How Cognitive Biases Influence How You Think and Act

 

A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that affects the  decisions and judgments that people make. Some of these biases are  related to memory. The way you remember an event may be biased for a  number of reasons and that in turn can lead to biased thinking and  decision-making. Other cognitive biases might be related to problems  with attention. Since attention is a limited resource, people have to be  selective about what they pay attention to in the world around them.         Because of this, subtle biases can creep in and influence the way you see and think about the world.

How Do Cognitive Biases Work?

A  cognitive bias is a type of error in thinking that occurs when people  are processing and interpreting information in the world around them.  The human brain is  powerful but subject to limitations. Cognitive biases are often a  result of your brain's attempt to simplify information processing. They  are rules of thumb that help you make sense of the world and reach  decisions with relative speed.When you are making judgments and  decisions about the world around you, you like to think that you are  objective, logical, and capable of taking in and evaluating all the  information that is available to you. Unfortunately, these biases  sometimes trip us up, leading to poor decisions and bad judgments.

What Causes Cognitive Biases?

If  you had to think about every possible option when making a decision, it  would probably take a lot of time to make even the simplest choice.    Becuase of the sheer complexity of  the world around you and the amount of information in the environment,  it is necessary sometimes to rely on some mental shortcuts that allow  you to act quickly.Cognitive biases can be caused by a number of different things, but it is these mental shortcuts, known as heuristics, that often play a major contributing role.         While they can often be surprisingly  accurate, they can also lead to errors in thinking. Social pressures,  individual motivations, emotions, and limits on the mind's ability to  process information can also contribute to these biases.These  biases are not necessarily all bad, however. Psychologists believe that  many of these biases serve an adaptive purpose—they allow us to reach  decisions quickly. This can be vital if we are facing a dangerous or  threatening situation. If you are walking down a dark alley and spot a  dark shadow that seems to be following you, a cognitive bias might lead  you to assume that it is a mugger and that you need to exit the alley as  quickly as possible. The dark shadow may have simply been caused by a  flag waving in the breeze, but relying on mental shortcuts can often get  you out of the way of danger in situations where decisions need to be  made quickly.

A Few Types of Cognitive Biases

Learn more about a few of the most common types of cognitive biases that can distort your thinking.

• Confirmation Bias: This is favoring information that conforms to your existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not conform.
• Availability Heuristic:  This is placing greater value on information that comes to your mind  quickly. You give greater credence to this information and tend to  overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening  in the future.

      

• Halo Effect:  Your overall impression of a person influences how you feel and think  about his or her character. This especially applies to physical  attractiveness influencing how you rate their other qualities.
• Self-Serving Bias:  This is the tendency to blame external forces when bad things happen  and give yourself credit when good things happen. When you win a poker  hand it is due to your skill at reading the other players and knowing  the odds, while when you lose it is due to getting dealt a poor hand.
• Attentional Bias:  This is the tendency to pay attention to some things while  simultaneously ignoring others. When making a decision on which car to  buy, you may pay attention to the look and feel of the exterior and  interior, but ignore the safety record and gas mileage.
• Actor-Observer Bias:  This is the tendency to attribute your own actions to external  causes while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes.  You attribute your high cholesterol level to genetics while you consider  others to have a high level due to poor diet and lack of exercise.
• Functional Fixedness:  This is the tendency to see objects as only working in a particular  way. If you don't have a hammer,  you never consider that a big wrench  can also be used to drive a nail into the wall. You may think you don't  need thumbtacks because you have no corkboard on which to tack things,  but not consider their other uses. This could extend to people's  functions, such as not realizing a personal assistant has skills to be  in a leadership role.
• Anchoring Bias: This  is the tendency to rely too heavily on the very first piece of  information you learn. If you learn the average price for a car is a  certain value, you will think any amount below that is a good deal,  perhaps not searching for better deals. You can use this bias to set the  expectations of others by putting the first information on the table  for consideration.
• Misinformation Effect:  This is the tendency for post-event information to interfere with the  memory of the original event. It is easy to have your memory influenced  by what you hear about the event from others. Knowledge of this effect  has led to a mistrust of eyewitness information.
• False Consensus Effect: This is the tendency to overestimate how much other people agree with you.
• Optimism Bias: This  bias leads you to believe that you are less likely to suffer from  misfortune and more likely to attain success than your peers.

Cognitive Bias vs. Logical Fallacy

People  sometimes confuse cognitive biases with logical fallacies, but the two  are not the same. A logical fallacy stems from an error in a logical  argument, while a cognitive bias is rooted in thought processing errors  often arising from problems with memory, attention, attribution, and other mental mistakes. 

READ MORE: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-cognitive-bias-2794963