http://io9.com/5974468/the-most-common-cognitive-biases-that-prevent-you-from-being-rational

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The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational io9.com

The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational

The human brain is capable of 1016, which makes it farprocesses per second

more powerful than any computercurrently in existence. But that doesn'tmean our brains don't have majorlimitations. The lowly calculator can domath thousands of times better than wecan, and our memories are often lessthan useless — plus, we're subject tocognitive biases, those annoying glitchesin our thinking that cause us to makequestionable decisions and reach

erroneous conclusions. Here are a dozen of the most common and pernicious cognitive biases that youneed to know about.

Before we start, it's important to distinguish between cognitive biases and logical fallacies. A logical fallacyis an error in logical argumentation (e.g. ad hominem attacks, slippery slopes, circular arguments, appealto force, etc.). A cognitive bias, on the other hand, is a genuine deficiency or limitation in our thinking — aflaw in judgment that arises from errors of memory, social attribution, and miscalculations (such asstatistical errors or a false sense of probability).

Some social psychologists believe our cognitive biases help us process information more efficiently,especially in dangerous situations. Still, they lead us to make grave mistakes. We may be prone to sucherrors in judgment, but at least we can be aware of them. Here are some important ones to keep in mind.

Confirmation Bias

We love to agree with people who agree with us. It's why we onlyvisit websites that express our political opinions, and why wemostly hang around people who hold similar views and tastes. Wetend to be put off by individuals, groups, and news sources thatmake us feel uncomfortable or insecure about our views — whatthe behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner called cognitive

. It's this preferential mode of behavior that leads to thedissonanceconfirmation bias — the often unconscious act of referencing onlythose perspectives that fuel our pre-existing views, while at thesame time ignoring or dismissing opinions — no matter how valid— that threaten our world view. And paradoxically, the internet hasonly made this tendency even worse.

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Ingroup Bias

Somewhat similar to the confirmation bias is the ingroupbias, a manifestation of our innate tribalistic tendencies.And strangely, much of this effect may have to do withoxytocin — the so-called "love molecule." Thisneurotransmitter, while helping us to forge tighter bondswith people in our ingroup, performs the exact opposite

— it makes us function for those on the outside suspicious,. Ultimately, thefearful, and even disdainful of others

ingroup bias causes us to overestimate the abilities andvalue of our immediate group at the expense of people we

don't really know.

Gambler's Fallacy

It's called a fallacy, but it's more a glitch in our thinking. Wetend to put a tremendous amount of weight on previousevents, believing that they'll somehow influence futureoutcomes. The classic example is coin-tossing. After flippingheads, say, five consecutive times, our inclination is topredict an increase in likelihood that the next coin toss willbe tails — that the odds must certainly be in the favor ofheads. But in reality, the odds are still 50/50. As statisticianssay, the outcomes in different tosses are statistically

and the probability of any outcome is still 50%.independent

Relatedly, there's also the positive expectation bias — which. It's the sense that our luck to eventually change and that good fortuneoften fuels gambling addictions has

is on the way. It also contribues to the "hot hand" misconception. Similarly, it's the same feeling we getwhen we start a new relationship that leads us to believe it will be better than the last one.

Post-Purchase Rationalization

Remember that time you bought something totally unnecessary, faulty, or overly expense, and then yourationalized the purchase to such an extent that you convinced yourself it was a great idea all along?Yeah, that's post-purchase rationalization in action — a kind of built-in mechanism that makes us feelbetter after we make crappy decisions, especially at the cash register. Also known as Buyer's StockholmSyndrome, it's a way of subconsciously justifying our purchases — especially expensive ones. Socialpsychologists say it stems from the principle of commitment, our psychological desire to stay consistentand .avoid a state of cognitive dissonance

Neglecting Probability

Very few of us have a problem gettinginto a car and going for a drive, but manyof us experience great trepidation about

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stepping inside an airplane and flying at35,000 feet. Flying, quite obviously, is awholly unnatural and seeminglyhazardous activity. Yet virtually all of usknow and acknowledge the fact that theprobability of dying in an auto accident is

greater than getting killed in asignificantlyplane crash — but our brains won'trelease us from this crystal clear logic (statistically, we have a 1 in 84 chance ofdying in a vehicular accident, ascompared to a 1 in 5,000 chance of dying

[other sources indicate odds as high as ]). It's the same phenomenon thatin an plane crash 1 in 20,000makes us worry about getting killed in an act of terrorism as opposed to something far more probable, likefalling down the stairs or accidental poisoning.

