Cognitive Biases are instinctive ways we think and see things, and thus behave, which are sometimes inappropriate in particular circumstances. They are a major source of poor thinking in both ourselves and others and are exploited by scammers and people looking to take advantage of us. By being better aware of cognitive biases we can significantly improve the quality of our thinking and be less susceptible to being fooled or taken advantage of.
Scrollbar, Popup, and Listing of different types of Cognitive Biases | Base Rate Bias
More about Cognitive Biases? | Test Yourself to Improve your understanding | Useful Sites for better understanding Cognitive Biases
Scroll Bar Listing of different types of Cognitive Biases
Scroll through here for a brief description of common cognitive biases, with a particular bias, the Base Rate Bias being separately described because of the need for a bit of arithmetic being required to appreciate it.
Actor-Observer Bias
Actor-Observer Bias: when it comes to explaining other people’s behavior, people overemphasize the influence of personality and underemphasize the influence of circumstances, but do the opposite when it comes to explaining their own behavior. People thus see themselves as flexible and responsive to circumstances but see others as fixed in their ways. This is also sometimes referred to as a Trait Ascription Bias.
Ambiguity Bias
Ambiguity Bias: people tend to select options for which they can estimate the probability of the outcome over those for which they are unable to make any such estimate. People tend to avoid options for which they don’t have adequate information.
Anchoring or Focusing Bias
Anchoring or Focusing Bias: people tend to rely heavily on one particular piece of information when making decisions, often a piece of information they obtained early on. For example people often make big purchase decisions, such as for a house or car, on some relatively minor feature. This is often deliberately used by those who wish to manipulate us as they plant some particular idea in our heads. The anchoring and adjustment process is where we begin by anchoring on the most easily retrievable relevant number and then adjust up and down based on information available. However our adjustments tend to stay relatively close to the anchor.
Attention Bias
Attention Bias: we notice far less of what is going on around us than we realize, and we tend to only really notice that which we are explicitly paying attention to. For much of the rest of what we believe we are seeing, the background, our brains is often filling out the detail based on past experiences rather than based on what is really there. The more you are paying attention to something in particular the less likely you are to notice something unusual in the background.
Attribution Bias
The Attribution Bias: if I make a mistake or do something wrong there is a good reason, and I am innocent; if others make the same mistake or do wrong they are guilty and should accept the consequences.
Availability Bias
Availability Bias: people overestimate probabilities based on the fact that they can bring particular examples to mind, and tend to be much more influenced by information that is readily to hand. This includes a tendency to be more persuaded by information presented in a visual form rather than that provided as a relatively long piece of text, and also to be more influenced by information that produces strong emotions or is otherwise dramatic.
Bandwagon Effect Bias
Bandwagon Effect Bias: as more people come to believe in something, others jump on the bandwagon without thinking too much about it, either because they want to conform, or because they are lazy in their thinking and take the view that something popular must be right, particularly if it is advantageous to themselves in some way.
Barnum Effect Bias
The Barnum Effect Bias: individuals will readily accept as highly accurate, descriptions of their personality that are supposedly tailored specifically for them, even though the descriptions are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.
Belief Bias
Belief Bias: people’s evaluation of the strength of an argument is strongly influenced by whether they are already prejudiced towards or against the conclusion. If they don’t agree with the conclusion they are more likely to reject what is actually a good argument, and similarly accept poor arguments if they agree with the conclusion.
Benefit Bias
Benefit Bias: people generally view something that would be of benefit to them as less risky than they would do if it had been neutral or disadvantageous to them.
Blind Spot Bias
Blind Spot Bias: people see themselves as generally ‘better than average’ when it comes to having positive traits and ‘less than average’ for negative traits. This includes believing themselves to be less prone to biases than most other people.
Even-Chance Bias
Even-Chance Bias: many people believe that chance events even themselves out such that if, for example, a sequence of 13 heads occurred on a coin toss, they will believe that for a while afterwards it is more likely that tails will occur, so as to even out the run of heads. This is not the case.
Choice Supportive Bias
Choice Supportive Bias: our memories are not absolutely true and become distorted. The distortion is strongly biased towards seeing ourselves in a positive ego enhancing light, and we often believe that we were right in our past beliefs and decisions. For example we believe we knew things would turn out the way they did before they did. In reality we didn’t have any more idea than anyone else, but once things have happened we remember any thought we might have had towards the way things turned out and forget the thoughts we had about alternatives. It is not particularly unusual to have completely false memories, or to remember as our own beliefs things we might have read or been told by others.
