The Appeal to Emotion Fallacy: Arguing Through Feelings Rather than Facts

  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 …

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Premature Optimization: Why It’s the “Root of All Evil” and How to Avoid It

  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 …

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The Rhyme-as-Reason Effect: Why Rhyming Makes Messages More Persuasive

  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 …

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Precommitment: Intentionally Limiting Your Future Options

  Precommitment is a technique where you intentionally limit the future options available to you, to ensure your commitment to some course of action. Generally, precommitment involves eliminating options that you want to avoid (e.g., by throwing out unhealthy food from your house), making those options more difficult to choose (e.g., by putting unhealthy food …

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The Credentials Fallacy: What It Is and How to Respond to It

  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 …

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The False-Consensus Effect: People Overestimate How Much Others Are Like Them

  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 …

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Deadlines: How Effective Time Constraints Can Boost Productivity

  A deadline is a point in time by which something must be done. Deadlines can be implemented by and for various types of entities, such as individuals and companies, and in various types of domains, such as school and the workplace. Deadlines can be beneficial in various ways, so it’s worthwhile to understand how …

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False Authority: When People Rely on the Wrong Experts

  A false authority is someone whose supposed authority in a certain domain is substantially flawed, generally because their credentials or expertise are irrelevant, dubious, insufficient, or missing entirely. For example, an actor who promotes a medical product despite having no medical training can be considered a false authority, because they lack relevant credentials or …

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