This is what the social psychologist — Cass Sunstein calls probability neglect our inability to properly — which often leads us to overstate the risks of relatively harmlessgrasp a proper sense of peril and risk

activities, while forcing us to overrate more dangerous ones.

Observational Selection Bias

This is that effect of suddenly noticing things we didn't notice that muchbefore — but we wrongly assume that the frequency has increased. A perfectexample is what happens after we buy a new car and we inexplicably start tosee the virtually everywhere. A similar effect happens to pregnantsame carwomen who suddenly notice a lot of other pregnant women around them. Orit could be a unique number or song. It's not that these things are appearingmore frequently, it's that we've (for whatever reason) selected the item in ourmind, and in turn, are noticing it more often. Trouble is, most people don'trecognize this as a selectional bias, and actually believe these items orevents are happening with increased frequency — which can be a verydisconcerting feeling. It's also a cognitive bias that contributes to the feelingthat the appearance of certain things or events couldn't possibly be a

coincidence (even though it is).

Status-Quo Bias

We humans tend to be apprehensive of change, which often leads us to make choices that guarantee thatthings remain the same, or change as little as possible. Needless to say, this has ramifications ineverything from politics to economics. We like to stick to our routines, political parties, and our favoritemeals at restaurants. Part of the perniciousness of this bias is the unwarranted assumption that anotherchoice will be inferior or make things worse. The status-quo bias can be summed with the saying, "If itain't broke, don't fix it" — an adage that fuels our conservative tendencies. And in fact, somecommentators say , despite the factthis is why the U.S. hasn't been able to enact universal health carethat most individuals support the idea of reform.

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Negativity Bias

People tend to pay more attention to badnews — and it's not just because we'remorbid. Social scientists theorize that it'son account of our selective attention andthat, given the choice, we perceivenegative news as being more important orprofound. We also tend to give morecredibility to bad news, perhaps becausewe're suspicious (or bored) ofproclamations to the contrary. Moreevolutionarily, heeding bad news may bemore adaptive than ignoring good news

(e.g. "saber tooth tigers suck" vs. "this berry tastes good"). Today, we run the risk of dwelling on negativityat the expense of genuinely good news. Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why

, argues that crime, violence, war, and other injustices are steadily declining, yetViolence Has Declinedmost people would argue that things are getting worse — what is a perfect example of the negativity biasat work.

Bandwagon Effect

Though we're often unconscious of it, we love to go withthe flow of the crowd. When the masses start to pick awinner or a favorite, that's when our individualized brainsstart to shut down and enter into a kind of "groupthink" orhivemind mentality. But it doesn't have to be a large crowdor the whims of an entire nation; it can include smallgroups, like a family or even a small group of officeco-workers. The bandwagon effect is what often causesbehaviors, social norms, and memes to propagate amonggroups of individuals — regardless of the evidence ormotives in support. This is why opinion polls are often

maligned, as they can steer the perspectives of individuals accordingly. Much of this bias has to do withour built-in desire to fit in and conform, as famously demonstrated by the .Asch Conformity Experiments

Projection Bias

As individuals trapped inside our own minds 24/7, it's often difficult for us to project outside the bounds ofour own consciousness and preferences. We tend to assume that most people think just like us — thoughthere may be no justification for it. This cognitive shortcoming often leads to a related effect known as the

where we tend to believe that people not only think like us, but that they also agreefalse consensus biaswith us. It's a bias where we overestimate how typical and normal we are, and assume that a consensusexists on matters when there may be none. Moreover, it can also create the effect where the members ofa radical or fringe group assume that more people on the outside agree with them than is the case. Or the

