Cognitive Biases

Spotlight Effect

We overestimate how much people pay attention to our behavior and appearance

Self-Serving Bias

Our failures are situational (not our fault) BUT our successes are due to our talent

Curse of Knowledge

Once we know something, we assume everyone else does too

Availability Heuristic

We rely on immediate/recent/extreme examples while making judgements

Dunning-Kruger Effect

The less we know, the more confident we are; the more we know, the less confident we are

Anchoring Bias

You heavily rely on the first piece of info introduced when making decisions

Confirmation Bias

We tend to find and remember info that confirms our perceptions

Status Quo Bias

We tend to prefer things to stay the same; change is seen as a loss

Gambler’s fallacy

We think future possibilities are affected by past events

Zero-Risk Bias

We prefer to reduce small risks to zero, even if we can reduce more risk overall with another option

Framing Effect

We often draw different conclusions from info depending on how it’s presented (20% fat v.s. 80% fat free)

Ikea Effect

We place higher value on things we partially created ourselves

Misinformation Effect

Info we learn after an event may interfere with our memory of the original event

Recency Bias

We place more value on more recent info and examples

Temporal Discounting

We favor our present self at the expense of our future self

Loss Aversion

Pain of losing is significantly more powerful than the happiness of gain