Dual Processing theory suggests that we have fast paced thinking and slow deliberate thinking. The fast paced thinking, system 1, relies on heuristics which are mental shortcuts or quick calculations that have evolved for our survival in solving problems that our ancestral environments posed. The slower form of thinking, system 2, is deliberate, rational, rule-based and analytical. We are going to be discussing some of the fast paced, system 1, forms of heuristics and a large majority of the discovered biases that result from this efficient form of processing.
I have taken the time to survey the majority of known and well documented biases that all humans are susceptible to and categorize them here for simplicity. I have given the name and year of the first person who has discovered them and will include a more detailed reference list in my book. I will also do more research on Kahneman and Gigerenzer for the book but decided that I had went far beyond my limit for content already for this Philosophy Tool. Some of the sources I used were journal articles, psychology textbooks, and Wikipedia to determine the heuristics and biases that have the most evidence to support their existence with reference to specific experiments and multiple sources in journal articles.
I want to offer a method for individuals to mitigate their biases or reduce the influence that these biases have on the individual. Through training, I am hopeful that one can avoid as many errors as possible that come from the biases and know where to put effort so it is effective. The method that I have developed so far is open to modification as new information is acquired.
Bias Reduction Method
1) Awareness of Cognitive Heuristics and Biases
2) Humbleness and acceptance that all brains are susceptible to biases and use heuristics to process information
3) Openness to observations from others to increase our self-awareness that we may be engaged in a bias.
4) Training in Critical Thinking Skills (CT)
5) Participation and Skill Development in Social Phalanx/ Philosophy Social Culture
6) Specific biases may need an individual and social protocol to remedy. Will be in book when published.
7) Category Specific Responses:
A) Decisions and Problem Solving
- assess decisions clearly using critical thinking.
- If probabilities are involved, skill in calculation needs to be developed.
- awareness of one’s frame when solving a problem. Take time away from problem to see it from outside of the presented frame. May need to change state, environment or other influences to modify one’s state of mind enough to see problem differently.
- Susceptibility to loss is strong, so calculated decision may be more trusted than gut feeling. Calculate gains and observe evidence to determine best course of action.
B) Judgment
- awareness that post experience has susceptibility to distortions therefore make effort to be more objective with (CT) when evaluating information.
- awareness of determining cause of behaviour and tendency to make false attributions.
- Value of things is largely relational. Determine objective criteria that can be followed in contrast to intuitive reactions.
- Awareness of the value of information that is independent of feelings or representativeness. Deliberately process events and properties based on objective criteria to ensure evaluation or judgment is more accurate.
C) Perspective
- awareness that meaning of things is not limited to their association. Just because something occurs or is similar to another does not mean it has some profound relationship. Use (CT) to be aware of things like correlation/causation fallacy.
- Awareness of the influence of context on our perception of information. Use (CT) and establish objective criteria independent of context.
D) Self and Identity
- Refer to Self-Awareness Tool to ensure accurate understanding of self-concept.
- practice social cultural based on philosophical system so you are more vulnerable to others offering observations of you to increase accuracy of self-concept
E) Attention
- Train mindfulness meditation to increase attention.
- understand that we are all open to making mistakes and it is okay to take another look.
F) Memory
- certain biases can be used to increase memory, like the Series Recall category.
- awareness that our memory is fallible so for important information make notes or journal like the Reflective Mind Map Tool.
- be open and humble if others disagree with what you think you remember and make a note to reference to avoid disagreement in the future.
G) Emotion
- susceptibility towards being negatively affected by negative emotions and drawn towards positive ones.
- Commitment to understanding negative emotions and Reflective Mind Map to have more accurate assessment of self when in negative emotional state that can be observed from alternative state.
- practice developing Social Phalanx so social group is supportive in times of negative emotions and constructively responds to situational and personal factors.
H) Belief
- Extreme emphasis on (CT) training to ensure one has advantage in the assessment and evaluation of beliefs
- Self-fulfilling prophecy can be used to one’s advantage if initial false belief is constructive
I) Social
- Awareness of Prosocial Token, Friendship, and Social Phalanx Tools
- Understanding and awareness of social pressures can help in not making social errors that are unethical or not in your interest.
