12 most common cognitive biases

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

12 cognitive distortions that humanity inherited from distant ancestors and do not allow us to rationally perceive reality.

Confirmation bias

We willingly agree with those people who willingly agree with us. We go to sites that are dominated by political views that are close to us, and our friends, most likely, share our tastes and beliefs. We try to avoid individuals, groups, and news sites that might raise doubts about our position in life.

American behavioral psychologist Burres Frederick Skinner called this phenomenon cognitive dissonance. People do not like when conflicting representations collide in their minds: values, ideas, beliefs, emotions. To get rid of the conflict between attitudes, we unconsciously seek those points of view that coexist with our views. Opinions and views that threaten our worldview are ignored or rejected. With the advent of the Internet, the effect of confirmation bias has only intensified: almost everyone is now capable of finding a group of people who will always agree with you on everything.

Distortion in favor of your group

This effect is similar to confirmation bias. We tend to agree with the opinions of people we consider to be members of our group and reject the opinions of people from other groups.

This is a manifestation of our most primitive tendencies. We strive to be with the members of our tribe. At the neurobiological level, this behavior is associated with the neurotransmitter oxytocin. It is a hypothalamic hormone that has a powerful effect on the psychoemotional sphere of a person. In the immediate postpartum period, oxytocin is involved in the formation of the relationship between mother and baby, and more broadly, it helps us form strong bonds with people in our circle. At the same time, oxytocin makes us suspicious, fearful, and even contemptuous of strangers. This is a product of evolution, in which only those groups of people survived who successfully interacted with each other within the tribe and effectively repelled the attacks of outsiders.

In our time, the cognitive distortion in favor of our group makes us unreasonably highly appreciate the capabilities and dignity of loved ones and deny the presence of such in persons we personally do not know.

Post-purchase rationalization

Remember the last time you bought something unnecessary, defective, or just too expensive? You must have convinced yourself for a very long time that you did the right thing.

This effect is also known as Stockholm Buyer Syndrome. This is a defense mechanism built into each of us, forcing us to look for arguments to justify our actions. Unconsciously, we strive to prove that the money was not wasted. Especially if the money was big. Social psychology explains the effect of rationalization simply: a person is ready to do anything to avoid cognitive dissonance. By purchasing something unnecessary, we create a conflict between the desired and the actual. To relieve psychological discomfort, reality has to be passed off as desired for a long time and carefully.

Player effect

In the scientific literature, it is called gambler's error or Monte Carlo false inference. We tend to assume that many random events depend on random events that happened earlier. A classic example is a coin toss. We tossed the coin five times. If heads came up more often, then we will assume that the sixth time should come up tails. If it comes up tails five times, we think we must come up heads for the sixth time. In fact, the probability of getting heads or tails on the sixth throw is the same as on the previous five: 50 to 50.

Each subsequent coin toss is statistically independent of the previous one. The probability of each of the outcomes is always 50%, but at an intuitive level, a person is not able to realize this.

Superimposed on the player's effect is the underestimation of the return of the value to the mean. If we do come up tails six times, we begin to believe that something is wrong with the coin and that the extraordinary behavior of the system will continue. Further, the effect of deviation towards a positive outcome begins - if we have been unlucky for a long time, we begin to think that sooner or later good things will begin to happen to us. We experience similar feelings when starting new relationships. Every time we believe that this time we will be better than the previous attempt.

Denying probability

Few of us are afraid to ride in a car. But the thought of flying at an altitude of 11,400 meters in a Boeing evokes an inner awe in almost everyone. Flying is an unnatural and somewhat dangerous activity. But at the same time, everyone knows that the probability of dying in a car accident is much higher than the probability of dying in an airplane crash. Various sources put the odds of dying in a car accident as 1 in 84, and the odds of dying in a plane crash as 1 in 5,000 or even 1 in 20,000. This same phenomenon makes us constantly worry about terrorist attacks when in fact we need to fear falling down stairs or food poisoning. American lawyer and psychologist Cass Sunstein calls this effect a denial of probability. We are not able to correctly assess the risk or danger of a particular occupation. To simplify the process, the likelihood of risk is either ignored altogether or ascribed to it of decisive importance. This leads to the fact that we consider relatively harmless activities dangerous, and dangerous - acceptable.

Selective perception

Suddenly, we begin to pay attention to the appearance of some thing, phenomenon or object that we did not notice before. Let's say you bought a new car: everywhere on the streets you see people in the same car. We're starting to think that this car model has suddenly become more popular. Although, in fact, we just included it in the framework of our perception. A similar effect occurs with pregnant women who suddenly begin to notice how many other pregnant women are around them. We begin to see a significant number for us everywhere or hear a song we like. It is as if we have marked them with a tick in our minds. Then the confirmation bias we have already discussed is added to the selectivity of perception.

This effect is known in psychology as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. The term was coined in 1994 by an unnamed visitor to the Pioneer Press forums in St. Paul. Twice a day he heard the name of the German radical Red Army Faction, founded by Andreas Baader and Ulrika Meinhof. Few are able to catch themselves selectively perceiving reality. Since we are positively bombarded with the names of German terrorists, it means that some kind of conspiracy is brewing somewhere!

Because of this cognitive bias, it is very difficult for us to recognize any phenomenon as a mere coincidence … although it is precisely a coincidence.

