Anthropocentric thinking
The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
Pattern
Self-Perspective
The bias intensifies when ego, identity, ownership, or asymmetry between self and others enters the picture.
45 biases
Biases with this pattern
This is the cross-cutting layer that helps the site feel more like a real reference and less like a flat list.
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
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
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
Cross-race effect
The tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying members of a race other than their own
RecallSelf-Perspective
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
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
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
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
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
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 uniqueness bias
The tendency of people to see their projects and themselves as more singular than they actually are
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
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
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
Illusion of asymmetric insight
Where people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Pessimism bias
The tendency to overestimate the likelihood that bad things will happen. (compare optimism bias )
EstimationSelf-Perspective
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
Pygmalion effect
The phenomenon whereby others' expectations of a target person affect the target person's performance
Causal AttributionSelf-Perspective
Reactive devaluation
Devaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary
DecisionSelf-Perspective
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
Social comparison bias
The tendency, when making decisions, to favour potential candidates who do not compete with one's own particular strengths
DecisionSelf-Perspective
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
Third-person effect
A tendency to believe that mass-communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves
Opinion ReportingSelf-Perspective
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
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
Worse-than-average effect
A tendency to believe ourselves to be worse than others at tasks which are difficult
EstimationSelf-Perspective
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