Heuristics
Movement
Gaze Heuristic - sense or a gut feeling for directing motion of one’s body by moving towards an object. Ex: Catching a ball without thinking (Gigerenzer 2009)
Emotions
Affect Heuristic - people make decisions, judgments and solve problems by referring to their current mood and emotional state. People assess risks being high or low depending on the emotional state they associate with the activity in question. (Emotional Reasoning) (Finucane 2000)
Memory
Peak-End Rule - tendency to judge an experience by how the person feels at the most intense or peak moment and at the end instead of am average or assessment of the total experience. (Recency Effect) (Kahneman 1993)
Processing
Fluency Heuristic - the faster, smoother and more fluent something is processed the more someone will believe or consider it as true irrelevant of its actual reasoning or logical structure. (Jacoby 1981, Hertwig 2008)
Judgment of Probability
Availability - when evaluating something or making a judgment, the tendency to legitimize information that most easily comes to mind or what is remembered quickly. (Tversky, Kahneman 1973)
Familiarity Heuristic - familiar people, places and things are preferred to novel stimuli when making a decision (Mere-Exposure Effect) (Park, Parker 1981)
Simulation Heuristic - the easier a potential future outcome can be imagined or simulated the higher they believe it is probable and will feel cognitive dissonance if that imagined outcome is compromised the more vivid the simulation is for them (Tversky, Kahneman 1998)
Representativeness - “the subjective probability of an event, or a sample, is determined by the degree to which it: (i) is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population; and (ii) reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated” (Kahneman tversky 430 1972). Ex: the Linda Problem and the Conjunction Fallacy. (Tversky, Kahneman 1972)
Conjunction Fallacy - when a person thinks that the probability of two events occurring together is higher than one event occurring on its own. The Linda problem is the classic case of this: While in University Linda was outspoken and participated in social justice activism for discrimination. Is it more probable that she is 1) a bank teller or 2) a bank teller and a feminist? To answer this people use the representative heuristic by fitting Linda to the prototype category in their minds and not determine the actual probability of her meeting the criteria for two conditions. Option 1 is more probable but option 2 is more representative. (Tversky, Kahneman 1983)
Anchoring and Adjustment - rely on first piece of information given when making judgments by influencing the individual to not stray too far from the initial anchor of information when making the judgment. Ex: it may appear there are 100 marbles in the jar, how many do you think are in the jar? Incorrect answer: 120. Correct answer: 200. (Tversky, Kahneman 1974)
Perception
Effort Heuristic - the value of a thing is determined by the perceived amount of effort that went into it; the more effort the more value the thing has. (Kruger 2004)
Recognition Heuristic - when presented with two objects, if one of them is recognized it will have more perceived value, for a given criteria, than the other that is not recognized. Ex: when buying soap, the recognized produced is chosen. (Gigerenzer 1996)
Scarcity Heuristic - things that are more rare or hard to find are valued more than things that are high in abundance Ex: tickle me Elmo. (Lynn 1992)
Social
Social Proof - when in an unknown situation, tendency to conform behaviour or beliefs to others who appear to have more knowledge of the situation. (Sherif 1935)
Decisions and Problem Solving Biases
Ambiguous Decisions
Ambiguity Effect - choose a clear decision over ambiguous ones when probability is unknown even if the decision against their interest - ex. Stocks, fixed or variable mortgages (Ellsberg 1961, Frisch 1988)
Default Effect - when a default option is made available people have a tendency to allow that option to be their choice through not choosing an option. Some social situations have a social default effect. ( Kahneman 1991, Gigerenzer 2008)
Automaton Bias - rely too heavily on automatic systems and do not detect the system’s errors. Ex: Automatic pilot (Mosier 1997)
Problem Solving
Einstellung Effect - when a person is attempting to solve a problem, they stay with a specific method when alternative better methods are available. A person is more likely to fall into this bias if they have solved similar problems before and are attempting to use the same strategy for the present problem even though a better approach is available. (Luchins 1942)
Functional Fixedness - a person sees an object’s use limited to what it is used for most often and is unable to think of other uses for the object. (Duncker 1945)
