The pessimism bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate the likelihood of negative things and underestimate the likelihood of positive things, especially when it comes to assuming that future events will have a bad outcome. For example, the pessimism bias could cause someone to believe that they’re going to fail an …
The authority bias is a cognitive bias that makes people predisposed to believe, support, and obey those that they perceive as authority figures. Most notably, the authority bias is associated with people’s tendency to obey the orders of someone that they perceive as an authority figure, even when they believe that there’s something wrong …
Reactive devaluation is a cognitive bias that causes people to devalue things that are offered to them, especially if offered by someone they perceive negatively. For example, reactive devaluation can cause someone to wrongly dismiss a good business proposal as bad, just because they dislike the person who offered it. Reactive devaluation is a …
False balance (also called fake balance, the balance fallacy, and bothsidesism) occurs when multiple things (like theories) are presented as more equal to each other in some regard (like level of supporting evidence) than they really are. For example, false balance occurs when a journalist presents the baseless opinion of a random layperson as …
Hofstadter’s law is the adage that “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law”. This means that people tend to underestimate how long things will take them to do, even when they try to account for their tendency to underestimate this. Hofstadter’s law has implications across many …
The appeal to authority (also known as the argument from authority, authority fallacy, appeal to expertise, appeal to expert opinion, and argumentum ad verecundiam) is a logical fallacy that occurs when a claim is assumed to be true because it was made by a perceived authority figure. In addition, the appeal to authority is …
The Picard principle is the adage that “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” This principle denotes that even if you follow the best course of action available to you, you can sometimes still end up with a negative outcome, such as failure …
The platinum rule is a moral principle which denotes that you should treat others the way they want to be treated. For example, the platinum rule denotes that if someone wants you to leave them alone, then you should do that. The platinum rule can be useful in many situations, but it’s important to …
The von Restorff isolation effect (sometimes called the von Restorff effect or the isolation effect) is a cognitive bias that causes people to remember things better when they stand out from other things that they’re next to. For example, the von Restorff isolation effect means that people who are shown a color photo in …
An ingroup is a social group that a person identifies as being a part of, based on factors like nationality, race, religion, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation. An outgroup is a social group that a person does not identify with, based on similar factors as would cause that person to identify with an ingroup …