Clustering Bias
Clustering Bias: people underestimate the likelihood of patterns in random events and see them as having significance. It’s because they underestimate how many different patterns there can be.
Conservativism Bias
Conservativism Bias: people tend to cling to their existing views at the expense of acknowledging new information. This is also where people tend to underestimate high values and high probabilities and overestimate low ones.
Confirmation or Preconception Bias
Confirmation or Preconception Bias: people give greater weight to information that confirms their beliefs or is otherwise advantageous to them. They tend to interpret ambiguous evidence, and evidence on its own is often ambiguous, in their own favor, and ignore or undervalue or dismiss as flawed evidence that goes against their beliefs.
Congruence Bias
Congruence Bias: people place greater reliance on direct testing of a hypothesis than on indirect testing (ie. a test which eliminates alternatives leaving only the one hypothesis remaining). This can lead to bias when there are a number of hypothesis some of which can be directly tested whilst other cannot. Better to focus on tests that would differentiate between the hypotheses. Note that Sherlock Holmes clearly did not suffer from this bias with the famous quote: “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.
Consistency Bias
Consistency Bias is the tendency to believe we were always the way we are now. When our attitudes or beliefs change we tend to alter our memories to be consistent with our changed attitudes or beliefs.
Contrast Bias
Contrast Bias is when we perceive something as more extreme than it is as a result of having just been exposed to something else with the same characteristic but a different value. Thus the same water may seem to us hot or cold depending on whether we had just been exposed to more extreme cold or more extreme hot water. If we interview a particularly good (or bad) candidate, the next candidate is likely to be perceived as worse (or better) than they really are. Contrast Bias can be a particular issue with regards decision-making because the idea or option that arrives right after a bad idea or option will tend to be rated much better than it would have been rated if presented at a different time.
Control Bias
Control Bias is where people underestimate risks if they believe they can control them.
Distinction Bias
Distinction Bias is the tendency to see two items as more dissimilar when evaluating them together than when evaluating them separately. Our mind exaggerates the differences as a means of distinguishing the items. Thus if viewing the quality of two TV screens next to each other one may appear significantly worse, whilst if we’d seen them at separate times we might not have noticed the difference. Or if we get a good suggestion for a solution after a bad suggestion, we tend to rate the good solution as much better than it might actually be. This is used as an influencing technique when we are pushed towards one option in particular because of the way it is presented together or alongside other options.
Early Evidence Bias
Early Evidence Bias: information that appears earlier is weighted more strongly than information that appears later. Note however there is also the Recency bias where recent information is also more heavily weighted. Between them the Early Evidence bias, sometimes referred to as the Primacy bias, and the Recency bias, lead to bias against information in the middle.
Early Reward Bias
Early Reward Bias is when given two similar rewards, people show a preference for the one expected to arrive sooner rather than the one expected to arrive later. We are said to ‘discount’ the value of the later reward; the more so the longer the delay.
Egocentric Bias
Egocentric Bias is when people see their role in things as more prominent than they actually were. For example claiming a greater role for themselves in joint action or in meetings, or remembering past events in a far more favorable light with regards themselves than was actually the case.
Egocentric Bias
Endowment Bias is our tendency to place more value on something we own than on something we don’t own. As a result people will demand more to give up something they own than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.
Extreme Aversion Bias
Extreme Aversion Bias is the tendency to avoid extremes and to choose something in between.
Observer Expectancy Bias
Observer Expectancy Bias occurs when someone subtly and unintentionally communicates their expectations of an outcome, which then causes biased behavior in another person. The wording of a question for example can subtly suggest an expected or preferred response. With regards undertaking experiments or tests involving people, this unconscious influencing of participants by the experimenter is termed The Experimenter Expectancy Bias.
Expectation Bias
Expectation Bias is where we see what we expect to see even when it is not there. Expectation significantly colors our perceptions and what we believe we experience. This is demonstrated by the placebo effect where for example a belief we are taking certain medicines can have the same physiological effect on us as would actually taking the medicine.
False consensus Bias
False consensus Bias is the tendency of a person to overestimate how much other people agree with them.