.exaggerated confidence one has when predicting the winner of an election or sports match

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The Current Moment Bias

We humans have a really hard time imagining ourselves inthe future and altering our behaviors and expectationsaccordingly. Most of us would rather experience pleasure inthe current moment, while leaving the pain for later. This isa bias that is of particular concern to economists (i.e. ourunwillingness to not overspend and save money) andhealth practitioners. Indeed, a that,1998 study showedwhen making food choices for the coming week, 74% ofparticipants chose fruit. But when the food choice was forthe current day, 70% chose chocolate.

Anchoring Effect

Also known as the relativity trap, this is the tendency we have to compare and contrast only a limited setof items. It's called the because we tend to fixate on a value or number that in turn getsanchoring effectcompared to everything else. The classic example is an item at the store that's on sale; we tend to see(and value) the difference in price, but not the overall price itself. This is why some restaurant menusfeature very expensive entrees, while also including more (apparently) reasonably priced ones. It's alsowhy, when given a choice, — not too expensive, and not too cheap.we tend to pick the middle option

Images: Lightspring/ , Tsyhun/Shutterstock, Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock, EverettShutterstockCollection/Shutterstock, Frank Wasserfuehrer/Shutterstock, George Dvorsky, Barry Gutierrez and EdAndrieski/AP, Daniel Padavona/Shutterstock, wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.

1LDiscuss

discussions displayed because an author is participating or following a participant.88 additional replies1awaiting review.K1Author is participating@

medic.abe

I disagree entirely with the example stated in Neglecting Probablity.

It's not that I *know* that airplane travel is inherently safer. It's that, regardless ofwhere I am sitting in a car - I am more in control of the situation. When I am sittingin row 32, seat E of an airline at 27,000 feet, I can't just yell out to slow down.. 1/09/13 10:47am

TheReverendFreshmaker

Illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to controlevents, for instance to feel that they control outcomes that they demonstrablyhave no influence over.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control 1/09/13 10:52am

George Dvorsky

I can totally relate to this, by the way, as I've learned toovercome a fear of flying that was triggered by this exactfeeling of loss of control. 1/09/13 10:58am

and 131 others...kaos71Author is participating@

George Dvorsky

There are well over ahundred cognitive biasesthat I did not list in thisarticle (as listed here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biases_in_judgment_and_decision_making

I'd love to hear some of the ones you might be guilty of. 1/09/13 10:27am

ImKickinThePlan

Great article! It was interesting to realize which ones skew my thinking regularly.For instance, I usually have a rational sense of risk, but my ingroup bias is off thecharts. Thanks for writing such a good piece! 1/09/13 10:42am

George Dvorsky

Thank you! 1/09/13 10:48am

and 9 others...zxc1Author is participating@

MagiK

I must be immune to thefirst one, ConfirmationBias as I come hereevery day and I usually...almost always disagreewith the political and

social views expressed here...but I find value in hearing what the opposition thinks.....I have yet to glean aclear understanding of why some people will believe what they do especially when asked and they cannotgive a solid explanation. ;) Plus I like Sci-Fi and Science and all the other wild articles that show up herefrom time to time :) 1/09/13 10:32am

George Dvorsky

I'm actually very sensitive to this, and over the past several months have been

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reading publications I don't normally go to. Interestingly, my opinions haven'tchanged, but it has broadened my horizons, so to speak. 1/09/13 10:44am

ContrarySynthesis

I believe the examples in the article may actually beconfusing what he's actually trying to say (because theactual definition is there, at least, but the examples aremore geared towards what you have in mind).Confirmation bias is not running away from views thatoppose your own. It's that you only remember/recall

examples in which your view was supported and tend not to remember or value arguments that don'tsupport your views. (From the article: "the often unconscious act of referencing only those perspectivesthat fuel our pre-existing views, while at the same time ignoring or dismissing opinions — no matter howvalid — that threaten our world view.")

