What are the top cognitive biases? This post gives you a list of some of the most useful cognitive bias examples for better thinking.
The concepts here are curated from some of the best cognitive bias books:
- “Super Thinking” by Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann
- “The Art of Thinking Clearly” by Rolf Dobelli
- “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” by Charlie Munger
- And more!
🧠 For a full list of 100+ cognitive biases (across self, interpersonal, belief, perception, emotion, planning, judgment, decision making, memory, learning, and more) check out Mini Mind: 365 daily emails of bite-size brain food
Post Contents: Click a link here to jump to a section below
- Anchoring Bias
- Association Bias
- Authority Bias
- Availability Bias
- Barnum-Forer Effect
- Bystander Effect
- Confirmation Bias
- Default Effect
- Dunning-Kruger Effect
- Effort Justification
- Endowment Effect
- False Consensus Effect
- Framing Effect
- Fundamental Attribution Error
- Groupthink
- Halo Effect
- Hindsight Bias
- Hyperbolic Discounting
- In-Group Out-Group Bias
- Introspection Illusion
- Just-World Fallacy
- Loss Aversion
- Self-Serving Bias
- Social Loafing
- Survivorship Bias
25 Cognitive Biases to Master for Better Thinking (+ Infographic Cheatsheet)
1. Anchoring Bias
Relying too heavily on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject). An individual’s decisions are influenced by a particular reference point (or “anchor”). Once the value of the anchor is set, subsequent arguments, estimates, etc. made by an individual may change from what they would have otherwise been without the anchor.
- “Your tendency to rely too heavily on first impressions when making decisions. You get anchored to the first piece of framing information you encounter. This tendency is commonly exploited by businesses when making offers.” — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann (Super Thinking)
2. Association Bias
Irrelevant association that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another.
- “The tendency to see connections where none exist … Our brain is a connection machine. This is how knowledge comes to be. However, this method also creates false knowledge.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
3. Authority Bias
Attributing greater accuracy/influence to the opinion of authority figures (unrelated to its content).
- “Whenever you are about to make a decision, think about which authority figures might be exerting an influence on your reasoning.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
4. Availability Bias
Relying on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating something.
- “Occurs when a bias, or distortion, creeps into your objective view of reality thanks to information recently made available to you … Availability bias stems from over-reliance on your recent experiences within your frame of reference, at the expense of the big picture.” — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann (Super Thinking)
5. Barnum–Forer Effect
Giving high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically to them, yet which are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. Because the assessment statements are so vague, people ascribe their own interpretation, thus the statement becomes “personal” to them. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some paranormal beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, aura reading, and some types of personality tests.
- “People tend to identify many of their own traits in universal descriptions. Science labels this tendency the Forer effect (or the Barnum effect). The Forer effect explains why the pseudosciences work so well—astrology, astrotherapy, the study of handwriting, biorhythm analysis, palmistry, tarot card readings, and séances with the dead.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
6. Bystander Effect
Individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present.
- “Where people fail to take responsibility for something when they are in a group, because they think someone else will take on that responsibility.” — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann (Super Thinking)
7. Confirmation Bias
Searching for, interpreting, favoring, and recalling information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs.
- “The confirmation bias is the mother of all misconceptions. It is the tendency to interpret new information so that it becomes compatible with our existing theories, beliefs, and convictions. In other words, we filter out any new information that contradicts our existing views (‘disconfirming evidence’) … To fight against the confirmation bias, try writing down your beliefs—whether in terms of worldview, investments, marriage, health care, diet, career strategies—and set out to find disconfirming evidence.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
8. Default Effect
Tendency to generally accept the default option in a strategic interaction. The default option is the course of action that the agent, or chooser, will obtain if he or she does not specify a particular course of action.