Familiarity Bias
Familiarity Bias is where we notice and are more positively disposed to things we recognize or are familiar with. We give more weight to the correctness of something we are familiar with, and tend to reject or disbelieve things we are unfamiliar with.
Framing Bias
The Framing Bias is when we look at a situation from a particular viewpoint and fail to recognize there are other viewpoints which might enable us to think differently about it.
The Frequency illusion
The Frequency illusion is where something that has recently come to our attention then appears to be everywhere, with far greater apparent frequently than previously.
The Halo Effect Bias
The Halo Effect Bias is a tendency to view a person or thing favorably, or unfavorably, based on a single incident or trait. For example, physically attractive people are often considered to be intelligent.
Hindsight Bias
Hindsight Bias is the tendency for people to believe they knew it all along after a given event has occurred. This includes significant memory distortions as people remember themselves as having been far more perceptive at the time than they really were. Even after unusual events have occurred many will believe that they knew it was going to happen and might be critical of others for not having done so.
An Illusion of Control Bias
An Illusion of Control Bias is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events which are in fact largely determined by chance. They thus praise or criticize themselves for outcomes over which in reality they had little or no say. Many gamblers suffer badly from this bias.
Implicit Assumption Bias
Implicit Assumption Bias is where an opinion is implicitly taken as though it were fact. This is often expressed through use of certain adjectives such as ‘he justifiably …’, or ‘it is obviously the case that …’.
Information Bias
Information Bias is the belief that the more information that can be acquired in support of making a decision the better, even though often the more information is irrelevant to the decision.
Ingroup Bias
Ingroup Bias is the tendency for people to give greater weight or preference to those who are members of groups of which they are themselves members.
A Just World Bias
A Just World Bias is where people believe that the world is essentially fair, and as a result those who are poor or are suffering or are victims, have, in some way, only themselves to blame. This can readily lead to prejudices and discrimination.
A Negativity Bias
A Negativity Bias is the tendency for people to pay more attention or give more weight to negative information or experiences than to positive. Thus a piece of negative information about someone or something will outweigh an equivalent piece of positive information. A good and a bad experience of similar weight occurring together will leave one feeling down rather than up or neutral. People tend to notice risks or threats more readily than they notice opportunities.
The Normalcy Bias
The Normalcy Bias is where people who are experiencing extreme circumstances significantly underplay the seriousness of the situation, seizing on any ambiguities as signs that things aren’t as serious as they in fact are.
Omission Bias
Omission Bias is our tendency to see harmful actions as being worse than equally harmful inactions.
Optimism Bias
Optimism Bias is the tendency for some people to overestimate the likelihood of positive events and underestimating the likelihood of negative events. It is, for example, a continual problem when planning projects based on subjective estimates of how long things take. Thus Hofstadter’s Law: Tasks take long than you expect, even when you take account of Hofstadter’s Law.
Outcome Bias
Outcome Bias, strongly linked to hindsight bias, is when a decision is judged based upon how it turned out rather than what could reasonably have been known at the time the decision was made.
Overconfidence Bias
The Overconfidence Bias is our tendency to be overconfident in our judgments. We all suffer from it to some extent, some more so than others. For example over 90% of drivers rate themselves as better than average. People who were 100% confident in their spelling of certain words were in fact only right 80% of the time. Most people are overconfident in their ability to accurately assess risks.
Partsum Bias
Partsum Bias is the tendency to estimate the probabilities of parts of a whole as summing up to more than estimates of the probability of the whole itself.
Pattern Bias
Pattern Bias is our tendency to see patterns even where they don’t exist. Thus we readily see images of faces or animals in clouds. Or we interpret vague statements such as given in astrological predications as specific to us because we focus on aspects that match and ignore those that don’t or fail to realize that statements are so general anyone could find a match.
Personal Validation Bias
Personal Validation Bias is where a person is more likely to consider information to be correct if it has some personal meaning or significance to them. People will often give far more weight to personal experiences and anecdotes than they will to objectively measured probabilities.
Pessimism Bias
Pessimism Bias is the tendency of some people to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening.
Recall Bias
Recall Bias is where we estimate as more probable things we find interesting or memorable. When we can recall specific examples of an event, we generally believe it is more common than it really is. Similarly if we cannot think of examples of an event we judge its probability to be lower than it really is. Thus chance or coincidental events that are memorable are often judged to be far more common than they really are.