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying. Seems like your response is to "It's why we only visitwebsites that express our political opinions, and why we mostly hang around people who hold similarviews and tastes," which is actually a bad example. Confirmation bias is relevant because of the fact thatwe come across opposing ideas, not that it leads us to avoid them. 1/09/13 11:14am

and 10 others...TravellingMan11 participants@

mrmarky246

The one that gets me is that people think I am risking my life by riding mybike to work every day when you are about 20 times more likely to beinjured while driving than you are while riding a bike. 1/09/13 11:11am

Tractorchick

I hear you! When there isn't 4+" of snow on theground, I bike-commute, too, and my coworkersworry that I'll be creamed by a semi orsomething. Thing is, it's legal to use thesidewalks here, so I use 'em. Crazy! 1/09/1312:40pm

beepbopbeep

You are also statistically more likely to be injured while driving a car than you arewhile tight rope walking over the grand canyon 1/09/13 1:13pm

and 7 others...dementeddigital1Author is participating@

pawnman99

Wait, the current moment bias says 74% said

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they'd pick fruit for the upcoming week, but only7% picked chocolate for the current day? Thatdoesn't seem to prove the point.

My buddy coined a phrase for this one: "That's aproblem for future you to solve". Current you isalways such a dick to future you. 1/09/1310:30am

George Dvorsky

Oops! Should be 70%. Will fix. 1/09/13 10:42am

Porxaderp

I used to say "Meh, fuck future me" whenever I consciously made agoodnowbadlater decision. 1/09/13 10:55am

and 8 others...I Play More Games Than You1Author is participating@

Annalee Newitz

Ingroup Bias should be renamed Social Media Bias. 1/09/13 3:50pm

SJ_Edwards_2.6

O whooshjoy!

O Mirandawhisper...

What shinynewworlds

That turn such pastbugs

Into such excitingnewfeatures 1/10/13 10:55pm

9 participants@Donald Pump

Here's one thing I don't get about the Gamblers Fallacy. What is the likelihood thatthe coin will hit heads 8 times in a row? 1/09/13 11:30am

Gemmabeta

2^8=1/256, assuming a fair coin.

But the probability of a coin flipping heads on the 8th flipafter 7 heads is still 1/2.

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But we have a innate belief that your run of luck shouldeven out in the end, which is false in this case as each flipevent is independent from each other, what happenedbefore has no bearing on what is going to happen. 1/09/13 12:26pm

Donald Pump

I get that. But aren't those twodifferent statistical events? I'mbetting that the coin won't landthe same way 8 times in a row. Ialso understand that thehypothetical 8th flip isn't effected

by anything that previously happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lawoflargenumbersanimation2.gif

That .gif shows that. Over the long term of course it's all 50/50, but over the course of a set of flips, itdoesn't appear to be.

I know I'm wrong, mathematically anyway. But I've always won money on roulette doing this. So whatever,science. ;) 1/09/13 12:34pm

and 5 others...Gemmabeta4 participants@

ParryLost

These biases are especially annoying when it comes to economics. All too ofteneconomists try to pretend to be psychologists... But people aren't rational actors.Corporations, which are composed of people, are not rational actors. Consumers

are not rational actors. Governments are not rational actors. Does the neat little economic model you'rebuilding involve humans in any way, shape, or form? Yes? Then I sure as heck hope that at no point doesit depend on them acting rationally, or you'd better start over!

This is harmful when particularly gung-ho proponents of the free market start arguing that free capitalismcan solve such-and-such a problem if only evil governments would let it, because, you see, if you justleave companies and consumers to their own devices, they'll all make rational, well-informed, logicaldecisions out of enlightened self-interest, and then you just throw in some survival of the fittest, sit back,and watch as the problem fixes itself. No, no, no, no, and a thousand more times — no. It doesn't workthat way, and never will. And yes, getting governments involved just throws more irrational humans at thesituation — but there's no getting around that anyway. The best you can do is put in enough checks andbalances to keep any one particular brand of irrationality from messing everything up too much... 1/09/1311:29am

B-1

And will there be people involved in establishing these checks and balances?

