakenly expect gains and losses to be directly balanced in a situation where they’re not, especially in terms of one party benefiting directly at the expense of others. For example, the zero-sum bias can cause someone to think that a resource they’re interested in is limited, meaning that …
The egocentric bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to rely too heavily on their own point of view when they examine events in their life or when they try to see things from other people’s perspective. Accordingly, the egocentric bias causes people to either underestimate how different other people’s viewpoint is from …
The confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to search for, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs. For example, if someone is presented with a lot of information on a certain topic, the confirmation bias can cause them to only remember the bits of information that …
Debiasing is a process through which the influence of cognitive biases is reduced, generally with the goal of helping people think in a more rational and optimal manner. Debiasing is usually accomplished through the use of various debiasing techniques, that can work on any number and type of cognitive biases. For example, when it comes to …
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from rationality, which occurs due to the way our cognitive system works. Accordingly, cognitive biases cause us to be irrational in the way we search for, evaluate, interpret, judge, use, and remember information, as well as in the way we make decisions. For example, one …