![]() We want to believe that the information that is more representative of what we were expecting about Sarah is more likely to be true. You would be in the majority, as 85% of people chose this option. Sarah loves dogs, and she loves cherry ice cream.īecause you were given information about Sarah that included her having a dog and having a pint of cherry ice cream, you may have wanted to pick option b. She is walking her dog down the street and carrying a bag containing a pint of cherry ice cream. Let’s try another one: Sarah is a retired nurse. This tendency for a positive impression of someone in one area to positively influence one’s opinion regarding their attributes in other areas is called the halo effect.īonus question - who are these two “candidates”? (answer at end) Nonetheless, numerous times voters have shown preferences for political candidates who are physically attractive 1. Of course, this decision is difficult to make because you know very little about either candidate other than how they look. To understand better how these biases can play out in everyday life, let’s go through some examples: Examples of cognitive biases in everyday life Other cognitive biases are more motivated by self-interest such as the overconfidence effect. These biases do not reflect a person’s own self-interest and are instead related to errors in information processing. ![]() Some biases are classified as “cold”, such as the availability heuristic, where we assume that events are more likely based on how vividly we can imagine or remember them, or base-rate neglect, which is the tendency to ignore general information about the prevalence of something in favor of specific information related to an individual case. Other biases affect how we process information or what information we pay attention to, such as the ostrich effect or the tendency to ignore negative information or situations. Some examples of biases related to memory are rosy retrospection or remembering the past as better than it was or remembering things better that are congruent with our current mood, referred to as the mood-congruent memory bias or state-dependent memory. Some biases are related to memory and can distort the types of information and events that we recall. What do we mean by the term cognitive bias?Ī cognitive bias refers to a systematic error in thinking, where judgment or behavior deviates from rationality or what would be considered desirable according to accepted norms. The Codex of Cognitive Biases – yes there are a lot of them. It’s hard to get much of out of this codex due to the huge amount of information it’s trying to convey, but one thing seems clear – there are a lot of identified biases affecting our everyday reasoning and judgment - and that psychologists and behavioral scientists are good at naming things creatively. You may have seen this infographic below.
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