Law of the Instrument - a predisposition to using a tool that someone is familiar with for everything even when it is inappropriate. “If the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” (Maslow 1966)
Gains and Losses
Loss Aversion - people generally feel more satisfied avoiding a loss than acquire a gain. (Kahneman, Tversky 1984)
Framing Effect - the way an option is worded either positively/negatively or as a gain/loss will determine how the individual chooses between the options. People will attempt to avoid taking a risk with a positive frame, a gain, in contrast to a negative frame, a loss. Ex: one is more likely to save 20$ of 60 than spend 40$ of 60. (Kahneman, Tversky 1981)
Endowment Effect - value a thing more because they own it shown in a willingness to pay more money to keep something they own than get something new they do not yet own. (Kahneman, Knetsch 1990)
Mere Ownership Effect - more value for something a person owns than a person who does not own it. (Beggan 1992)
Escalation of Commitment - continue investing into something even when they have had many negative outcomes from the decision. (Self-Justification and Confirmation Bias) (Staw 1976)
Sunk Cost Fallacy - when a person has invested into something, lost that investment and cannot get the investment back they continue to invest more despite any prospects for success. The cost of investing outweighs any benefit. (Knox, Inkster 1968)
Status Quo Bias - any deviation from one’s current state of affairs is seen as a loss. The individual perceives a change from the current state as having more potential losses than gains.
Zero-Sum Thinking - when a person interprets social interactions in the context of one person’s gain or success is at the expense of another individual’s loss or failure. (All or Nothing Thinking)
Denomination Effect - not break larger forms of currency or spend money in contrast to spending the same amount when in smaller forms of currency. (Raghubir 2009)
Hyperbolic Discounting - when faced with a decision to gain something now at 1 unit or in the future for 3 units, people have a tendency to choose to take the immediate gain. (Thaler 1981)
Risk Aversion - avoid decisions and investments that have some degree of risk if lower risks-decisions are available or tendency to reduce risk of uncertainty. Attempt to lower the risk of uncertainty by accepting a lower pay off decision. (Kahneman, Tversky 1979, 1981, 1984)
Probability
Neglect of Probability - when evaluating information for a decision, completely ignoring the probability in determine the best course of action Ex: determining whether to wear a seat belt and believing that being trapped in a burning car is equivalent in probability as being saved by the seat belt in all other kinds of crashes. (Cass 2001)
Attribute Substitution - substitute complex question with a simpler question. Ex: instead of calculating probability use the representative heuristic by seeking similarities. (Kahneman 1973)
Judgment Biases - How I Discern Things
Post-Decision/Event Judgment
Hindsight Bias - belief that an event was predictable after the event has occurred without any information beforehand. (Fischhoff 1973)
Choice-Support Bias - after a decision one tends to ascribe positive attributes to the option and neglect any negative attributes in contrast to other options they would focus on negative attributes and neglect any positive ones. (cognitive dissonance) (Mather 2000)
Outcome Bias - evaluating the good or badness of a decision when the decision or behaviour that lead to the outcome would of been the same. Chance lead to the difference in outcome but the evaluation of the behaviour is determined not by the behaviour but by the outcome. (Illusion of Control) (Baron 1988)
Behaviour Cause
Attribution Bias - tendency for people to make systematic errors when determining the cause of their own or other’s behaviour. (Heider 1958)
Fundamental Attribution Error - perceive others behaviour as a product of their dispositional traits and not caused by the situational factors imposing on them. (Ross 1977)
Hostile Attribution Bias - interpret neutral behaviors from others as intentionally hostile. (Nasby 1980)
Actor-Observer Bias - attribute their own behaviour to situational factors and the behaviour of others to character traits. (Nisbett 1973)
Self-Serving Bias - distorting perception to enhance self-esteem or seeing oneself as more likeable by attributing success to one’s efforts and failures to external factors (Self-Enhancement) (Miller, Ross 1975)
Group Attribution Error - tendency to ascribe attributes of an individual member to a whole group and a group decision is reflective unanimously amongst all of its members. (Allison, Scott T; Messick 1985)