Recency Bias
Recency Bias is where more recent information will tend to push out older information, and thus we are more likely to be influenced by it. Albeit noting the Early Evidence bias where early information is also more readily remembered. To keep an appropriate balance we need to ensure we keep good notes and review them regularly, so that newer or more readily remembered information doesn’t inappropriately bias our decisions.
Restraint Bias
Restraint Bias is the tendency for people to overestimate their self-control, and thus they are more likely to put themselves in the way of temptation.
Risk Framing Bias
Risk Framing Bias is the fact that people tend to be more risk adverse when faced with positive options, but more likely to take risks when faced with negative options. Thus people are less likely to take chances when looking to gain something than when faced with losing something.
Secrecy Bias
Secrecy Bias is when people give greater weighting to information that they believe is restricted and not openly available in some way.
Selective Outcome Bias
Selective Outcome Bias occurs when we only use the results that favor our viewpoint and suppress those that don’t. If you run 10 sampling tests then you will get a spread of results. If you then only present the results from one test at the extreme you will get a biased viewpoint.
Social Comparison Bias
Social Comparison Bias is claiming an argument on the basis of some social comparison, such as a parent claiming they are right because they are the parent and the other the child.
Unconscious Bias
Unconscious Bias is the tendency to make unconscious assumptions about another person based upon a single characteristic, such as their sex, gender, place of origin, etc. It is a natural process and the fact that we are subject to it does not make us prejudiced, because we are all subject to it to a greater or lesser degree. However we should be aware of it, and actively seek to compensate for it, and when we don’t then we are being prejudiced. Thus whenever we find ourselves having reservations about someone that we don’t have personal experiences of interacting with, then there is likely to be unconscious bias at work.
The Zeigarnik Effect
The Zeigarnik Effect is a bias towards wanting to complete unfinished tasks, and the fact that we haven’t can keep intruding on our consciousness when trying to do other things. It can be more extreme in some people and lead to them going out of their way to get something finished even when there are more important things to be done.
[Note that you can navigate through with left and right arrows or hold the screen by hovering over it.]
PopUp Listing of different types of Cognitive Biases
Or click on any given Bias name to see a pop up of its definition. Use this is a learning tool by seeing if you can remember the gist of the definition before popping it up.
| Actor-Observer Bias | Ambiguity Bias | Anchoring or Focusing Bias | Attention Bias | Attribution Bias | Availability Bias | Bandwagon Effect Bias | The Barnum Effect Bias | Belief Bias | Benefit Bias | Blind Spot Bias | Even-Chance Bias | Choice Supportive Bias | Clustering Bias | Conservativism Bias | Confirmation or Preconception Bias | Congruence Bias | Consistency Bias | Contrast Bias | Control Bias | Distinction Bias | Early Evidence Bias | Early Reward Bias | Egocentric Bias | Endowment Bias | Extreme Aversion Bias | Observer Expectancy Bias | Expectation Bias | False consensus Bias | Familiarity Bias | Framing Bias | The Frequency illusion | The Halo Effect Bias | Hindsight Bias | An Illusion of Control Bias | Implicit Assumption Bias | Information Bias | Ingroup Bias | A Just World Bias | A Negativity Bias | The Normalcy Bias | Omission Bias | Optimism Bias | Outcome Bias | Overconfidence Bias | Partsum Bias | Pattern Bias | Personal Validation Bias | Pessimism Bias | Recall Bias | Recency Bias | Restraint Bias | Risk Framing Bias | Secrecy Bias | Selective Outcome Bias | Social Comparison Bias | Unconscious Bias | The Zeigarnik Effect |
Base Rate Bias
The base rate bias, which is also known as a Fallacy, under the heading The Prosecutor’s Fallacy, relates to misinterpreting the meaning of a test or detection rate accuracy.
Consider a detection system with a 1% failure rate, whereby it fails to go off when it should 1% of the time, and it goes off when it shouldn’t 1% of the time. Note that most ‘detection’ systems are not 100% accurate, and it is common for them to occasionally ‘detect’ something that is not there, or fail to ‘detect’ something that is there.
Most people in finding the detection system has gone off will assume that the stated failure rate of 99% means that that it is correct 99% of the time. This however is likely to be wrong, and could be badly wrong.
