Action bias
The tendency for someone to act when faced with a problem even when inaction would be more effective, or to act when no evident problem exists
DecisionBaseline
Index
Searchable bias index
This index stays broad on purpose. Use categories when you know what kind of judgment is failing, and patterns when you suspect the failure mode but not the exact label.
Additive bias
The tendency to solve problems through addition, even when subtraction is a better approach
DecisionBaseline
Aesthetic–usability effect
A tendency for people to perceive attractive things as more usable
EstimationAssociation
Agent detection bias
The inclination to presume the purposeful intervention of a sentient or intelligent agent
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Ambiguity effect
The tendency to avoid options when their probabilities are unclear, even if the unclear option may not actually be worse than the familiar one.
DecisionAssociationForecasting & planningPersonal decisions
Anchoring effect
The tendency for the first salient number, frame, or option to pull later estimates toward itself even when it is arbitrary or weakly relevant.
EstimationBaselineForecasting & planningPersonal decisions
Anthropocentric thinking
The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Anthropomorphism
Characterization of animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human traits, emotions, or intentions. The opposite bias, of not attributing feelings or thoughts to another person, is dehumanised perception, a type of objectification
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Apophenia
The tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things
Causal AttributionOutcome
Assumed similarity bias
Where an individual assumes that others have more traits in common with them than those others actually do
Causal AttributionOutcome
Attentional bias
The tendency of perception to be affected by recurring thoughts
RecallInertia
Attribute substitution
When a judgment has to be made (of a target attribute) that is computationally complex, and instead a more easily calculated heuristic attribute is substituted. This substitution is thought of as taking place in the automatic intuitive judgment system, rather than the more self-aware reflective system
EstimationAssociation
Authority bias
The tendency to give excess weight to the opinion of a high-status or authoritative source independent of whether the source has earned that weight on the specific issue.
DecisionAssociationTeams & managementMedia & politics
Automation bias
The tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions
DecisionAssociation
Availability cascade
A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true"). See also availability heuristic
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Availability heuristic
The tendency to judge frequency, risk, or importance by how easily examples come to mind.
EstimationAssociationMedia & politicsPersonal decisions
Backfire effect
A tendency to react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one's previous beliefs
Opinion ReportingInertia
Ballot order effect
Where candidates who are listed first often receive a small but statistically significant increase in votes compared to those listed in lower positions
DecisionBaseline
Bandwagon effect
The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior
Opinion ReportingOutcome
Barnum effect
This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Base-rate neglect
The tendency to underweight general prevalence information when vivid case-specific details are available.
EstimationBaselineResearch & evidenceForecasting & planning
Belief bias
The tendency to judge an argument as stronger when its conclusion seems believable and weaker when its conclusion seems unbelievable, even if the reasoning structure is unchanged.
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcomeLearning & expertiseMedia & politics
Ben Franklin effect
Where a person who has performed a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than they would be if they had received a favor from that person
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Berkson's paradox
The tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Bias blind spot
The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Bizarreness effect
Bizarre material is better remembered than common material
RecallBaseline
Boundary extension
Remembering the background of an image as being larger or more expansive than the foreground
RecallAssociation
Cheerleader effect
The tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation
DecisionBaseline
Childhood amnesia
The retention of few memories from before the age of four
RecallAssociation
Choice-supportive bias
The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were
RecallOutcome
Clustering illusion
The tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns)
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Cognitive dissonance
The perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Common source bias
The tendency to combine or compare research studies from the same source, or from sources that use the same methodologies or data
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Compassion fade
The tendency to behave more compassionately towards a small number of identifiable victims than to a large number of anonymous ones
DecisionAssociation
Compromise effect, choices affected if presented as extreme or average
Choices affected if presented as extreme or average
DecisionBaseline
Confirmation bias
The tendency to notice, seek, and remember evidence that supports the story you already prefer more readily than evidence that threatens it.
