10/5/2012 Cognitive Biases

gathered from Wikipedia by Brandon Taylor

A cognitive bias describes a replicable pattern in perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Cognitive biases are the result of distortions in the human mind that always lead to the same pattern of poor judgment, often triggered by a particular situation.

Broader Concepts
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision-making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision.

Cognitive dissonance is the term used in modern psychology to describe the state of holding two or more conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously. In a state of dissonance, people may sometimes feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment.[1] The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements.

Adaptive bias is the idea that the human brain has evolved to reason adaptively, rather than truthfully or even rationally, and that cognitive bias may have evolved as a mechanism to reduce the overall cost of cognitive errors as opposed to merely reducing the number of cognitive errors, when faced with making a decision under conditions of uncertainty.

The salience (also called saliency) of an item – be it an object, a person, a pixel, etc. – is the state or quality by which it stands out relative to its neighbors. Saliency detection is considered to be a key attentional mechanism that facilitates learning and survival by enabling organisms to focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the most pertinent subset of the available sensory data.

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that uses the ease with which examples come to mind to make judgments about the probability of events. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that "if you can think of it, it must be important."

In sociology and social psychology, impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event; they do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction.

Specific Cognitive Biases
Bandwagon effect – the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same.

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

Fundamental attribution error – the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior.

Dunning–Kruger effect—an effect in which incompetent people fail to realize they are incompetent because they lack the skill to distinguish between competence and incompetence.

Status quo bias is a cognitive bias; an irrational preference for the current state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss.

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.

Anchoring – the tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on a past reference or on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (also called "insufficient adjustment").

Outcome bias – the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Ultimate attribution error – similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.

Halo effect – the tendency for a person's positive or negative traits to "spill over" from one area of their personality to another in others' perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype).[59]

Optimism bias – the tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes

Conservatism (Bayesian) – the tendency to belief update insufficiently but predictably as a result of new evidence (estimates of conditional probabilities are conservative)

Loss aversion – "the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it".

Questions

Do you agree that with the suggested cognitive biases above?

Are cognitive biases nature or nurture?

Can you match broader concepts with specific cognitive biases?

To what extent do cognitive biases and logical fallacies overlap?

Can you find specific examples of how one of the cognitive biases or general concepts above relates to your everyday life?

Does the existence of cognitive biases have any epistemological implications?