151 Cognitive Biases

Reverse Psychology / Reactance: promote a belief or behavior that is opposite to the desired behavior, the person is then more inclined to start doing the opposite (the desired).

Decoy Effect: people tend to make a certain choice between two options if give...

Sunk Cost Fallacy: something paid for that cannot be reversed. Past costs incurred are no longer relevant to future decisions.

Irrational Escalation: continuing what you were doing despite having negative outcomes because it is in line with past decisions a...

Conjunction Fallacy: we think something is more likely to happen if it contains a specific condition (loses the first set, but wins the match) than if it is presented as a general event (wins the match).

Law of Triviality: focusing on non-important details ...

Planning Fallacy: we underestimate the time a task will actually take from us, outsiders overestimate the time others need for a task.

Pro-innovation Bias: not seeing the limitations and weaknesses of a particular innovation, only wanting to implement the i...

Automation Bias: preference of suggestions made by an automated system, even if a non-automated suggestion is better.

Bandwagon Effect: adopting a certain behavior, belief, style or attitude because others do it.

Placebo: believing so...

Neglect of Probability: neglecting a relatively small chance that something will happen. Not wearing a seatbelt because there is a small chance of an accident happening.

Anecdotal Fallacy: evidence based entirely on personal experience without real evidence...

Well Traveled Road Effect: estimating route times differently because you are unfamiliar with the route. Routes traveled more often seem to take less time than new routes.

Mental Accounting: we put a value on something we have earned that is based on how we...

Cue-Dependent Forgetting: remembering certain things by thinking of equivalent memories.

Frequency Ilussion / Baader-Mein...

Normalcy Bias: we underestimate things that might come, sometimes we don’t even believe they are going to come. For example, think of a car accident or a natural disaster.

Zero Sum Bias: thinking that if one thing goes up that another will go down.

Risk Compensation: we become more cautious when risk is high and become less cautious when we feel confident and secure.

Hyperbolic Discounting / Instant Gratification: we prefer a reward if we get it sooner, we unconsciously attach a discount to a reward t...

Dunning-Kruger Effect: people without skills overestimate their own ability, people with lots of skills underestimate their own ability.

Egocentric Bias: we place too much value on our own perspective and opinion.

Optimism Bias: think...

Primacy Effect: we best remember information presented first.

Memory Inhibition: we don’t remember much of irrelevant information.

Modality Effect: the way knowledge is presented contributes to how well the knowledge is remembered. In...

Selective Perception: we ignore certain things if they are not in line with what we believe.

Observer-Expectancy Effect: people behave differently when someone is watching them.

Experimenter’s Bias / Observer Effect: a researcher can,...

Functional Fixedness: using an object only for the way it traditionally should be used.

Self-licensing: increased self-confidence makes an individual more likely to engage in undesirable behavior because they believe there are no consequences.

IKEA Effect: we place more value on products that we have helped create.

Zero-Risk Bias: we prefer to reduce risk on subcomponents than remove a greater amount of risk over the whole.

Processing Difficulty Effect: we remember informat...

Self-serving Bias: we want to keep our self-esteem high, therefore we think that success comes from our own ability and we write off mistakes to external factors.

Illusion of Control: we overestimate our ability to influence certain events.

Il...

Distinction Bias: we place more value on the difference between two options when comparing them than we would if we were evaluating them separately.

Framing Effect: people are influenced by the way information is presented, 20% fat or 80% fat free.

Picture Superiority Effect: we remember pictures better than text.

Self-Reference Effect: things we feel related to we remember better.

Negativity Bias: people are more likely to be attracted to negativity.

Anchoring:

Information Bias: more information is not always better; we think we make better choices when we have more information, but that is often not the case.

Ambiguity Bias: we prefer options that have a higher probability of success than options whose probabilit...

Illusory Correlation: seeing a correlation between two variables that are unrelated.

Pareidolia: seeing patterns or objects in something that are not there. For example, seeing shapes in the clouds.

Anthropomorphism: personifying an a...

Illusion of Transparency: we assume that others know how we feel.

Curse of Knowledge: while communicating with others we think they know the same as us.

Spotlight Effect: people feel watched, much more than they are actually watched.

Serial Recall Effect: our ability to recall items or events in order.

Misinformation Effect: our ability to adjust memories of events after hearing information after the event has occurred.

Peak-end Rule: the value we place on a memor...

Naïve Cynicism: we think people are more selfish than they really are.

Naïve Realism / Bias Blind Spot: we think we see the world objectively and that others who don’t see it the same way are misinformed, irrational or biased.

Clustering Illus...

Absent-mindedness: people have three reasons for not paying attention or forgetting things:

• Lack of attention
• Tunnel vision on one item and forgetting the rest
• Distraction by external factors

Testing Effect: things are sent ...

Illusion of Assymetric Insight: we think we know others better than others know themselves.

Rosy Retrospection: people judge the past as more positive than the present.

Hindsight Bias: we think past events were more predictable than t...

Halo Effect: people, companies, brands or products are judged by their past performance or personality, even if the current or future situation has nothing to do with it.

Cheerleader Effect: individual people are more attractive in a group.

Po...

Fading Affect Bias: memories with negative associations are forgotten faster than positive memories.

Negativity Bias: we are much more attracted to negativity.

Prejudice / Stereotypical Bias: we prejudge people based on the group we p...

Cryptomnesia: we see something somewhere and later remember it as something we did or made ourselves.

False Memory: remembering things we think we made, but which in fact never happened.

Suggestibility: we are willing to accept sugges...