The mind tends to ignore base rates (even if informed) and focuses on the most recently discovered evidence. Generally underweighted or neglected when specific casee information is available

base rate neglect (fallacy)

People have a tendency to do nothing when facing a decision (exemplified by opt-in and opt-out procedures).

Status quo bias

People's decisions are affected by the way that the choices are framed (presented).

Framing effect

People have a tendency to think a syllogism is valid if it looks like it is true.

Belief Bias

Hindsight bias, also known as the 'knew-it-all-along' phenomenon, is the tendency to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. After an event's outcome is known, individuals often mistakenly believe they would have accurately predicted it beforehand.

Hindsight Bias

When people have heard something before they are more likely to assume it is true, even if the first time they were introduced to it they were told it wasn't true.

Propaganda effect

Humans have a bias to think they are less biased than others. Arises from the implicit operation of our beliefs which help us justify our actions. This can exacerbate other forms of bias because one is unaware of their own bias or they minimize their bias in comparison to others.

Bias Blind Spot

Humans have a tendency to focus on the negative. For example, we focus more on potential threats than benefits.

Negativity bias

Humans tend to overestimate the influence of personality (dispositional) compared to situational factors when making explanations for why people do what they do. 

The Fundamental Attribution Error

A bias in which new information that supports what we want to believe is readily accepted and information that supports what we do not want to believe is scrutinized in an effort to reduce cognitive dissonance. Motivated reasoning is very similar to confirmation bias

Motivated Reasoning

A hypothesis that people believe mass media has a larger influence on others than on themselves

Third Person Effect

When members of a particular population or community (i.e., group) favor the group of which they are a member for a particular measure.

Group-Centric Bias

When group members have negative views towards nonmembers of their group, not limited to nonmembers who are related to the group in an obvious way. 

Cross-Group Bias

Although humans ordinarily prioritize self-enhancing information, individuals also often perceive news media as largely opposing their personal beliefs.

Biases in media perception

A common type of bias that occurs when one does not recall information verbatim but instead recalls their own personal interpretation of the information.

Memory Bias

When a person's prior beliefs or attitudes impact what information they pay attention to and how they interpret new information. This bias often manifests as favoring information that is consistent with one's worldview and beliefs.

Prior Belief Bias

Confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency to selectively focus on cases that validate our pre-existing intuitive beliefs while actively disregarding or forgetting cases that disconfirm them. This mental shortcut leads individuals to reinforce incorrect assumptions by ignoring contradictory evidence.

Confirmation Bias

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut where individuals make decisions based on information that is most easily recalled, such as a recent experience or a vivid example. This reliance on readily available information can lead to flawed judgments, as the most accessible information is not always the most representative or accurate for making a sound decision.

Availability Heuristic

Humans place themselves at the center of their universe. New information is learned more easily when it relates to the person learning it.

Egocentric Bias

In-group bias is the tendency to prefer one's own group over other groups. This preference stems from the strong sense of belonging and emotional connection individuals feel toward their in-groups.

In-Group Bias

- Availability bias
- Negativity bias
- Base rate neglect
- Confirmation bias
- Status quo bias
- Framing effect
- Belief bias
- Hindsight bias
- Propaganda effect
- Bias blind spot
- Egocentric bias
- Fundamental Attribution Error
- Motivated reasoning
- Group-centric bias
- Third person effect
- Cross-group bias
- Ingroup bias
- Memory bias
- Prior Belief bias
- Bias Blind spots


University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Pepperdine University

Michigan State University

University of California, Davis

Brandeis University

Using heuristics in reasoning under uncertainty leads to predictable biases in behavior.  

Cognitive Bias

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Nota, 2013.

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Goldstein, E. B. (2014). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience. Nelson Education.


Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience

Aronson, Elliot, and Joshua Aronson. The Social Animal. Worth Publishers, Macmillan Learning, 2018.

The Social Animal

List of biases (and behavioral effects)

Humans (and other animals) are considered cognitive misers. This is some being that conserves mental energy by simplifying the complexity of cognition. It leads to taking mental shortcuts  (heuristics) which can bias behavior.

Cognitive Misers

A primary drawback of relying on intuition is that intuitive judgments are frequently incorrect. This vulnerability arises because instinctual decisions are driven by cognitive and motivational biases rather than being grounded in logical reasoning, objective facts, or scientific evidence.

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