CogBias

Agent detection bias

The inclination to presume the purposeful intervention of a sentient or intelligent agent

Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation

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

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

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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

Berkson's paradox

The tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities

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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)

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Cognitive dissonance

The perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it

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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

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

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Extension neglect

When the quantity of the sample size is not sufficiently taken into consideration when assessing the outcome, relevance or judgement

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False priors

Initial beliefs and knowledge which interfere with the unbiased evaluation of factual evidence and lead to incorrect conclusions

Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation

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

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

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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

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

Illusory correlation

Inaccurately seeing a relationship between two events related by coincidence

Causal AttributionHypothesis AssessmentOutcome

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

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

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Information bias

The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action

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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

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 )

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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

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Probability matching

Sub-optimal matching of the probability of choices with the probability of reward in a stochastic context

Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation

Quantification bias

The tendency to ascribe more weight to measured/quantified metrics than to unquantifiable values. See also: McNamara fallacy

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Rhyme as reason effect

Where rhyming statements are perceived as more truthful

Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation

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

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

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 .)

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Survivorship bias

The tendency to learn from the visible winners while overlooking the invisible failures that dropped out of view.

Hypothesis AssessmentOutcomeResearch & evidenceForecasting & planning

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

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

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