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcomeMedia & politicsResearch & evidence
Congruence bias
The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Conjunction fallacy
The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than a more general version of those same conditions
EstimationAssociation
Conservatism bias
The tendency to insufficiently revise one's belief when presented with new evidence
EstimationInertia
Conservatism or regressive bias
Tendency to remember high values and high likelihoods/probabilities/frequencies as lower than they actually were and low ones as higher than they actually were. Based on the evidence, memories are not extreme enough
EstimationBaseline
Consistency bias
Incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour
RecallAssociation
Context neglect bias
The tendency to neglect the human context of technological challenges
Causal AttributionOutcome
Continued influence effect
Misinformation continues to influence memory and reasoning about an event, despite the misinformation having been corrected. cf. misinformation effect, where the original memory is affected by incorrect information received later
RecallInertia
Contrast effect
The enhancement or reduction of a certain stimulus's perception when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object
RecallAssociation
Courtesy bias
The tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one's true opinion, so as to avoid offending anyone
Opinion ReportingOutcome
Cross-race effect
The tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying members of a race other than their own
RecallSelf-Perspective
Cryptomnesia
Where a memory is mistaken for novel thought or imagination, because there is no subjective experience of it being a memory
RecallAssociation
Cue-dependent forgetting
Context effect: That cognition and memory are dependent on context, such that out-of-context memories are more difficult to retrieve than in-context memories (e.g., recall time and accuracy for a work-related memory will be lower at home, and vice versa)
RecallAssociation
Curse of knowledge
The tendency for informed people to underestimate how hard it is for less-informed people to follow, predict, or reconstruct the same material.
EstimationSelf-PerspectiveLearning & expertiseTeams & management
Declinism
The predisposition to view the past favorably ( rosy retrospection ) and the future unfavorably
RecallOutcome
Decoy effect
Where preferences for either option A or B change in favor of option B when option C is presented, which is completely dominated by option B (inferior in all respects) and partially dominated by option A
DecisionBaseline
Default effect
The tendency to favor the preselected or default option simply because it is already positioned as the path of least resistance.
DecisionAssociationChoice architecturePersonal decisions
Defensive attribution hypothesis
A tendency to attribute more blame for a mishap to the person or persons involved if they are perceived as dissimilar to the person making that judgment
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Denomination effect
The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g., coins) rather than large amounts (e.g., bills)
DecisionBaseline
Disposition effect
The tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value
DecisionBaseline
Distinction bias
The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately
DecisionBaseline
Domain neglect
Bias, the tendency to neglect relevant domain knowledge while solving interdisciplinary problems
Causal AttributionOutcome
Doubling-back aversion
The tendency for people to avoid retracing their steps or restarting a task, even when doing so would clearly save time or effort, because it feels like undoing past progress rather than making future gains
DecisionInertia
Dread aversion
Just as losses yield double the emotional impact of gains, dread yields double the emotional impact of savouring
DecisionAssociation
Dunning-Kruger effect
The tendency for low skill or shallow understanding to produce overestimation of one's own competence, while higher-skill people may underestimate how unusual their competence really is.
EstimationBaselineLearning & expertiseTeams & management
Duration neglect
The neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value
RecallAssociation
Effort justification
A person's tendency to attribute greater value to an outcome if they had to put effort into achieving it. This can result in more value being applied to an outcome than it actually has. An example of this is the IKEA effect, the tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects that they partially assembled themselves, such as furniture from IKEA, regardless of the quality of the end product
DecisionSelf-Perspective
Egocentric bias
Recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g., remembering one's exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as bigger than it really was. Also the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a different perception of oneself relative to others
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Embodiment bias
Biases in attribution of meaning and perceived properties to objects or events based on the physical capacities and properties of the body, such as sex and temperament
Causal AttributionOutcome
End-of-history illusion
The age-independent belief that one will change less in the future than one has in the past
Opinion ReportingInertia
Endowment effect
The tendency to value something more highly once it is already owned, possessed, or treated as part of the current arrangement.
