Top 10 Cognitive Biases... Tools to think rationally

in #psychology8 years ago (edited)

Top 10 Cognitive Biases

  • Just-World Hypothesis

"The world is just and people get what they deserve." A Completely false assertion, nature is neutral at best.

  • Reactivity bias

When your behavior is changed in the presence of others. It’s because you think you are being observed by another person and thus, change your mannerisms​ according to the environment.

  • Illusory Superiority bias

The Illusory Superiority bias occurs when people consider themselves far superior than others. This happens all the time, Dunning-Kruger effect.

  • Egocentric Effect

It’s the tendency for humans to avoid the responsibility of failure and to take credit for successes. This is because we experience our life via a self-centered filter. "failures are quickly forgotten"

  • Projection Bias

Trapped inside our own minds 24/7, We tend to assume that most people think just like us. "He/She must be thinking xyz.. "

  • Confirmation Bias

Seeking out information that supports and confirms our own beliefs while dismissing contradictory​ information as invalid. The Internet has only made this tendency worse. "High IQ is a necessary and sufficient condition to be highly successful! Just Look at Bill Gates"

  • Survivorship bias

Concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that didn't because of their lack of visibility. " Tech Startups are extremely​ successful​l these days".

  • Third-person effect

Belief, that mass communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves. " it's all propaganda and advertising, When is iphone 8 coming out again ?"

  • Illusion of asymmetric insight

People perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them. " My EQ is on another level.."

  • Declinism bias

The belief that a society or institution is heading​ towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition to view the past favorably​ and future negatively. " The government​ and the economic system is xyz since 2008, the 500 years before that is just minutiae "

Added bonus: Black-and-white thinking

  • False dilemma bias is black-and-white thinking. There are people who routinely engage in black-and-white thinking, an example of which is someone who categorizes other people as all good or all bad. Things are black or white, it 's usually grey :)

For a full list of biases, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

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