Ultimate Attribution Error - a means of explaining the behaviour of ingroups and outgroups. Positive ingroup behaviour is explained with reference to the members dispositions or traits. Negative ingroup behaviour explained by reference to external circumstances or situations. Outgroups are inverted so positive behaviour is externalized to situations or circumstances and negative behaviour is internalized as dispositional flaws within the people. (Pettigrew 1979)
Trait Ascription Bias - tendency to view one’s own personality, behaviour and emotional states as variable and other’s as fixed. We see ourselves being affected by situational factors and others contingent on their dispositions. (Jones, Nisbett 1971)
Judging Value
Distinction Bias - we judge things with more scrutiny when they are presented together and impose a higher standard for acceptance when we are given an option between items than if the options were presented independently. Ex: if given bruised apple we are more likely to eat it than if paid with a non-bruised apple. (Hsee, Zhang 2004)
Less-is-Better Effect - People compare a thing that they are buying or being given based on its relative position within the category that it belongs. If the thing is higher in quality in it’s category, they will perceive it as having more value than if it is more expensive but lower in value in its respective category. If the items are given together, the effect does not occur and the person can assess the value of the items objectively. Ex: a 45$ scarf that has 50$ scarfs is judged more valuable than a 55$ jacket where 500$ is the best jacket. (Hsee 1998)
Disregarding Information
Extension Neglect - ignore the size of a set of things when the size is relevant for evaluation usually due to using the representative heuristic. (Kahneman 2000)
Duration Neglect - when a person evaluates an unpleasant or painful experience they do not focus on how long the experience lasted but the peak of the pain and how fast the pain diminishes. The slower the pain is alleviated the experience will be deemed more painful. (Peak-End Rule) (Kahneman and Fredrickson 1993)
Base Rate Fallacy - not including general information in assessing something but focusing on specific details when the general information about the category would reveal more accurate conclusions. Ex: not taking given percentages into account but focusing on traits of the members of a group when assessing probability. (Kahneman, Tversky 1973)
Insensitivity to Sample Size - when determining the probability of something, neglecting the size of the sample that the probability is being derived from. (Kahneman, Tversky 1974)
Perspective Biases - How I am Looking at the World
Meaning of Things
Apophenia - see meaning and connection in unrelated things - schizophrenic tangentialism (perspective) (Conrad 1958)
Anthropocentrism - limited to seeing things from the human perspective or interests (Naess 1973)
Anthropomorphism - ascribing human characteristics and traits to nonhuman things. (Heider, Simmel 1944)
Pareidolia - familiar pattern of images or sounds in random visual or auditory experiences - face in rock. (Sagan 1995)
Cross-Race Effect - recognize faces of one’s own ethnic or racial group than unfamiliar groups. (Feingold 1914)
Gambler's fallacy - fairness in chance, belief that after sequence of losses, win is more likely. If something is more frequent now, it will be less frequent in the future and vice versa. (Kahneman, Tversky 1971)
Hot-Hand Fallacy - expectation of a run of successful behaviours or events to continue or have greater probability for future events. Ex: sports player who scores a goal is thought to have a greater chance of scoring another goal. (Illusion of Control and confirmation bias) (Gilovich, Tversky 1985)
Confirmation Bias - seek confirming evidence and dismiss disconfirming evidence for belief. (Wason 1960)
Clustering illusion - see pattern in random information or events - WWII bombing pattern. (Gilovich 1991)
Illusory Correlation - perceiving connection between two variables of individuals, behaviour or events when there is not. Correlation does not imply causation. Ex stereotypes in groups of people. availability heuristic connecting variable that most easily comes to mind with perceived connection. (Chapman, Chapman 1967)
Rosy Retrospection - when a person believes the past disproportionally better than the present or future. (Terence 1997)
Declinism - belief that society is declining in progress relative to the past. (Spengler 1918)
Halo and Horn Effect - people who are physically attractive are seen as having positive traits to their personality, whereas unattractive people are seen to have negative traits to their personality. People will think an attractive person has socially desirable traits like being kind and intelligent. (Thorndike 1920, Glennie 2011)
