The fear of missing out (FOMO) is the concern that people experience with regard to the possibility that they’re missing out or will miss out on rewarding opportunities. People most commonly experience FOMO when it comes to rewarding opportunities that other people, and especially those in your close social circle, are a part of. …
An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process where a certain stance gains increasing prominence in public discourse, which increases its availability to people and which therefore makes them more likely to believe it and spread it further. For example, an availability cascade could occur in a situation where a news story triggers a wave …
Read moreThe Availability Cascade: How Information Spreads on a Large Scale
The just-world hypothesis is a cognitive bias that causes people to assume that people’s actions always lead to fair consequences, meaning that those who do good are eventually rewarded, while those who do evil are eventually punished. For example, the just-world hypothesis could cause someone to assume that if someone else experienced a tragic …
Read moreThe Just-World Hypothesis: On the Belief that Everyone Gets What They Deserve
The zero-sum bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to mistakenly view certain situations as being zero-sum, meaning that they incorrectly believe that one party’s gains are directly balanced by other parties’ losses. For example, the zero-sum bias can cause people to think that there is competition for a resource that they feel …
Read moreThe Zero-Sum Bias: When People Think that Everything is a Competition
The false-consensus effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate the degree to which their beliefs, values, characteristics, and behaviors are shared by others. Essentially, this means that the false consensus effect leads people to assume that others think and act in the same way that they do, even when that isn’t the case. For …
Read moreThe False Consensus Effect: Why People Assume that Everyone Agrees with Them
The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that causes people to fail to account for the fact that others don’t know the same things that they do. Essentially, this means that people who are more knowledgeable than others in some domain will generally struggle to act in a way that properly takes this …
Read moreThe Curse of Knowledge: What It Is and How to Account for It
A nudge is a simple modification that is made to an environment in order to alter people’s behavior in a predictable way, without forbidding any options or changing their incentives on a significant level. For example, if a school has the goal of reducing the amount of soda that students drink, then placing water …
Read moreNudge: How Small Manipulations Can Make a Big Difference
The bandwagon effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to think or act in a certain way, because they believe that others are doing the same. For example, the bandwagon effect can cause someone to adopt a certain political ideology, simply because influential people in their social circle have adopted the same ideology. …
Read moreThe Bandwagon Effect: Why People Tend to Follow the Crowd
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. Essentially, the egocentric bias causes people to either underestimate how different other people’s viewpoint is from …
Read moreThe Egocentric Bias: Why It’s Hard to See Things from a Different Perspective
The familiarity backfire effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to remember misinformation better, and to remember it as being true, after they are shown corrective information that is supposed to debunk it, as a result of the increased exposure to that misinformation. For example, if someone is shown evidence which proves that …
Read moreThe Familiarity Backfire Effect: Why Debunking a Myth Can Make People Believe It