DecisionInertiaPersonal decisionsMarkets & valuation
Euphoric recall
The tendency of people to remember past experiences favorably while overlooking bad experiences associated with them
RecallOutcome
Exaggerated expectation
The tendency to expect or predict more extreme outcomes than those outcomes that actually happen
EstimationOutcome
Experimenter's 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
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Extension neglect
When the quantity of the sample size is not sufficiently taken into consideration when assessing the outcome, relevance or judgement
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Extrinsic incentives bias
An exception to the fundamental attribution error, where people view others as having (situational) extrinsic motivations, while viewing themselves as having (dispositional) intrinsic motivations
EstimationSelf-Perspective
Fading affect bias
A bias in which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly than the emotion associated with pleasant ones
RecallAssociation
False consensus effect
The tendency to overestimate how many other people share one's own beliefs, preferences, habits, or reactions.
EstimationSelf-PerspectiveMedia & politicsTeams & management
False memory
Where imagination is mistaken for a memory
RecallAssociation
False priors
Initial beliefs and knowledge which interfere with the unbiased evaluation of factual evidence and lead to incorrect conclusions
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
False uniqueness bias
The tendency of people to see their projects and themselves as more singular than they actually are
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Fluency heuristic
If one object is processed more fluently, faster, or more smoothly than another, the mind infers that this object has the higher value with respect to the question being considered. In other words, the more skillfully or elegantly an idea is communicated, the more likely it is to be considered seriously, whether or not it is logical
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Form function attribution bias
In human–robot interaction, the tendency of people to make systematic errors when interacting with a robot. People may base their expectations and perceptions of a robot on its appearance (form) and attribute functions which do not necessarily mirror the true functions of the robot
Causal AttributionOutcome
Framing effect
The tendency for the same underlying information to produce different judgments depending on how the options or outcomes are described.
DecisionAssociationMedia & politicsPersonal decisions
Frequency illusion
The frequency illusion is that once something has been noticed then every instance of that thing is noticed, leading to the belief it has a high frequency of occurrence (a form of selection bias ). The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon is the illusion where something that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards. It was named after an incidence of frequency illusion in which the Baader–Meinhof Group was mentioned
RecallBaseline
Functional fixedness
A tendency limiting a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used
DecisionInertia
Fundamental attribution error
The tendency to explain other people's behavior too quickly in terms of character while underweighting situational pressures and constraints.
Causal AttributionSelf-PerspectiveTeams & managementMedia & politics
G. I. Joe fallacy
The tendency to think that knowing about cognitive bias is enough to overcome it
Causal AttributionOutcome
Gambler's fallacy
The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers . For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads."
EstimationBaseline
Gender bias
A widespread set of implicit biases that discriminate against a gender. For example, the assumption that women are less suited to jobs requiring high intellectual ability. [ failed verification ] Or the assumption that people or animals are male in the absence of any indicators of gender
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Gender differences in eyewitness memory
The tendency for a witness to remember more details about someone of the same gender
RecallSelf-Perspective
Generation effect
That self-generated information is remembered best. For instance, people are better able to recall memories of statements that they have generated than similar statements generated by others
RecallSelf-Perspective
Google effect
The tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines
RecallAssociation
Group attribution error
The biased belief that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole or the tendency to assume that group decision outcomes reflect the preferences of group members, even when information is available that clearly suggests otherwise
Causal AttributionOutcome
Groupshift
The tendency for decisions to be more risk-seeking or risk-averse than the group as a whole, if the group is already biased in that direction
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Groupthink
The tendency for groups to preserve harmony, cohesion, or momentum at the cost of critical evaluation and live dissent.
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociationTeams & managementPolitics & institutions
Halo effect
The tendency for one salient positive or negative impression to spill over into unrelated judgments about a person, product, or institution.
Opinion ReportingAssociationTeams & managementPersonal decisions
Hard–easy effect
The tendency to overestimate one's ability to accomplish hard tasks, and underestimate one's ability to accomplish easy tasks
EstimationBaseline
Hedonic recall bias
The tendency for people who are satisfied with their wage to overestimate how much they earn, and conversely, for people who are unsatisfied with their wage to underestimate it
EstimationOutcome
Hindsight bias
The tendency, after an outcome is known, to see it as having been more obvious or predictable than it actually was beforehand.
