Cognitive dissonance
The perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it
Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation
Learning Path
Self-Justification And Meta-Bias
A path for the distortions that protect choices, identities, and self-descriptions by editing memory, standards, or the location of bias itself.
8 biases
Teaching And Team Use
55 min
By the end of this path
- Catch the self-protective layer that keeps a bias site from becoming merely other-directed.
- Teach people to separate honest explanation from story repair.
- Use the site for coaching, debriefing, and intellectual self-discipline rather than only classification.
How to study it
Work the pages in order, then loop back and compare which distortions happened earliest, which ones protected the first impression, and which ones interfered with later learning.
Biases in this path
This is a deliberate sequence, not just a themed pile. Start at the top if the context is new to you.
Choice-supportive bias
The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were
RecallOutcome
Consistency bias
Incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour
RecallAssociation
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
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
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
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
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