Ingroup Favouritism - having a positive disposition or liking members of one’s group more than outgroup members shown in allocation of resources, evaluation and positive emotions. Used to increase members self-esteem. The neurotransmitter oxytocin is associated with positive ingroup relations. (Sumner 1906)
Outgroup Homogeneity Bias - perceiving members of an outgroup as being similar to one another whereas members of one’s ingroup are different from one another. (Quattrone 1980)
Stereotype - a means of categorizing the world of objects, events or people. When applied to people, specific attributes are used to make generalizations of that person within a perceived group. (Lippmann 1922)
Prejudice - to pre-judge with emotional disposition towards someone without experience. Largely based on ingroup/outgroup perception of an other of either a positive or negative evaluation (racism). (Allport 1954)
Discrimination - treating a person in a disadvantageous way because of perceived differences in their differences based on a group they belong to like sex, gender, ethnicity, age, religion, etc. (Sherif 1967)
Scapegoating - putting unwarranted blame on a person or a group and singling them out with negative consequences. (Jung 1964)
Cultural Bias - interpreting behaviour of a person of another culture by the standards of one’s own culture. Ex: Ethnocentrism (Helms 2010)
Context
Context Effect - the influence the environment or context of a thing has on our perception of it. Ex: a TV show will influence how one perceives the commercial or a display will influence how one perceives a product in a store. (Goldberg 1987)
Hostile Media Effect - when viewing media coverage on an issue that the individual has a preexisting belief that is strong, they will perceive the media as against their own view, irrelevant of whether the media is neutral or in favour of their view. (confirmation bias, selective recall and perception) (Vallone 1985)
Overjustification Effect - When someone expects an external incentive or reward they have a depreciated intrinsic value/motivation for an activity or a task. Ex: Children given $5 to draw a picture are less likely to draw a picture without the $5. (Deci 1971)
Self and Identity Biases - How I am Looking at Myself
Self-Concept
Self-Verification - motivation to maintain sense of current self-concept. (Swann 1981)
Worse-than-Average-Effect - tendency to underestimate one’s own achievements and abilities in contrast to others. (disqualifying the positive) (Kruger 1999)
False Consensus Effect - assume properties of yourself are shared by the general population like skills, habits, beliefs and values. (Ross 1977)
Curse of Knowledge - when communicating, assuming that others have the background knowledge necessary to understand the content of the discussion (Camerer 1989)
Self-Esteem
Self-Enhancement - motivation to seek positive confirmation of self-concept to maintain positive self-esteem (Krueger, 1998)
Self-Justification - when faced with the feeling of cognitive dissonance, unpleasantness from conflicts in thoughts, actions, or reality, the tendency to justify one’s actions or decisions to maintain a positive sense of self. (Festinger 1957, Holland 2002)
Bias Blind Spot - acknowledge biases in others but not in self (Pronin, Ross 2002)
Third-Person Effect - belief that mass media advertisements and communication have more of an effect on others than they do on oneself. (Davison 1983)
Introspective Illusion - view personal introspection as more reliable than introspective knowledge of others. (Nisbett, Wilson 1977)
Illusory Superiority - overestimate one’s own abilities and attributes in contrast to others of a similar level in that area. (Van Yperen, Buunk 1991)
Dunning-Kruger Effect - people low in self-awareness of their cognitive skills not being able to assess their actual cognitive competence and concluding they are more competent than they actually are. (self-enhancement) People with high cognitive skills will assume that others share that high level of cognitive skill. (false consensus) (Kruger, Dunning's 1999)
Downing Effect - individuals with below average IQ estimate that they have above average IQ. Individual's ability to accurately assess the IQ of others is relative to the degree of their own IQ, therefore the lower your IQ the poorer you are at assessing IQ in others. (Davidson, Downing 2000)
Overconfidence Bias - confidence in one’s judgments is greater than objective assessment of person’s judgment in one’s actual performance, relation to others and overprecision of certainty in the accuracy of one’s beliefs. (Pallier 2002, Moore 2008)