RecallOutcomePostmortems & learningForecasting & planning
Hostile attribution bias
The tendency to read ambiguous behavior as hostile, threatening, or intentionally disrespectful even when the evidence is underdetermined.
Causal AttributionOutcomeConflict & dialogueTeams & management
Hot-cold empathy gap
The tendency to underestimate the influence of visceral drives on one's attitudes, preferences, and behaviors
EstimationAssociation
Hot-hand fallacy
The belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts
EstimationBaseline
Humor effect
That humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones, which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor, the increased cognitive processing time to understand the humor, or the emotional arousal caused by the humor
RecallAssociation
Hyperbolic discounting
Where discounting is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. Hyperbolic discounting leads to choices that are inconsistent over time—people make choices today that their future selves would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning. Also known as current moment bias or present bias, and related to Dynamic inconsistency . A good example of this is a study showed that when making food choices for the coming week, 74% of participants chose fruit, whereas when the food choice was for the current day, 70% chose chocolate
DecisionAssociation
Illusion of asymmetric insight
Where people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Illusion of control
The tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events
Causal AttributionOutcome
Illusion of explanatory depth
The tendency to believe you understand how something works more deeply than you actually do, especially until you are forced to explain the mechanism step by step.
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociationLearning & expertisePublic reasoning
Illusion of learning
A false belief that if you understand something you learned and acquired a knowledge about it
Opinion ReportingOutcome
Illusion of transparency
The tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which their personal mental state is known by others, and to overestimate how well they understand others' personal mental states
EstimationSelf-Perspective
Illusion of validity
The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one's judgments, especially when available information is consistent or inter-correlated
EstimationOutcome
Illusory correlation
Inaccurately seeing a relationship between two events related by coincidence
Causal AttributionHypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Illusory superiority
The tendency to overestimate one's desirable qualities, and underestimate undesirable qualities, relative to other people. (Also known as "Lake Wobegon effect", "better-than-average effect", or "superiority bias".)
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Illusory truth effect
The tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity. People are more likely to identify as true statements those they have previously heard (even if they cannot consciously remember having heard them), regardless of the actual validity of the statement. In other words, a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Impact bias
The tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states
EstimationOutcome
Implicit association
Where the speed with which people can match words depends on how closely they are associated
RecallAssociation
Implicit bias
The underlying attitudes and stereotypes that people unconsciously attribute to another person or group of people that affect how they understand and engage with them. Many researchers suggest that unconscious bias occurs automatically as the brain makes quick judgments based on past experiences and background
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Impostor Syndrome
A psychological occurrence in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Also known as impostor phenomenon
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Information bias
The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Ingroup bias
The tendency to favor, trust, defend, or positively interpret people and claims associated with one's own group more readily than comparable outsiders.
Causal AttributionSelf-PerspectiveMedia & politicsTeams & management
Insensitivity to sample size
The tendency to under-expect variation in small samples
EstimationBaseline
Intentionality bias
The tendency to judge human action to be intentional rather than accidental
Causal AttributionOutcome
Interoceptive bias
(As for example, in parole judges who are more lenient when fed and rested.)
EstimationBaseline
Just-world fallacy
The tendency to assume that people usually get what they deserve, which encourages reinterpretation of suffering, injustice, or bad luck as somehow earned.
Causal AttributionOutcomeMedia & politicsConflict & dialogue
Lag effect
The phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of time in a single session. See also spacing effect
RecallAssociation
Law of the instrument
An over-reliance on a familiar tool or methods, ignoring or under-valuing alternative approaches. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
DecisionSelf-Perspective
Less-is-better effect
The tendency to prefer a smaller set to a larger set judged separately, but not jointly
DecisionBaseline
Leveling and sharpening
Memory distortions introduced by the loss of details in a recollection over time, often concurrent with sharpening or selective recollection of certain details that take on exaggerated significance in relation to the details or aspects of the experience lost through leveling. Both biases may be reinforced over time, and by repeated recollection or re-telling of a memory
RecallAssociation
Levels-of-processing effect
That different methods of encoding information into memory have different levels of effectiveness
RecallAssociation
List-length effect
A smaller percentage of items are remembered in a longer list, but as the length of the list increases, the absolute number of items remembered increases as well
RecallBaseline
Loss aversion
The tendency for potential losses to weigh more heavily than equivalent gains when choices are being evaluated.
