Cognitive bias
A
cognitive bias is any of a wide range of
observer effects identified in
cognitive science and
social psychology including very basic
statistical, social
attribution, and memory errors that are common to all
human beings. Biases drastically skew the reliability of
anecdotal and
legal evidence. Social biases, usually called
attributional biases, affect our everyday social interactions. And biases related to
probability and decision making significantly affect the
scientific method which is deliberately designed to minimize such
bias from any one observer.
Bias arises from various life, loyalty and local risk and attention concerns that are difficult to separate or codify. They were first identified by
Amos Tversky and
Daniel Kahneman as a foundation of
behavioral economics. Tversky and Kahneman claim that they are at least partially the result of problem-solving using
heuristics, including the
availability heuristic and the
representativeness heuristic.
Recently, some scientists (
David Funder and
Joachim Krueger) have raised doubt as to whether all of the 'biases' are in fact errors. Their theories hold that some so called 'biases' may in fact be 'approximation shortcuts', that aid humans in making predictions when information is in short supply. For example, the
false consensus effect may be viewed as a reasonable estimation based on a single known data point, your own opinion, instead of a false belief that other people agree with you.
The following is a list of the more commonly studied cognitive biases
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Hindsight bias sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, is the inclination to see past events as being predictable
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Fundamental attribution error the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior.
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Confirmation bias the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
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Self-serving bias the tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests.
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The Roots of Consciousness: To Err is human* [https://www.cia.gov/csi/books/19104/art12.html What Are Cognitive Biases?]
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Cognitive psychology*
List of cognitive biases*
Heuristics
