An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process where a certain stance gains prominence in public discourse, which makes people 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 of public discussion of a topic such as climate …
Cherry picking is a logical fallacy where someone focuses only on evidence that supports their stance, while ignoring evidence that contradicts it. For example, a person who engages in cherry picking might mention only a small selection of studies out of all the ones available on a certain topic, to make it look as if …
Parsimony is a guiding principle which suggests that we should prefer simpler explanations and solutions over more complex ones, all other things being equal. For example, if you hear barking from inside your house, and you own a dog, it’s better to assume that you’re hearing your own dog right now, than to assume …
The just-world hypothesis is the mistaken belief that actions always lead to morally fair consequences, so good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. For example, a person is displaying the just-world hypothesis when they assume that if someone experienced a tragic misfortune, then they must have done something to deserve it. The just-world …
The appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy that involves manipulating people’s emotions to strengthen their support for the conclusion of an unsound argument (e.g., one that’s misleading or baseless). For example, a person using an appeal to emotion in a debate might encourage the audience to ignore certain, by trying to make the …
Premature optimization involves trying to improve something—especially with the goal of perfecting it—when it’s too early to do so. For example, a software developer could engage in premature optimization by spending a lot of time trying to write a piece of flawless code, even though it’s unclear whether this code will actually be needed. Premature …
The psychologist’s fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when an external observer assumes that their subjective interpretation of something represents the objective nature of that thing. Most notably, this is associated with the mistaken assumption that your (third-person) interpretation of someone else’s mental state (e.g., how they feel or what they think) is …
The rhyme-as-reason effect is a cognitive bias that makes people more likely to believe statements that contain a rhyme, compared to statements that don’t. For example, people generally perceive the statement “woes unite foes” as more accurate than the statements “woes unite enemies” and “misfortunes unite foes”—even though they all mean roughly the same …
The credentials fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone dismisses an argument by stating that whoever made it doesn’t have proper credentials, so their argument must be wrong or unimportant. For example, if a person raises concerns about a political policy, someone using the credentials fallacy might dismiss those concerns without addressing …
The false-consensus effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate how much others are like them, in terms of sharing things such as their beliefs, values, characteristics, experiences, and behaviors. Essentially, this means that the false consensus effect leads people to assume that others are more similar to them than they actually …