Take the case of whatever it is that is of interest actually only being present 500 times in a million. Note that this is nothing to do with the detection system itself or its accuracy. We might for example be seeking to detect the presence of some rare form of cancer, or seeking to detect the presence of some mineral in a sample we have taken. The likelihood that the cancer is actually present, or the mineral is actually present, is what we term ‘the base rate’. It is a value that exists independent of the means by which we are trying to detect its presence.
Suppose, for illustration purposes, a million tests were undertaken.
Then with there being 500 ‘true’ occurrences in this million, the detection system, with an accuracy of 99%, will detect (on average) 495 of these ‘true’ occurrences (ie. 99% of 500).
It will fail to detect 5 of these ‘true’ occurrences, ie. 1% of the 500.
In the other 999,500 cases, where there is no ‘true’ occurrence, the detection system will believe there is an occurrence in 1% of the cases, ie. it will be believe there is an occurrence in 9,995 cases.
For 99% of the 999,500 cases it will correctly identify there is no occurrence.
Thus, of the 1 million cases, there will be 495 ‘true’ occurrences, but also 9,995 cases where the detection system believes there is an occurrence. Thus the true accuracy of the detection system in detecting true occurrences is 495/(9995+495), ie. a little under 5%. This is clearly a long way from the 99% that many people will assume based on the supposed ‘99%’accuracy of the detection system.
Appreciating and being able to calculate the implications of base rates is often aided through creating a table of the form of the following:
| Has occurred | Has not occurred | ||
| Test positive | 495 | 9,995 | Thus there is only approximately a 5% chance of a detection actually being correct. |
| Test negative | 5 | 989,505 | The chance that a negative test is correct is approximately 99.9995%. |
| 500 | 999,500 |
Note:
495 is 99% of 500 [500 being the (on average) number of ‘true’ occurrences in a million]
5 is 1% of 500 [ie. 1% chance that a ‘true’ occurrence is not detected]
9,995 is 1% of 999,500 [ie. 1% chance that we incorrectly believe we have an occurrence when in fact we don’t, with 999,500 being the number of ‘non-occurrences’ that we have in a million.]
989,505 is 99% of 999,500 [ie. the 99% chance that we correctly recognise we don’t have an occurrence.]
This base rate error is most prominent when the accuracy of the detection system is much worse than the ‘base rate’ of whatever is being measured. However:
- Even if the detection system has the same accuracy as the base rate of what is being measured, there is still a 50% chance that a detection is in fact false.
- If the detection system is 10 times more accurate than the base rate of what is being measured, there is still a 10% chance that a detection is false.
- Only if the detection system is 100 times more accurate than the base rate of what is being measured does the chance of a false detection fall to about 1%.
More about Cognitive Biases?
Cognitive biases happen unconsciously. Unless we learn about them and become sensitive to them, we are not aware of them when they happen.
Our brains have become susceptible to cognitive biases because in our distant pass they helped us survive. Our ability to react quickly and instinctively would have in certain circumstances saved our lives and those with brains which reacted in such a way would have been more likely to survive and pass on these brain characteristics to their offspring. However our environment has changed and these biases are no longer required for survival and can often lead us astray.
Cognitive biases don’t necessary lead us astray. We may, based on ‘instinct’, jump to a conclusion about a person or a circumstance, and we might be right. But sometimes we won’t be. Moreover it will be largely a matter of chance whether or not in a given circumstance we are right based solely upon our instinct. Our instinct can’t differentiate between what is really right or what is really wrong, and sometimes it will be wrong when it really matters.
Cognitive biases arise largely as a result of our brain seeking to maintain a positive self-image so we feel good about ourselves, and our tendency to be lazy and want to do things, including thinking, with the minimum of effort. Most people are unaware of their own cognitive biases, though readily see them in others.
By allowing these Cognitive Biases to dominate our thinking we are allowing ourselves to make incorrect judgments, and poorer decisions than we might otherwise have done.
By recognizing our own cognitive biases, and being able to correct for them, we will be much better thinkers, much more able to draw correct conclusions and take appropriate action. By understanding and being able to label given cognitive biases, we will be much more able to recognize shortcomings in other people’s thinking and make allowances accordingly.
Note that a poor understanding of cognitive biases, or a naïve view that we are somehow magically immune to them, leaves us open to the influencing and persuading of others, whether by salesmen, general advertising or through being targeted by scammers.