DecisionAssociationPersonal decisionsForecasting & planning
Memory inhibition
Being shown some items from a list makes it harder to retrieve the other items (e.g., Slamecka, 1968)
RecallAssociation
Mere exposure effect
The tendency to like, trust, or feel more comfortable with something simply because it has become familiar.
DecisionInertiaMedia & politicsPersonal decisions
Misinformation effect
Memory becoming less accurate because of interference from post-event information . cf. continued influence effect, where misinformation about an event, despite later being corrected, continues to influence memory about the event
RecallAssociation
Misinterpreted-effort hypothesis
Perceiving effort as a poor learning
Opinion ReportingOutcome
Modality effect
That memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the list items were received via speech than when they were received through writing
RecallAssociation
Money illusion
The tendency to concentrate on the nominal value (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power
DecisionBaseline
Mood-congruent memory bias
The improved recall of information congruent with one's current mood
RecallAssociation
Moral credential
Effect: Occurs when someone who does something good gives themselves permission to be less good in the future
Opinion ReportingAssociation
Moral luck
The tendency for people to ascribe greater or lesser moral standing based on the outcome of an event
Opinion ReportingOutcome
Motivated reasoning
The tendency to use reasoning as a defense lawyer for desired conclusions rather than as an impartial search for what is most likely true.
Hypothesis AssessmentSelf-PerspectiveMedia & politicsPersonal decisions
Motonormativity
The assumption that motor vehicle use is an unremarkable social norm, causing people to discount harms caused by motor vehicle use compared to similar harms caused by other behaviors
Causal AttributionOutcome
Naïve cynicism
Expecting more egocentric bias in others than in oneself
EstimationSelf-Perspective
Naïve realism
The tendency to experience one's own perception of reality as the obvious, objective view and to treat disagreement as evidence that others are uninformed, irrational, or biased.
Opinion ReportingSelf-PerspectiveMedia & politicsConflict & dialogue
Negativity bias
The tendency to give bad news, threats, criticism, and losses more psychological weight than equally sized positives.
Opinion ReportingRecallAssociationBaselineMedia & politicsTeams & management
Neglect of probability
The tendency to ignore or drastically underuse probability information when making decisions under uncertainty.
DecisionAssociationRisk judgmentPublic policy
Next-in-line effect
When taking turns speaking in a group using a predetermined order (e.g. going clockwise around a room, taking numbers, etc.) people tend to have diminished recall for the words of the person who spoke immediately before them
RecallAssociation
Non-adaptive choice switching
After experiencing a bad outcome with a decision problem, the tendency to avoid the choice previously made when faced with the same decision problem again, even though the choice was optimal. Also known as "once bitten, twice shy" or "hot stove effect"
DecisionAssociation
Normalcy bias
The tendency to assume that things will keep functioning more or less normally, which leads people to underprepare for unprecedented or fast-moving disruption.
DecisionBaselineRisk judgmentPublic policy
Not invented here
An aversion to contact with or use of products, research, standards, or knowledge developed outside a group
DecisionSelf-Perspective
Objectivity illusion
The phenomena where people tend to believe that they are more objective and unbiased than others. This bias can apply to itself – where people are able to see when others are affected by the objectivity illusion, but unable to see it in themselves. See also bias blind spot
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Observer-expectancy effect
When a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect )
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Omission bias
The tendency to judge harmful inaction as more acceptable, or less blameworthy, than equally harmful action.
Opinion ReportingInertiaPersonal decisionsPublic policy
Optimism bias
The tendency to overestimate favorable outcomes and underestimate the probability or impact of unfavorable ones, especially for oneself or one's own plans.
