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    United States Avalon Member James's Avatar
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    Default The Lesser Known Cognitive Biases

    We all like to say “I knew it!”

    Hindsight bias, or creeping determinism, is the term used to describe the tendency of someone to overestimate their ability to predict an outcome that could not have been predicted.

    A great example of this would be two friends at the casino. One says to the other, “this is a winning machine, I just know it.” Although all odds are completely random, the friend puts his tokens in the machine only to win $50. He tells his friend, even in spite of his previous dozen misses, “see, what did I tell you?”

    Hindsight bias is a well known example of a cognitive bias - a measurable deviation from normal rationality in judgement - but what about the lesser known heuristics that govern our lives in ways we are much less apt to catch?

    Here are some of the more interesting and uncommon cognitive biases that like to sneak up on and jump-kick our reasoning.

    Peak-End Rule:
    The tendency to judge an experience by how we felt during its most intense point and its end rather than the sum of each moment.

    Eaton-Rosen Phenomenon:
    If a saying rhymes, it is often judged as being more accurate or truthful. An apple a day keeps the doctor away!

    Zeigarnik Effect:
    Uncompleted or interrupted tasks are often recalled more effectively than their completed counterparts.

    Bizareness Effect:
    Much like the Eaton-Rosen Phenomenon, bizarre anecdotes are more easily remembered than ones that aren’t strange. *coughs* Blue bird aliens.

    Loss Aversion:
    The tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains of the same value.

    Irrational Escalation:
    The justification of increased investment in a decision based solely on the cumulative prior investment - even in light of new information that suggests the decision is incorrect.

    Baader-Meinhof Effect:
    When a word, number, or object that has recently come to someone's attention suddenly seems to appear more frequently.

    Reactive Devaluation:
    Devaluing ideas believed to have originated from an adversary.

    Dunning-Kruger Effect:
    The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their abilities and experts to underestimate their own abilities.

    Anthropocentric Thinking:
    Our desire to use human tendencies and analogies to explain the behavior of less familiar or unknown biological phenomena.

    Bias Blind Spot:
    The tendency to see oneself as less biased than others.

    Risk Compensation:
    The tendency to take greater risks when under the belief that safety is also increasing at a similar rate.

    Pseudocertainty Effect:
    Making risk-averse choices if the intended outcome is positive, but seeking out risky choices to avoid a negative outcome.

    Weber-Fechner Law:
    The difficulty ascribed to the comparing of small differences in large quantities.

    Barnum Effect:
    The tendency to find personality descriptions that are supposedly tailored to you as accurate, when in fact they are vague and general enough to satisfy the conditions for nearly anyone.

    Context Effect:
    Memories being recalled in the area they occurred are easier to retrieve than memories being recalled elsewhere.

    Cheerleader Effect:
    The tendency to rate someone as more attractive if they’re seen in a group as opposed to if they're seen alone.

    Subadditivity Effect:
    The tendency to judge the probability of the sum as less than the probability of its parts.

    Omission Bias:
    The tendency to judge harmful actions are less moral than equally harmful inactions.

    Courtesy Bias:
    Sharing an opinion that is more politically correct than one’s true opinion to avoid coming off as offensive.

    And my favorite…

    Continued Influence Effect:
    The tendency to believe previously-learned false information even after being corrected with true information.



    Let's talk heuristics, shall we, before the Peak-End Rule sets in?


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    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Lesser Known Cognitive Biases

    Quote Posted by James (here)

    Dunning-Kruger Effect:
    The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their abilities and experts to underestimate their own abilities.
    A short, fun, interesting animated video to make the point.... explaining why Stupid People Think They're Smart.


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