Illusion of Validity - unjustified confidence when making a prediction of an outcome based on input information by connecting the most representative output from the input. (Confirmation Bias, Base Rate Fallacy and Representative Heuristic) (Tversky, Kahneman 1973)
Illusion of Control - overestimate one’s ability to control events. (Langer 1975)
Illusion of Asymmetric Insight - think that one has more knowledge of others than others do of them. (Pronin 2001)
Egocentric Bias - overestimate one’s own opinion or perspective in contrast to others or objective reality. (Ross, Sicoly 1979)
Naive Realism - belief that one sees the world objectively and anyone who disagrees is biased or unreasonable. (Ross 1996)
Naive Cynicism - occurs when a person expects more egocentric bias in others than is realistic. (Ash 1949, Kruger, Gilovich 1999)
Self-Licensing - when a person makes a moral act, they are more likely to make immoral acts afterward or care less of its consequences. Ex: taking a multivitamin reduces belief in the risk of cancer from smoking. (Monin 2001)
Hard-Easy Effect - overestimate one’s ability to succeed at a hard task and underestimate one’s ability to succeed at an easy task. (Ferrell 1980, Burson 2005)
Misjudging Self
Empathy Gap - inability to understand the influence of visceral, bodily cravings, in future and past states, attitudes, behaviours and decisions. The individual is unaware of the state-dependent nature that viceral factors have on them and are unable to understand the influence of alternative states. The empathy gap affects our understanding of our own states that we are not currently experiencing as well as states of others that we do not share. Hot-to-Cold is when we are currently under a visceral state, like hunger or anger, and are unaware of how much their current state is guiding their behaviour and attitudes mistaking the short term biased view for a long-term preferences. Cold-to-Hot is when a person cannot visualize what is it like to be under visceral demands in oneself or others. (Loewenstein 2005)
Projection Bias - when a person incorrectly projects current preferences into future situations or states usually seen when evaluating future emotional states by current states. Ex: addict assumes that they will easily be able to resist drug when in withdrawal. (Loewenstein 2003)
Restraint Bias - an individual’s overestimation in controlling their impulse control seen in people with addiction issues. (Nordgren 2009)
Attention Biases
Attentional Bias - when primed with information, that information is pervasive in one’s perception. Less likely to think of alternative information. Ex: anxiety and depression. (Bar-Haim 2007)
Inattentional Blindness - person fails to perceive stimulus that is not expected but is directly in their field of view. Ex gorilla walking past people passing basketball. (Response: mindfulness) (Simons 1975)
Memory Biases
Something’s Different
Change Blindness - not noticing that something has changed in a visual stimulus which incorporates both attention to the change in stimulus and use of the working memory. (Simons 1997)
Von Restorff Effect - when multiple things that are displayed that are the same, the thing that is different will be remembered more easily than the others. (Restorff 1933)
Influence of Self
Self-Reference Effect - the degree that a person is integrated within information will improve their ability to recall that information. Ex: If a person is able to envision themselves as the main character of a story they will better remember the story. (Rogers, Kuiper, Kirker 1977)
Reminiscence Bump - cross culturally, people tend to remember events from their adolescence and early adulthood more than any other period of their lives because those during those times people are developing their sense of identity and passing through life transition experiences like going to college or university, getting a new job, and having children. (Rubin 1998)
Generation Effect - items that an individual creates or generates on their own are more easily remembered than items that one reads. (Jacoby 1978, Crutcher 1989)
Mere-Exposure Effect - the more familiar someone or something is the more a person tends to like that person or thing. (Zajonc 1968)
Propinquity Effect - form sexual and romantic relationships with people that they frequently come into contact with. (Marvin 1919)
Series Recall
Serial Position Effect - remember the items at the beginning and end of a list and forget items in the middle of the list. (Ebbinghaus 1913)
Primacy Effect - remember things at the beginning of the list more, due to rehearsing the first items more than all the other items. (Murdock 1962)
Recency Effect - remember items at the end of a list more than ones in the middle, attributed to those items still being retained within the individuals working memory. (Bjork 1974)
