Aesthetic–usability effect
The tendency to treat attractive things as more usable than they really are.
EstimationAssociation
Category
Estimation
Biases here distort numerical judgment, probability, calibration, and first-pass estimation.
40 biases
Biases in this category
Use these side by side before deciding which label best fits the judgment failure you are seeing.
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
Attribute substitution
The tendency to answer a hard judgment question by unconsciously substituting an easier one.
EstimationAssociation
Availability heuristic
The tendency to judge frequency, risk, or importance by how easily examples come to mind.
EstimationAssociationMedia & politicsPersonal decisions
Base-rate neglect
The tendency to underweight general prevalence information when vivid case-specific details are available.
EstimationBaselineResearch & evidenceForecasting & planning
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
Regressive bias
The tendency to remember high values as lower and low values as higher, pulling estimates back toward the middle.
EstimationBaseline
Curse of knowledge
The tendency for better-informed people to underestimate how hard the issue looks to less-informed people.
EstimationSelf-PerspectiveLearning & expertiseTeams & management
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
Exaggerated expectation
The tendency to expect or predict more extreme outcomes than those outcomes that actually happen.
EstimationOutcome
Extrinsic incentives bias
An exception to the fundamental attribution error, where people view others as having extrinsic motivations, while viewing themselves as having intrinsic motivations.
EstimationSelf-Perspective
False consensus effect
The tendency to overestimate how many other people share one's own beliefs, preferences, habits, or reactions.
EstimationSelf-PerspectiveMedia & politicsTeams & management
Gambler's fallacy
The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged.
EstimationBaseline
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 current satisfaction to distort how positively or negatively past experience is remembered.
EstimationOutcome
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
Illusion of transparency
The tendency to overestimate how visible one's thoughts, feelings, or intentions are to others.
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
Impact bias
The tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
EstimationOutcome
Insensitivity to sample size
The tendency to under-expect variation in small samples and overread sparse data.
EstimationBaseline
Interoceptive bias
The tendency for hunger, fatigue, pain, or other bodily states to distort judgment.
EstimationBaseline
Naïve cynicism
The tendency to expect more egocentric bias in others than in oneself.
EstimationSelf-Perspective
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
Outcome bias
The tendency to judge a decision mainly by its result rather than by the quality of the reasoning behind it.
EstimationOutcomePostmortems & learningTeams & management
Outgroup homogeneity bias
The tendency to see members of other groups as more alike than members of one's own group.
EstimationSelf-Perspective
Pessimism bias
The tendency to overestimate the likelihood that bad things will happen.
EstimationSelf-Perspective
Planning fallacy
The tendency for people to underestimate the time it will take them to complete a given task.
EstimationOutcome
Restraint bias
The tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.
EstimationOutcome
Sexual overperception bias
The tendency to overestimate sexual interest of another person in oneself, and sexual underperception bias, the tendency to underestimate it.
EstimationOutcome
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
Subadditivity effect
The tendency to estimate that the likelihood of a remembered event is less than the sum of its mutually exclusive components.
EstimationHypothesis AssessmentAssociationBaseline
Systematic bias
Judgement that arises when targets of differentiating judgement become subject to effects of regression that are not equivalent.
EstimationBaseline
Tachypsychia
The tendency for time to feel slowed down or sped up during intense stress or arousal.
EstimationAssociation
Time-saving bias
The tendency to misjudge how much time is saved by speed changes, especially at low versus high speeds.
EstimationAssociation
Travis syndrome
The tendency to overestimate the importance, uniqueness, or permanence of the present moment.
EstimationAssociation
Unit bias
The tendency to treat a standard unit or serving as the right amount to consume.
EstimationBaseline
Weber–Fechner law
Difficulty in perceiving and comparing small differences in large quantities.
EstimationBaseline
Worse-than-average effect
The tendency to believe ourselves to be worse than others at tasks which are difficult.
EstimationSelf-Perspective