Just a few selections from an impressively long Wikipedia list found yesterday, via Robot Wisdom:
Anchoring – the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.
Bandwagon effect – the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same.
Bias blind spot – the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people.
Confirmation bias – the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
Experimenter's or Expectation bias – the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.
Illusion of control – the tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.
Information bias – the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
Normalcy bias – the refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.
Planning fallacy – the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
Status quo bias – the tendency to like things to stay relatively the same
Availability cascade – a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse.
Hindsight bias – sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable.
Ostrich effect – ignoring an obvious (negative) situation.
Egocentric bias – occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would.
Herd instinct – common tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict.
Ingroup bias – the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups.
Just-world phenomenon – the tendency for people to believe that the world is just and therefore people "get what they deserve."
Many, many more at Wikipedia.
Bias-blind-spot - is it possible that I am less biased than other people because I am right? :-) Or more biased because I think I'm right?
ReplyDeleteMy favorite cognitive bias is the Dunning Kruger effect, which describes the phenomenon that less able persons lack the ability to comprehend their own relative lack of ability. In short: You don't know what you don't know.
ReplyDeleteI see the Dunning Kruger effect exhibited daily in our nation's political discussions (or at least I think I do).
Hi Stan,
ReplyDeleteHere's a little tune to help you remember the various types of cognitive bias: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RsbmjNLQkc .
Boing Boing picked it up earlier in the year, I seem to remember.
I'm pretty sure everyone is a part of ingroup bias.
ReplyDelete