Irrational Primacy Effect - judge information in the beginning of a series as having more legitimacy than contrary information later in the series. The person becomes primed with the first bits of information then engage in a confirmation bias based on the initial judgment. Ex: He was strong, honest, vulnerable and sometimes deceitful. (Baron 2000)
Distorted Recall
Cryptomnesia - occurs when the individual forgets something and remembers it as a new idea not knowing that they were exposed to the information previously. (Moses 1874)
False Memory - the individual recalls something that was not actually a memory. False memories can be implanted by leading questions through suggestibility or the way a question is framed of makes assumptions. Ex: eye witness testimonies and child abuse. (Loftus 1974)
Misinformation Effect - one’s memory of experiences and events becomes less accurate because of information that they gain after the events. Ex: suggestibility due to others influencing the memory and misattribution due to information being attributed from the wrong source. (Weingardt 1994)
Telescoping Effect - remember recent events to be further in the past, backward telescoping, and past memories to be more recent, forward telescoping, by about 3 years. Ex: friends party last year remembered to be a few years ago and childhood dog remembered in teenage years. (Neter, Waksberg 1964)
Encoding
Levels of Processing Effect - remember information more when the meaning of the information is processed, semantic deep processing, in contrast to trying to remember information at a surface level, shallow or phoneme (sound of word) or orthographic (spelling of word) (Craik, Lockhard 1972)
Spacing Effect - when information that is being learned is spread out over time the information is better retained and recalled in contrast to attempting to learning information in one sitting. Ex: cramming for an exam vs distributed practice. (Ebbinghaus 1885)
Testing Effect - information is better learned and stored in long term memory when the person practices retrieval with feedback through testing. Ex: using flash cards. (Gates 1917)
Emotion
Negativity Bias - negative thoughts, experiences, memories and emotions have a greater effect on a person’s psychological state and processing than positive ones. Information affected includes attention, memory, and decisions. Contrast: selective perception and pollyanna principle. (Kanouse 1972)
Positivity Offset - interpret neutral situations and experiences as slightly positive and believe that their lives are good. (Diener 1996)
Pollyanna Principle - more accurately remember things that have positive emotions associated with them than negative ones. (Matlin, Stang 1978)
Fading Affect Bias - forget information that has negative emotions associated with it than positive emotions. Contrast: state dependent memory in depressed people activating the negative emotion schema. (Cason 1932)
Selective Perception - avoid and forget information that is emotionally upsetting or contradicts one’s beliefs. Contrast: negativity bias. (Pronin 2007)
Belief Biases
Expectations
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - false belief influences behaviour which leads to conditions of initial false belief coming true. (Merton 1948)
Pygmalion Effect - increased expectations produce increase in performance. (Rosenthal, Jacobson 1992)
Subject-Expectancy Effect - in experiments, a participants expectations of the experiment change influences the participants involvement within the experiment. (Gomm 2009)
Placebo Effect - individual's expectations alone improves conditions of their physical or mental health and not the procedure or substances that is said to be correlated with improvement. Used in clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of drugs. (McDonald 1983)
Belief Change
Conservatism Bias - not fully revise beliefs when new evidence is given with a tendency to hold on to old beliefs. (Edwards 1968)
Continued Influence Effect - when a person continues to believe false information even after they have been corrected (Johnson, Seifert 1994)
Backfire Effect - strengthen false belief in response to evidence against it. (Nyhan, Reifler 2010)
Reactive Devaluation - if someone perceives an individual as an antagonist, they are less likely to accept truths from them. (Ross, Stillinger 1988)
Irrational Belief
Wishful Thinking - creating beliefs and making decisions based on imagined pleasure about the belief or decision instead of based on evidence or reason. (Bruner, Goodman 1947)
Belief Bias - accept a conclusion that corresponds to a person's beliefs or values even when argument is invalid or not supported by its premises. Emotional content will motivate the person to be more evaluative of the reasons or not depending on whether negative or positive emotions are evoked. If positive belief associations, people are less critical and vice versa. (Evans, Barston, Pollard 1983)
