Top 10 Cognitive Biases... Tools to think rationally
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 successfull 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
If you liked this list and found it informative and interesting, VOTE ME UP!
For more posts like this follow me @sojiro