In practice even when we recognize our cognitive biases it can be different to overcome or correct for them. However we usually can to some extent, and can usually come to much better conclusions than we would if we hadn’t tried.
The greatest barrier to countering our own cognitive biases is our belief that they don’t apply to us. And thus the most important step towards overcoming them, or at least significantly lessening their hold and impact on us, is to accept without question that we too are susceptible to them, in the same way as we readily see that others are.
Once we accept that we are as readily susceptible as others, itself a vital first step if we are to mitigate the impact of cognitive biases upon us, we can lessen their impact by:
- being clear about what is clearly facts and what is opinion or assumption, with far more being the later than we may otherwise have realized;
- always recognise that you might be wrong or mistaken, that you don’t magically know anything for certain;
- don’t rely upon your memory if you want accurately remember something, write it down as objectively as you can before anyone can influence your memory;
- actively listening to or seeking out alternative viewpoints and opinions;
- being aware that others are also susceptible to biases, including experts and friends;
- being aware that circumstances play a major part in what people do and decide, and that often you may not be aware of those circumstances;
- avoiding making important decisions when tired or after you’ve been working hard for an extended period of time; and
- ensuring you are not rushed into making up your mind or rushed into accepting what others are forcing upon you.
The main types of cognitive biases are well known, and indeed have been known about since the times of the Greeks and Romans and probably before. It is very useful to know the names of the biases, which are for the most part sufficiently descriptive that we will then readily be able to remember the basis of the bias. The training we include here is thus largely about teaching you to recognize the names of the common biases and be able to associate them with their meaning. We also give tips on how you can try to compensate for these biases should you recognize you may potentially be subject to it.
By regularly running through the training below, and regularly returning to the related exercises, you will become more aware of these Cognitive Biases, and better able to stop and think in a given circumstance to ask whether or not it is inappropriately affecting your thoughts and judgements.
Useful Sites for better understanding Cognitive Biases
http://www.howtogetyourownway.com/
https://www.schoolofthought.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
If you know of other sites you believe are particularly good at covering cognitive biases, or have good free cognitive bias related tests or quizzes, please let us know:
Quiz/Tests
Test Yourself to improve your understanding:
- Cognitive Biases -> Just to get you Thinking
- Cognitive Biases -> Name that Bias
- Cognitive Biases -> Choose a Definition
- Cognitive Biases -> The Clue is in the Name
- Cognitive Biases -> Matching Names to Definitions
- Cognitive Biases -> Attribution Bias
- Cognitive Biases -> Base Rate Bias
- Cognitive Biases -> Quiz and Test Yourself Sites
Reminder on taking tests: It’s not about trying to prove you already know it, it’s about learning.
Cognitive Biases -> Just to get you Thinking
Question Think.1
Susceptibility to Cognitive Biases. Which of the following do you consider to be closest to the truth:
a. It is clear many other people are susceptible, but we ourselves are much less so.
b. Susceptibility to Cognitive Biases is largely a matter of intelligence. The cleverer someone is the less susceptible they are.
c. We are all equally susceptible to Cognitive Biases.
d. Having read about susceptibility to Cognitive Biases we become largely immune to them.
e. We can learn to lessen our susceptibility to Cognitive Biases by learning about them.
f. We can learn to eliminate our susceptibility to Cognitive Biases by learning about them.
Question Think.2
Cognitive ease refers to our brain being in an automatic mode, accepting things as they are and not questioning them. In such a state we are more likely to fall for cognitive biases. Which of the following are conducive to putting us in a state of cognitive ease:
a. Being in a good mood.
b. Reading something written very clearly.
c. Something being repeated.
d. Familiarity.
Question Think.3
People do evil things because they are evil people. Is this a reasonable thing to believe?