Illusory Truth Effect - believing something after repeated exposure to the information. Repetition engages the mere-exposure effect and hindsight bias. (Hasher, Goldstein, Toppino 1977)
Magical Thinking - falsely attribute causal relationships relating to the influence of one’s thoughts and external events. (Carroll 2003)
Just Illusions
Just-World-Hypothesis - belief that only good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Attempt to not feel vulnerable in situations where they have no control. Problem with this attitude is that it can lead to blaming victims for events that they were not responsible for. (Lerner 1966)
Defensive Attribution Hypothesis - believe that they are less likely to be cause or victim of an unfortunate event in an attempt to protect themselves from experiencing fear. (Walster 1966)
Optimism Bias - think one is at less risk of negative events occuring to them than others - representative heuristic, self-enhancement - problems of accurately assessing health risks. (Weinstein 1996)
Planning Fallacy - underestimation of how long it will take to complete one’s own tasks. (overconfidence) (Kahneman, Tversky 1979)
Normalcy Bias - the belief that things will function the way they usually do and prevents people from accepting, preparing and acting in situations where a disaster is present. (Ripley 2008)
Pessimism Bias - exaggerate one's susceptibility to risks. Frequent with depressed people: mental filter, fortune telling. (Shepperd 2002)
Vague Meanings
The Barnum Effect - when a person identifies with a very vague general description that they believe is specifically about them that actually applies to many people. Ex: astrology, horoscope, cold reading, and fortune telling. (Meehl 1956)
Subjective Validation - when a person believes a claim is true if it has any personal significance or meaning to them. (Forer 1949)
Social Biases
Expectations from/of Others
Observer-Expectancy Effect - expectations of experimenter influence the outcome of a study. Element of confirmation bias in experimenter’s assessment of evidence. Participants conform to experimenter’s interests in the study. Ex - Clever Hans. (Rosenthal 1966)
Hawthorne Effect - behaviour to change when aware of being observed. (Landsberger 1958)
Spotlight Effect - think that others are noticing them more than they actually are. (Gilovich, Savitsky 1999)
Illusion of Transparency - overestimate how much of one’s own mental state others know. (McRaney 2010)
Authority Bias - obedience when pressured by a perceived authority even when the action violates one’s moral code. Ex: Milgram authority experiments influenced participants to shock someone when they felt it was wrong but felt obligated due to command from experimenter. (Milgram 1961)
Shared Information Bias - when a group is solving an ambiguous or judgment-oriented task that needs consensus, they are more likely to spend time discussing information everyone is already familiar with in contrast to information that some members may not be exposed to. The lack of comprehensiveness in making sure all members are knowledgeable about information reduces their capacity to make an informed decision. (Forsyth 2009)
Conforming
Bandwagon Effect - conform behaviour or beliefs relative to others conforming to new behaviours or beliefs. Ex. Asch’s conformity experiments. (Asch 1955)
Availability Cascade - ascribe themselves to a belief because of its rising popularity making it easy to bring to mind and need to gain social approval despite the legitimacy of the claim. (availability heuristic) (Kuran, Sunstein 1999)
Bystander Effect - the more people are present when a person is in need of help the less likely that an individual will help them. (Darley, Latané 1968)
Helping and Empathy
Ben Franklin Effect - When someone does a favour for you, they will like you more than if they did not. Cognitive dissonance influences people to reason that they like people they do favours for. It wouldn’t make sense to do nice things for people you don’t like. (Jecker, Landy 1969)
Identifiable Victim Effect - people have a tendency to offer help or dispense punishment to a person who is easily identifiable as a victim or perpetuator of an offense but unwilling to give the same treatment to larger groups that display the same characteristics. People are able to empathize and identify with a single person whereas a large group becomes statistically abstract. “‘If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics’ in Washington Post 20 January 1947” Stalin. (Schelling 1968)
AJ 10.2.18, 15.3.18, 25.4.18, 27.3.20
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