EstimationSelf-PerspectiveForecasting & planningPersonal decisions
Ostrich effect
The tendency to avoid acknowledgment of an obviously bad situation to avoid the bad feelings that may come with acknowledgment of the situation
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Outcome bias
The tendency to judge the quality of a decision mainly by how things turned out rather than by the quality of the reasoning under the uncertainty that existed at the time.
EstimationOutcomePostmortems & learningTeams & management
Outgroup favoritism
When some socially disadvantaged groups will express favorable attitudes (and even preferences) toward social, cultural, or ethnic groups other than their own
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Outgroup homogeneity bias
Where individuals see members of other groups as being relatively less varied than members of their own group
EstimationSelf-Perspective
Overconfidence effect
The tendency to be more certain about judgments, forecasts, or abilities than the evidence warrants.
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcomeForecasting & planningTeams & management
Pareidolia
A tendency to perceive a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the Moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Part-list cueing effect
That being shown some items from a list and later retrieving one item causes it to become harder to retrieve the other items
RecallAssociation
Peak–end rule
That people seem to perceive not the sum of an experience but the average of how it was at its peak (e.g., pleasant or unpleasant) and how it ended
RecallAssociation
Perky effect
The Perky effect, where real images can influence imagined images, or be misremembered as imagined rather than real
RecallAssociation
Persistence
The unwanted recurrence of memories of a traumatic event
RecallAssociation
Pessimism bias
The tendency to overestimate the likelihood that bad things will happen. (compare optimism bias )
EstimationSelf-Perspective
Phantom effect
Choices affected by dominant but unavailable options
DecisionBaseline
Picture superiority effect
The notion that concepts that are learned by viewing pictures are more easily and frequently recalled than are concepts that are learned by viewing their written word form counterparts
RecallAssociation
Placement bias
Tendency to remember ourselves to be better than others at tasks at which we rate ourselves above average (also Illusory superiority or Better-than-average effect ) and tendency to remember ourselves to be worse than others at tasks at which we rate ourselves below average (also Worse-than-average effect )
RecallSelf-Perspective
Plan continuation bias
Failure to recognize that the original plan of action is no longer appropriate for a changing situation or for a situation that is different from anticipated
DecisionInertia
Planning fallacy
The tendency for people to underestimate the time it will take them to complete a given task
EstimationOutcome
Plant blindness
The tendency to ignore plants in their environment and a failure to recognize and appreciate the utility of plants to life on earth
Causal AttributionOutcome
Positivity effect
Older adults' tendency to favor good over bad information in their memories. See also euphoric recall
RecallAssociation
Present bias
The tendency to give disproportionate weight to immediate costs and payoffs relative to later ones, even when the later consequences are larger.
DecisionOutcomePersonal decisionsForecasting & planning
Prevention bias
When investing money to protect against risks, decision makers perceive that a dollar spent on prevention buys more security than a dollar spent on timely detection and response, even when investing in either option is equally effective
DecisionAssociation
Primacy effect
Where an item at the beginning of a list is more easily recalled. A form of serial position effect . See also recency effect and suffix effect
RecallBaseline
Pro-innovation bias
The tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation's usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses
Causal AttributionOutcome
Probability matching
Sub-optimal matching of the probability of choices with the probability of reward in a stochastic context
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Processing difficulty effect
That information that takes longer to read and is thought about more (processed with more difficulty) is more easily remembered. See also levels-of-processing effect
RecallAssociation
Projection bias
The tendency to overestimate how much your future preferences, values, and reactions will resemble whatever you feel strongly right now.
DecisionBaselinePersonal decisionsForecasting & planning
Proportionality bias
Our innate tendency to assume that big events have big causes, may also explain our tendency to accept conspiracy theories
Causal AttributionOutcome
Pseudocertainty effect
The tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is good but risk-seeking choices if it is bad
DecisionAssociation
Puritanical bias
The tendency to attribute cause of an undesirable outcome or wrongdoing by an individual to a moral deficiency or lack of self-control rather than taking into account the impact of broader societal determinants
Causal AttributionOutcome
Pygmalion effect
The phenomenon whereby others' expectations of a target person affect the target person's performance
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Quantification bias
The tendency to ascribe more weight to measured/quantified metrics than to unquantifiable values. See also: McNamara fallacy
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Reactance
The tendency to push back against a perceived attempt to limit one's freedom of choice, sometimes by moving toward the very option one was being steered away from.
