Cognitive biases

Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. These biases often result from the brain's attempt to simplify information processing, leading to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, or illogical interpretation. Common examples include confirmation bias, where people favor information that confirms their preexisting beliefs, and availability heuristic, where people overestimate the importance of information that is readily available to them.

Common Cognitive Biases

Here is a list of some common cognitive biases along with a brief description of each:

1. Actor-Observer Bias: Attributing one's own actions to situational factors while attributing others' actions to their character.
2. Anchoring Bias: Relying heavily on the first piece of information encountered (the "anchor") when making decisions.
3. Availability Heuristic: Overestimating the importance of information that is most recent or readily available.
   • Long Description: A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, decision, or question. This cognitive bias occurs because people tend to overestimate the importance of information that is readily available to them. For example, after seeing news reports about airplane accidents, a person might overestimate the risk of flying despite statistics showing it's one of the safest modes of transport. The availability heuristic often leads to misjudgments because it doesn't consider all relevant information, just the most memorable or recent information.
4. Bandwagon Effect: Adopting beliefs or behaviors because many others do.
5. Base Rate Fallacy: Ignoring statistical information in favor of specific information.
6. Choice-Supportive Bias: Remembering one's choices as better than they actually were.
7. Confirmation Bias: Tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information that confirms one's preexisting beliefs.
8. Dunning-Kruger Effect: When people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.
9. False Consensus Effect: Overestimating how much others agree with one's own beliefs or behaviors.
10. Framing Effect: Reacting differently to the same information depending on how it is presented.
11. Fundamental Attribution Error: Overemphasizing personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while underemphasizing situational explanations.
12. Gambler's Fallacy: Believing that future probabilities are influenced by past events, even when the events are independent.
13. Halo Effect: The tendency for positive impressions of a person in one area to positively influence one's opinion in other areas.
14. Hindsight Bias: Believing, after an event has occurred, that one would have predicted or expected the outcome.
15. Horn Effect: The tendency for negative impressions of a person in one area to negatively influence one's opinion in other areas.
16. Illusory Correlation: Perceiving a relationship between variables even when no such relationship exists.
17. Ingroup Bias: Favoring members of one's own group over those in other groups.
18. Just-World Hypothesis: Believing that the world is fair and people get what they deserve.
19. Loss Aversion: Preferring to avoid losses rather than acquiring equivalent gains.
20. Negativity Bias: Giving more weight to negative experiences or information than positive ones.
21. Optimism Bias: Believing that one is less likely to experience negative events and more likely to experience positive events than others.
22. Overconfidence Bias: Having excessive confidence in one's own answers, judgments, or abilities.
23. Placebo Effect: Experiencing a real improvement in condition due to believing in the efficacy of a treatment that is actually inert.
24. Planning Fallacy: Underestimating the time, costs, and risks of future actions and overestimating the benefits.
25. Primacy Effect: Remembering and giving more importance to the first information received over information received later.
26. Recency Effect: Remembering and giving more importance to the most recent information over older information.
27. Self-Serving Bias: Attributing positive events to one's own character but attributing negative events to external factors.
28. Status Quo Bias: Preferring things to stay the same rather than change.
29. Sunk Cost Fallacy: Continuing a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money, or effort).
30. Survivorship Bias: Focusing on the successes and ignoring the failures, leading to a distorted view of reality.

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