Cognitive Biases -> Name that Bias
[Alternative version of Quiz with Scoring]: Requires ActiveX enabled
Question Name.1
The belief that we are less prone to biases than most other people.
a. Belief Bias
b. Blind Spot Bias
c. Egocentric Bias
Question Name.2
Over 90% of drivers rate themselves as better than average.
a. Control Bias
b. The Halo Effect Bias
c. Overconfidence Bias
Question Name.3
People often see their role in things as more prominent than they actually were.
a. Personal Validation Bias
b. Egocentric Bias
c. Recall Bias
Question Name.4
Significantly underplaying the seriousness of extreme situations
a. Normalcy Bias
b. Optimism Bias
c. Overconfidence Bias
Question Name.5
The tendency to see two items as more dissimilar when evaluating them together than when evaluating them separately
a. Recall Bias
b. Familiarity Bias
c. Distinction Bias
Question Name.6
When we look at a situation from a particular viewpoint and fail to recognize there are other viewpoints
a. Omission Bias
b. Framing Bias
c. Familiarity Bias
Question Name.7
The tendency to overestimate how much other people agree with us.
a. Base Rate Bias
b. Conservativism Bias
c. False consensus Bias
Question Name.8
We see ourselves as flexible and responsive to circumstances but see others as fixed in their ways.
a. Actor-Observer Bias
b. Attribution Bias
c. Blind Spot Bias
Question Name.9
People tend to notice risks or threats more readily than they notice opportunities.
a. Negativity Bias
b. Pessimism Bias
c. Choice Supportive Bias
Question Name.10
A tendency to view a person or thing favorably, or unfavorably, based on a single incident or trait.
a. Omission Bias
b. Recall Bias
c. Halo Effect Bias
Cognitive Biases -> Choose a Definition
[Alternative version of Quiz with Scoring]: Requires ActiveX enabled
Question Defn.1
Attribution Bias.
a. Judging the behaviour of others differently to how we judge our own.
b. Our tendency to be overconfident in our judgments.
c. When we see what we expect to see even when it is not there
Question Defn.2
Just World Bias
a. Our tendency to see harmful actions as being worse than equally harmful inactions
b. Chance events even themselves out.
c. Victims, have, in some way, only themselves to blame.
Question Defn.3
Confirmation Bias
a. The tendency to see two items as more dissimilar when evaluating them together than when evaluating them separately
b. The ignoring or undervaluing of evidence that is contrary to what we already believe.
c. Our tendency to place more value on something we own than on something we don’t own
Question Defn.4
The Barnum Effect Bias
a. A readiness to accept statements supposedly tailored to us as highly accurate even when they are statements are vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.
b. A bias towards wanting to complete unfinished tasks.
c. A parent’s claim they are right because they are the parent and the other is the child.
Question Defn.5
The Zeigarnik Effect
a. A readiness to accept statements supposedly tailored to us as highly accurate even when they are statements are vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.
b. A bias towards wanting to complete unfinished tasks.
c. A parent’s claim they are right because they are the parent and the other is the child.
Question Defn.6
Hindsight Bias
a. When something turns out well, we praise ourselves even though the outcome may have been almost entirely due to luck.
b. Given any event, after it has occurred most people seemed to have ‘known it all along,’ even though few of them seem to have been so definitive prior to the event occurring.
c. Our tendency to see patterns even where they don’t exist.
Cognitive Biases -> The Clue is in the Name
[Alternative version of Quiz with Scoring]: Requires ActiveX enabled
Many biases take their name fairly obviously from their definition. Identify the name of the biases related to the following definitions:
Question Clue.1
Which bias is being described:
When only the results that favour a give outcome are used, and those that don’t are suppressed. [If you want to ‘prove’ a coin is biases towards heads, undertake hundred samples of coin tosses each with a hundred tosses. Then present only the sample which included the most head tosses and apply a statistical significance test to ‘prove’ that the result was highly unlikely to occur unless the coin was biased.]
Question Clue.2
Which bias is being described:
When our attitudes or beliefs change we tend to alter our memories to be consistent with our changed attitudes or beliefs.
Question Clue.3
Which bias is being described:
When people overestimate probabilities based on the fact that they can bring particular examples to mind.
Question Clue.4
Which bias is being described:
Given two rewards, people show a preference for the one expected to arrive sooner rather than the one expected to arrive later, even if the one arriving later is worth more. We ‘discount’ the value of the later reward; the more so the longer the delay. Of course this assumes the later reward is not significantly disproportionate to the earlier reward.
Question Clue.5
Which bias is being described:
When something that has recently come to our attention then appears to be everywhere.
Question Clue.6
Which bias is being described:
Our tendency to be overconfident in our judgments. For example over 90% of drivers rate themselves as better than average. People who were 100% confident in their spelling of certain words were in fact only right 80% of the time. Most people are overconfident in their ability to accurately assess risks.
