Association

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

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

Boundary extension

Remembering the background of an image as being larger or more expansive than the foreground

RecallAssociation

Childhood amnesia

The retention of few memories from before the age of four

RecallAssociation

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

Conjunction fallacy

The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than a more general version of those same conditions

EstimationAssociation

Consistency bias

Incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour

RecallAssociation

Contrast effect

The enhancement or reduction of a certain stimulus's perception when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object

RecallAssociation

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

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

Dread aversion

Just as losses yield double the emotional impact of gains, dread yields double the emotional impact of savouring

DecisionAssociation

Duration neglect

The neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value

RecallAssociation

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 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

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

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

Google effect

The tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines

RecallAssociation

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

Hot-cold empathy gap

The tendency to underestimate the influence of visceral drives on one's attitudes, preferences, and behaviors

EstimationAssociation

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 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 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 association

Where the speed with which people can match words depends on how closely they are associated

RecallAssociation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positivity effect

Older adults' tendency to favor good over bad information in their memories. See also euphoric recall

RecallAssociation

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

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

Pseudocertainty effect

The tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is good but risk-seeking choices if it is bad

DecisionAssociation

Quantification bias

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

Hypothesis AssessmentAssociation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tachypsychia

When time perceived by the individual either lengthens, making events appear to slow down, or contracts

EstimationAssociation

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

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

Biases with this pattern