DecisionOutcomePersonal decisionsConflict & persuasion
Reactive devaluation
Devaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary
DecisionSelf-Perspective
Recency effect
A form of serial position effect where an item at the end of a list is easier to recall. This can be disrupted by the suffix effect . See also primacy effect
RecallBaseline
Recency illusion
The illusion that a phenomenon one has noticed only recently is itself recent. Often used to refer to linguistic phenomena; the illusion that a word or language usage that one has noticed only recently is an innovation when it is, in fact, long-established (see also frequency illusion ). Also recency bias is a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones. A memory bias, recency bias gives "greater importance to the most recent event", such as the final lawyer's closing argument a jury hears before being dismissed to deliberate
RecallOutcome
Reminiscence bump
The recalling of more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than personal events from other lifetime periods
RecallAssociation
Repetition blindness
Unexpected difficulty in remembering more than one instance of a visual sequence
RecallAssociation
Restraint bias
The tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation
EstimationOutcome
Rhyme as reason effect
Where rhyming statements are perceived as more truthful
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Risk compensation
The tendency to take greater risks when perceived safety increases
DecisionAssociation
Rosy retrospection
The remembering of the past as having been better than it really was
RecallOutcome
Salience bias
The tendency to focus on items that are more prominent or emotionally striking and ignore those that are unremarkable, even though this difference is often irrelevant by objective standards. See also von Restorff effect
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Saying is believing effect
Communicating a socially tuned message to an audience can lead to a bias of identifying the tuned message as one's own thoughts
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Scope neglect
For example, being willing to pay as much to save 2,000 children or 20,000 children
DecisionBaseline
Selection bias
Which happens when the members of a statistical sample are not chosen completely at random, which leads to the sample not being representative of the population
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Selective perception
The tendency for expectations to affect perception
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Self-relevance effect
That memories relating to the self are better recalled than similar information relating to others
RecallSelf-Perspective
Self-serving bias
The tendency to take disproportionate credit for successes while locating failures in bad luck, unfair circumstances, or other people.
Causal AttributionSelf-PerspectiveTeams & managementConflict & dialogue
Semmelweis reflex
The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm
DecisionInertia
Serial position effect
That items near the end of a sequence are the easiest to recall, followed by the items at the beginning of a sequence; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered. See also recency effect, primacy effect and suffix effect
RecallBaseline
Sexual overperception bias
The tendency to overestimate sexual interest of another person in oneself, and sexual underperception bias, the tendency to underestimate it
EstimationOutcome
Shared information bias
The tendency for group members to spend more time and energy discussing information that all members are already familiar with (i.e., shared information), and less time and energy discussing information that only some members are aware of (i.e., unshared information)
DecisionInertia
Social comparison bias
The tendency, when making decisions, to favour potential candidates who do not compete with one's own particular strengths
DecisionSelf-Perspective
Social cryptomnesia
A failure by people and society in general to remember the origin of a change, in which people know that a change has occurred in society, but forget how this change occurred; that is, the steps that were taken to bring this change about, and who took these steps. This has led to reduced social credit towards the minorities who made major sacrifices that led to a change in societal values
RecallAssociation
Social desirability bias
The tendency to over-report socially approved attitudes or behaviors and under-report the ones likely to invite embarrassment, judgment, or sanction.
Opinion ReportingOutcomeSurveys & interviewsTeams & management
Source confusion
Episodic memories are confused with other information, creating distorted memories
RecallAssociation
Spacing effect
That information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a long span of time rather than a short one
RecallAssociation
Spotlight effect
The tendency to overestimate how much other people notice, remember, or care about one's appearance, mistakes, or behavior.
EstimationSelf-PerspectivePersonal decisionsConflict & dialogue
Status quo bias
The tendency to prefer the current option, default, or inherited arrangement simply because it is the current option, default, or inherited arrangement.