The status quo effect

People don't like change. We tend to make decisions that will lead to the maintenance of the current state of affairs or to the most minimal changes. The effect of the bias towards the status quo is easy to see in both economics and politics. We hold on to routine, bureaucracy, political parties, we start chess games with the most proven moves and order pizza with the same filling. The danger is that the potential damage from the loss of the status quo is more important to us than the potential benefit from a new state of affairs or an alternative scenario.

This is the approach on which all conservative movements in science, religion and politics are held. The clearest example is America's healthcare and patient protection reform. Most US residents are in favor of free (or at least cheap) medicine. But the fear of losing the status quo led to the fact that the money for the reform was not allocated and from October 1 to October 16, 2013, the US government had to stop its work.

The effect of negativity

We focus more on bad news than good news. And the point is not that we are all pessimists. Over the course of evolution, responding correctly to bad news has been far more important than responding correctly to good news. The words "this berry is delicious" could be ignored. But the words "saber-toothed tigers eat people" was not recommended to be passed on. Hence the selectivity of our perception of new information. We consider negative news to be more reliable - and we are extremely suspicious of people who try to convince us otherwise. Today, the crime rate and the number of wars are lower than at any other time in the history of mankind. But most of us readily agree that the situation on Earth is getting worse and worse every day. The concept of fundamental attribution error is also related to the effect of negativity. We tend to explain the actions of other people by their personal characteristics, and our own behavior - by external circumstances.

Majority effect

Man is a collective being. We like to be like everyone else, even if we ourselves are not always aware of it or openly express our non-conformism. When the time comes to massively choose a favorite or a winner, individual thinking gives way to group thinking. This is called the majority or mimic effect. That is why professional political scientists have such a negative attitude to election polls. The results of polls are quite capable of influencing the results of elections: many voters are inclined to change their minds in favor of the winning party in the poll. But it's not just about global phenomena like elections - the majority effect can be observed both in the family and in a small office. The effect of imitation is responsible for the dissemination of forms of behavior, social norms and ideas among groups of people, regardless of what motives or grounds these ideas, norms and forms have.

A person's unconscious tendency to conformity and the associated cognitive distortions were demonstrated in 1951 in a series of experiments by the American psychologist Solomon Asch. The students gathered in the classroom were shown cards with images and asked questions about the length of the lines in the images. Only one student in each group was a true participant in the experiment. All the rest were dummies who deliberately gave the wrong answer. In 75% of cases, real participants agreed with the deliberately incorrect opinion of the majority.

Projection effect

We are very familiar with our thoughts, values, beliefs and beliefs. Still, in the company of ourselves we spend 24 hours a day! Unconsciously, we tend to believe that other people think in the same way as we do. We are confident that the majority of those around us share our beliefs, even if we have no reason to do so. After all, it is very easy to project your way of thinking onto other people. But without special psychological exercises, it is extremely difficult to learn how to project the thoughts and views of other people onto yourself. This cognitive bias often leads to a similar false consensus effect. We not only believe that other people think like us, but we also believe that they agree with us. We tend to exaggerate our typicality and normality, and together with them we overestimate the degree of agreement with us around us. The views of cults or extremist organizations are not shared by too many people. But the members of radical groups themselves are sure that the number of their supporters is in the millions.

It is the projection effect that makes us confident that we can predict the outcome of a football match or election.

The effect of the moment

It is very difficult for a person to imagine himself in the future. Without special training, we find ourselves unable to predict further developments, accordingly lower our expectations and correct behavior. We agree to immediate pleasure, even if it portends great pain in the future. This gives rise to the present moment effect, also known as the discount revaluation effect. Economists are seriously concerned about this effect: from the tendency of people to prefer immediate benefits to benefits in the distant future, most of the problems of the world financial system follow. People are willing to spend money and extremely reluctant to save for a rainy day. Also, the current moment heuristic is well known to nutritionists. In 1998, American scientists conducted a study "Hunger Prediction: Effects of Appetite and Abstinence on Food Choices." Study participants were given a choice between healthy (fruit) and unhealthy (chocolate) food, which they will receive the next week. Initially, 74% of the participants chose fruit. But when the day of food distribution came and the participants in the experiment were offered the opportunity to change their choice, 70% chose chocolate.

Snapping effect

When we receive new information, we correlate it with the existing data. This is especially true for numbers.

The psychological effect in which we select a particular number as an anchor and compare all new data with it is called the anchor effect or anchor heuristic. A classic example is the cost of a product in a store. If the item is discounted, we compare the new price ($ 119.95) with the old price tag ($ 160). The cost of the product itself is not taken into account. The whole mechanism of discounts and sales is based on the anchor effect: this week only, a 25% discount, if you buy four pairs of jeans, you will get one pair for free! The effect is also used in the preparation of restaurant menus. Next to super-expensive items there are specially indicated (relatively!) Cheap ones. At the same time, we do not react to the price of the cheapest items, but to the difference in price between salmon steak on the podium with asparagus and chicken cutlet. Against the background of a steak for 650 rubles, a cutlet for 190 seems completely normal. Also, the anchor effect appears when three options are given to choose from: very expensive, medium and very cheap. We choose the middle option, which seems the least suspicious against the background of the other two options.