As humans, we are all inevitably biased. However, a skill of the most thoughtful and empathetic people in history is that they are aware and somehow limit them.
This condensed list of illusions, fallacies, heuristics, and biases is a toolbox that helps manage situations where rationality is not at first.
Disclaimer: The list is extracted from the best seller from Rolf Dobelli’s “The Art of Thinking Clearly.”
The list is split into four parts for better readability.
PART 1 | 1 to 25
- Survivorship bias: We only hear about the triumphs or “survivors”; we don’t hear about the failures, so we overestimate our odds of success.
- Swimmer’s body illusion: associating the selection factor with the outcome (ex: swimming gives you a great body frame; actually, great swimmers are born with a good structure for swimming).
- Clustering illusion: We tend to see patterns when none exist.
- Social proof: When we act the same way as other individuals, we believe we are operating correctly.
- Sunk cost fallacy: when we take the costs we’ve already experienced as a component in our decision-making. It would be best if you only considered estimating future expenses and benefits. For example, keeping a business open with losses because we already spent so much on it.
- Reciprocity: When we take a favor or a free item, we feel we owe something in return.
- Confirmation bias: We evaluate evidence in a way that confirms our pre-existing ideas. Set out to collect evidence that contradicts your hypothesis as a countermeasure.
- Authority bias: We tend to defer to authority and place undue weight on the opinions of ostensibly authoritative persons.
- Contrast effect: We judge based on the context in which they occur. Small, subtle changes are also overlooked.
- Availability bias: We develop a picture of the world or arguments based on the examples and evidence that first comes to mind.
- It’ll-get-worse-before-it-gets-better fallacy: a variation of confirmation bias. The prediction will be proven if the problem persists. If it improves, the expert can credit his abilities.
- Story bias: We attempt to turn everything into a story.
- Hindsight bias: In retrospect, everything appears to be evident and unavoidable.
- Overconfidence effect: We consistently overestimate our capacity to forecast and our expertise.
- Chauffeur knowledge: when someone appears to understand something when they don’t. See also surface knowledge.
- The illusion of control: We believe we have significantly more impact than we actually do.
- Incentive super-response tendency: Incentives motivate people to act in their own best interests.
- Regression to the mean: The mean of average values will fluctuate. Decreased or enhanced performance may be due to random oscillations rather than a specific cause.
- Outcome bias: We tend to judge decisions based on the outcome rather than the process.
- The paradox of choice: an abundance of choice leads to inner paralysis, poorer decisions, and unhappiness with our choices.
- Liking bias: the more we like someone, the more we want to buy from or help that person.
- Endowment effect: When we own something, it becomes more precious.
- Coincidence: We tend to view unusual events as causal when they are most likely random.
- Groupthink: We avoid contradiction in groups and agree with the majority conclusion.
- Neglect of probability: We lack an intuitive understanding of probability and respond to an event’s expected magnitude rather than its likelihood.
Links to the other sections of the Cognitive Biases list