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Are you familiar with "The Fatal Conceit" orhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersed_knowledge ?

You are using a Straw Man logical fallacy here. The free market may be able tosolve problems, but that isn't because of rational decision making. Mice aren'texactly rational, but I can expect them to go for the cheese any day of the week.

The best economic theories do not rely on rational decision making (as we would seem to agree) they arebased on the understanding and interaction of incentive. It's not implied that the free market will have abetter set of goals and aims, but that it is a better manager of incentives than any smaller group can be.This is simply because they lack sufficient information (not to mention the ability of enforcement) to makegood decisions (or at least to make decisions that will actually have the intended effect, assuming we'vealready gotten past the question of their qualifications to make the determinations in the first place). 1/09/13 11:59am

FailiarusEconomicus

Is economics a hard science or a social science? Is it closer to molecularchemistry or sociology? Lie to yourself, but don't pretend like you're foolinganybody else: economics involves PEOPLE. And people do not make rationaldecisions all the time (and let's not forget that the notion of a rational decision iscontextual at best).

In fact, you claim that mice are not rational—an undefended claim that rests on your Aristotelianhangover, no doubt, but you expect them to go for cheese. Isn't that in some scenarios the rationaldecision for the mouse to make? When the mouse considers the option "cheese/no cheese," does that notmake the mouse a calculating, rational actor?

While nowhere in your post do you claim that economics is a hard science, you seem to closer (on thespectrum) to those that like to forget the main failure of economics as "science": namely, that it deals withhumans. Jesus Christ, even statisticians understand you have to correct for human error, and thatcausality is a fleeting dream; why the fuck can't economists? 1/09/13 1:00pm

and one other...ParryLost2 participants@

Corpsegoddess

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but a lot of the biases that have to do with"going with the flow" (ie. "Bandwagon Bias") don't always or completelyapply to me. I generally am suspicious of anything the majority likes, I likehaving dissenting opinions, and I find surrounding myself with a lot of"yes men" in terms of how we all think can be deadly dull.

That being said, I am not completely immune; I'm a diehard New York Yankees fan (have been since thewomb), for example, and I tend not to think rationally where they're concerned.

My husband is even less susceptible to these things than I am; he seems to be missing the tribal gene

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entirely. 1/09/13 10:51am

jtly

I often wonder if there's actually what I call an "Indie Bias" nowadays (or always?)that comes into play often. People who like/subscribe to things only BECAUSEother people don't. 1/09/13 2:51pm

Corpsegoddess

Oh, I'm sure there is. I don't fall into that trap, either,though—I tend to weigh things on their own merits myselfand make a decision based on that. 1/09/13 2:57pm

6 participants@josephusB

One problem with this list is thatbehavior is described as "rational"if it maximizes an economic utilityfunction. Neoclassical economicsstarts off by assuming that webehave as rational economic

actors, and if we don't, it's not that economic theory is wrong, rather we, the human beings, are wrong,"irrational", and we should behave differently. But many cognitive biases are strongly selected for byevolution. We see threats that aren't there because that's a much healthier mistake to make than theopposite mistake, not seeing threats that are there (a predator, for example), and any imperfect patternrecognition system has to trade off false positives for false negatives. 1/09/13 11:50am

Borkowskowitz

I always think of human beings as computers trying to run advanced software onoutdated hardware. Our minds (not the physical brain) are very advanced, butthey keep getting pulled back by the chemical balances in our body that wereformed when everything was a matter of surviving for the next day. The chemicalsin our body such as dopamine are geared to reward finding shelter, food, and amate not the finding of a diet, a condo, a relationship, and a career.

We are evolving, and there have been shifts that reward more long term things, but our technology andthe world around us changes much too quickly for most of the population. 1/09/13 1:29pm

solk512

Yeah, the whole "rational actor" model is generally terrible. 1/09/13 6:09pm

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