on CRITICAL THINKING

What is a Cognitive Bias??

Anchoring – the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.

Bandwagon effect – the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.

Bias blind spot – the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people.

Confirmation bias – the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Framing effect – drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented.

Hostile media effect - the tendency to see a media report as being biased due to one's own strong partisan views.

Hyperbolic discounting – the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, where the tendency increases the closer to the present both payoffs are.

Illusion of control – the tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.

Irrational escalation – the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong.

Mere exposure effect – the tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.

Normalcy bias – the refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.

Planning fallacy – the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.

Post-purchase rationalization – the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.

Reactance – the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.

Restraint bias – the tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.

Semmelweis reflex – the tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts an established paradigm.

Wishful thinking – the formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is pleasing to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality.

Authority bias – the tendency to value an ambiguous stimulus (e.g., an art performance) according to the opinion of someone who is seen as an authority on the topic.

Availability cascade – a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true").

Clustering illusion – the tendency to see patterns where actually none exist.

Gambler's fallacy – the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. Results from an erroneous conceptualization of the

Hindsight bias – sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable.

Overconfidence effect – excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.

Pareidolia – a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.

Pessimism bias – the tendency for some people, especially those suffering from depression, to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening to them.

Stereotyping – expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.

Egocentric bias – occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would.

Forer effect (aka Barnum effect) – the tendency to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. For example, horoscopes.

False consensus effect – the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.

Herd instinct – common tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict.

Ingroup bias – the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups

.Just-world phenomenon – the tendency for people to believe that the world is just and therefore people "get what they deserve."

Outgroup homogeneity bias – individuals see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups.

Projection bias – the tendency to unconsciously assume that others (or one's future selves) share one's current emotional states, thoughts and values.

Self-serving bias – the tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests.

System justification – the tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest. (See also status quo bias.)