Question Clue.7
Which bias is being described:
Where more recent information tends to push out older information, and thus we are more likely to be influenced by it.
Question Clue.8
Which bias is being described:
To someone who appreciates wine, a more expensive wine will actually taste better to them because they expect more expensive wines to taste better.
Cognitive Biases -> Matching Names to Definitions
[Alternative version of Quiz with Scoring]: Requires ActiveX enabled
Test your ability to recognise different biases with the following Quiz, with each bias being from the following list:
Attribution Bias / Pattern Bias / Availability Bias / Belief Bias / Consistency Bias / Distinction Bias / Endowment Bias / False Consensus Bias / The Frequency illusion / Hindsight Bias / Ingroup Bias / Omission Bias / Optimism Bias / Overconfidence Bias / Restraint Bias / Unconscious Bias.
Cognitive Biases Quiz
Testing knowledge of what different types of Cognitive Bias are well known.
Cognitive Biases -> Attribution Bias
[Alternative version of Quiz with Scoring]: Requires ActiveX enabled
Question Attrib.1
Part 1: You are walking along and you momentarily trip and knock into someone. What is the likely cause?
a. Something was on the ground.
b. There was some unevenness on the ground that was just enough to upset your balance.
c. Your mind was elsewhere.
d. It’s the result of your general clumsiness.
[Put a. to d. in an order as to what might most typically have been a cause.]
Part 2: You are walking along and someone knocks into you. What is the likely cause?
a. There was something on the ground.
b. There was some unevenness on the ground which caused them to lose their balance.
c. Their mind was elsewhere.
d. It’s the result of their general clumsiness.
[Put a. to d. in an order as to what might most typically have been a cause.]
Question Attrib.2
Part 1: Think about any mistakes you might have made or been accused of making over the past year or so. Assign a general probability to each of the following, adding up to a total of 100%.
a. I don’t make mistakes. Whilst it may have appeared to others to be a mistake in fact things turned out as I intended.
b. I made a balanced judgement based upon the best information at the time, which turned out to be wrong.
c. I was distracted by other things and didn’t pay enough attention.
d. It would have been ok, but other people made it worst or prevented things turning out the way I intended.
e. I am prone to making mistakes.
f. Some other option.
[Assign probabilities to each of a. to f., such that the total of the probabilities is 100%. This is not intended to be precise, and try to avoid use of f.]
Part 2: Think about mistakes others in general might have made over the past year or so. Again assign a general probability to each of the following, adding up to a total of 100%.
a. They probably weren’t mistakes. It was the way they probably wanted things to turn out.
b. They made a balanced judgement based upon the best information at the time, which turned out to wrong.
c. They were distracted by other things and didn’t pay enough attention.
d. It would have been ok, but other people made it worst or prevented things turning out the way they intended.
e. They are prone to making mistakes.
f. Some other option.
[Assign probabilities to each of a. to f., such that the total of the probabilities is 100%. This is not intended to be precise, and try to avoid use of f.]
Cognitive Biases > Base Rate Bias
Question BaseR.1
A test for a disease has a 99.9% accuracy rate. You are one of a population of 100 million who each have an equal chance of having the disease, and some 10,000 people in this population have the disease. You are tested for the disease, and the test shows you have the disease. What is the likelihood that you do in fact have the disease? (You don’t need to be precise, just approximate.)
Question BaseR.2
A test for a disease has a 99% accuracy rate. You are one of a population of 50 million who each have an equal chance of having the disease, and some 10,000 people in this population have the disease. You are tested for the disease, and the test shows you have the disease. What is the likelihood that you do in fact have the disease? (You don’t need to be precise, just approximate.)
Question BaseR.3
A test for a disease has a 99.9% accuracy rate. You are one of a population of 50 million who each have an equal chance of having the disease, and some 50,000 people in this population have the disease. You are tested for the disease, and the test shows you have the disease. What is the likelihood that you do in fact have the disease? (You don’t need to be precise, just approximate.)
Cognitive Biases -> Quiz and Test Yourself Sites
The following sites have also got quizzes and tests you can use to improve and test your understanding of cognitive biases.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/popestcyril/12-cognitive-biases-that-keep-you-from-being-rational
http://www.clearerthinking.org/
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