DecisionInertiaPersonal decisionsTeams & management
Stereotype bias or stereotypical bias
Memory distorted towards stereotypes (e.g., racial or gender)
RecallInertia
Stereotyping
Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual
Opinion ReportingOutcome
Subadditivity effect
The tendency to estimate that the likelihood of a remembered event is less than the sum of its (more than two) mutually exclusive components
EstimationHypothesis AssessmentAssociationBaseline
Subjective validation
Where statements are perceived as true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences. (Compare confirmation bias .)
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Suffix effect
Diminishment of the recency effect because a sound item is appended to the list that the subject is not required to recall. A form of serial position effect . cf. recency effect and primacy effect
RecallAssociation
Suggestibility
Where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory
RecallAssociation
Sunk cost effect
The tendency to keep investing in a losing path because of what has already been spent, even when the forward-looking case has weakened.
DecisionInertiaPersonal decisionsTeams & management
Surrogation
Losing sight of the strategic construct that a measure is intended to represent, and subsequently acting as though the measure is the construct of interest
Causal AttributionOutcome
Survivorship bias
The tendency to learn from the visible winners while overlooking the invisible failures that dropped out of view.
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcomeResearch & evidenceForecasting & planning
System justification
The tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest
Causal AttributionOutcome
Systematic bias
Judgement that arises when targets of differentiating judgement become subject to effects of regression that are not equivalent
EstimationBaseline
Tachypsychia
When time perceived by the individual either lengthens, making events appear to slow down, or contracts
EstimationAssociation
Teleological bias
The tendency to engage in overgeneralized ascriptions of purpose to entities and events that did not arise from goal-directed action, design, or selection based on functional effects
Causal AttributionOutcome
Telescoping effect
The tendency to displace recent events backwards in time and remote events forward in time, so that recent events appear more remote, and remote events, more recent
RecallAssociation
Testing effect
The fact that one more easily recall information one has read by rewriting it instead of rereading it. Frequent testing of material that has been committed to memory improves memory recall
RecallAssociation
Third-person effect
A tendency to believe that mass-communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Time-saving bias
A tendency to underestimate the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively low speed, and to overestimate the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively high speed
EstimationAssociation
Tip of the tongue
Phenomenon: When a subject is able to recall parts of an item, or related information, but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item. This is thought to be an instance of "blocking" where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other
RecallAssociation
Trait ascription bias
The tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior, and mood while viewing others as much more predictable
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Travis syndrome
Overestimating the significance of the present. It is related to chronological snobbery with possibly an appeal to novelty logical fallacy being part of the bias
EstimationAssociation
Truth bias
People's inclination towards believing, to some degree, the communication of another person, regardless of whether or not that person is actually lying or being untruthful
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Turkey illusion
Absence of expectation of sudden trend breaks in continuous developments
Causal AttributionOutcome
Ultimate attribution error
Similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Unit bias
The standard suggested amount of consumption (e.g., food serving size) is perceived to be appropriate, and a person would consume it all even if it is too much for this particular person
EstimationBaseline
Value selection bias
The tendency to rely on existing numerical data when reasoning in an unfamiliar context, even if calculation or numerical manipulation is required
Hypothesis AssessmentOutcome
Verbatim effect
That the "gist" of what someone has said is better remembered than the verbatim wording. This is because memories are representations, not exact copies
RecallAssociation
Von Restorff effect
That an item that sticks out is more likely to be remembered than other items
RecallBaseline
Weber–Fechner law
Difficulty in perceiving and comparing small differences in large quantities
EstimationBaseline
Well travelled road effect
The tendency to underestimate the duration taken to traverse oft-travelled routes and overestimate the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes
DecisionInertia
Women are wonderful effect
A tendency to associate more good attributes with women than with men
Opinion ReportingOutcome
Worse-than-average effect
A tendency to believe ourselves to be worse than others at tasks which are difficult
EstimationSelf-Perspective
Zeigarnik effect
That uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones
RecallAssociation
Zero-risk bias
The preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk
DecisionAssociation
Zero-sum bias
Where a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game, in which any gain by one person necessarily comes at the expense of another
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective