1. Confirmation Bias: The tendency to seek and interpret information in a way that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses, while ignoring or dismissing contradictory evidence.
2. Availability Heuristic: Relying on immediate examples or information that easily come to mind when making judgments or decisions, leading to an overestimation of the likelihood or importance of such events.
3. Anchoring Bias: The tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of information encountered when making judgments or estimates, influencing subsequent evaluations even if the anchor is arbitrary or irrelevant.
4. Availability Cascade: The self-reinforcing process in which the repetition of a belief or information creates the perception of its widespread acceptance, regardless of its actual validity.
5. Bandwagon Effect: The tendency to adopt beliefs or behaviours simply because many other people hold them, often driven by the desire to conform to social norms or gain social acceptance.
6. Overconfidence Bias: The tendency to overestimate one’s abilities, knowledge, or the accuracy of one’s judgments, leading to overconfident decision-making and potentially underestimating risks or limitations.
7. Loss Aversion: The strong preference for avoiding losses over acquiring gains, often leading to risk aversion and conservative decision-making.
8. Gambler’s Fallacy: Believing that past random events or outcomes will influence future random events, despite the lack of evidence or logic supporting such a belief.
9. Halo Effect: The tendency to generalize positive traits or characteristics from one area to another, assuming that if someone excels in one aspect, they will excel in others as well.
10. Sunk Cost Fallacy: The inclination to continue investing in a course of action or project because of the resources (time, money, effort) already invested, even if it no longer appears to be the best option.
11. Framing Effect: The influence of the way information is presented or “framed” on decision-making, as people often respond differently to the same information depending on how it is framed.
12. Dunning-Kruger Effect: The cognitive bias in which individuals with low ability or knowledge in a particular area tend to overestimate their competence, while those with higher competence may underestimate their abilities.
13. Self-Serving Bias: The tendency to attribute successes to internal factors while attributing failures to external factors, protecting one’s self-esteem and maintaining a positive self-image.
14. Fundamental Attribution Error: The inclination to overemphasize dispositional or internal factors when explaining others’ behaviour, while underemphasizing situational or external factors.
15. Hindsight Bias: The tendency, after an event has occurred, to perceive the outcome as having been predictable or inevitable, leading to an overestimation of one’s ability to have predicted the event in advance.
These are just 15 cognitive biases. Understanding these biases can help improve decision-making processes and promote critical thinking.
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