- “Most people cling to the standard options … The default effect is at work even when no standard option is mentioned. In such cases, we make our past the default setting, thereby prolonging and sanctifying the status quo.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
9. Dunning–Kruger Effect
When people with low ability at a task overestimate their own ability (or the opposite effect when high performers underestimate their skills). The Dunning–Kruger effect is usually measured by comparing self-assessment with objective performance. The idea is that poor performers have not yet acquired the ability to distinguish between good and bad performances. They tend to overrate themselves because they do not see the qualitative difference between their performances and the performances of others.
- “The confidence people experience over time as they move from being a novice to being an expert (e.g. high confidence at the beginning of the learning curve, then it plummets as you realize everything you don’t know).” — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann (Super Thinking)
10. Effort Justification
Attributing a value to an outcome which one had to put effort into achieving as greater than the objective value of the outcome.
- “When you put a lot of energy into a task, you tend to overvalue the result … Effort justification is a special case of cognitive dissonance … Whenever you have invested a lot of time and effort into something, stand back and examine the result—only the result.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
11. Endowment Effect
People are more likely to retain an object they own than acquire that same object when they do not own it. People’s maximum willingness to pay to acquire an object is typically lower than the least amount they are willing to accept to give up that same object when they own it—even when there is no cause for attachment, or even if the item was only obtained minutes ago.
- “We consider things to be more valuable the moment we own them. In other words, if we are selling something, we charge more for it than what we ourselves would be willing to spend … Don’t cling to things. Consider your property something that the ‘universe’ (whatever you believe this to be) has bestowed to you temporarily. Keep in mind that it can recoup this (or more) in the blink of an eye.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
12. False Consensus Effect
Seeing one’s own choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances. In other words, they assume that their personal qualities, characteristics, beliefs, and actions are relatively widespread through the general population. This bias is especially prevalent in group settings where one thinks the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. Since the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way.
- “We frequently overestimate unanimity with others, believing that everyone else thinks and feels exactly like we do. This fallacy is called the false-consensus effect … Assume that your worldview is not borne by the public. More than that: Do not assume that those who think differently are idiots. Before you distrust them, question your own assumptions.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
13. Framing Effect
Deciding on options based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations. People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented. One of the dangers of framing effects is that people are often provided with options within the context of only one of the two frames.
- “It’s not what you say but how you say it. If a message is communicated in different ways, it will also be received in different ways. In psychologists’ jargon, this technique is called framing. We react differently to identical situations, depending on how they are presented … Realize that whatever you communicate contains some element of framing, and that every fact—even if you hear it from a trusted friend or read it in a reputable newspaper—is subject to this effect, too.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
14. Fundamental Attribution Error
Tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are. People tend to under-emphasize situational/environmental explanations for an individual’s observed behavior while over-emphasizing dispositional/personality-based explanations. The error is in seeing someone’s actions as solely reflective of their personality rather than somewhat reflective of it and also largely prompted by circumstances.
- “The tendency to overestimate individuals’ influence and underestimate external, situational factors … As much as we are fascinated with the spectacle of life, the people onstage are not perfect, self-governed individuals. Instead, they tumble from situation to situation. If you want to understand the current play—really understand it—then forget about the performers. Pay close attention to the dance of influences to which the actors are subjected.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
15. Groupthink
Psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness (or the desire for cohesiveness) in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation.
- “A group of smart people makes reckless decisions because everyone aligns their opinions with the supposed consensus. Thus, motions are passed that each individual group member would have rejected if no peer pressure had been involved. Groupthink is a special branch of social proof.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
16. Halo Effect
When positive impressions of a person, company, brand or product in one area positively influence one’s opinion or feelings in other areas. Halo effect is the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality.
- “The halo effect occurs when a single aspect dazzles us and affects how we see the full picture … We take a simple-to-obtain or remarkable fact or detail, and extrapolate conclusions from there that are harder to nail down … The psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike discovered the halo effect nearly one hundred years ago. His conclusion was that a single quality (e.g., beauty, social status, age) produces a positive or negative impression that outshines everything else, and the overall effect is disproportionate.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
17. Hindsight Bias
Perceiving past events as having been more predictable than they actually were (a significant source of overconfidence regarding one’s ability to predict the outcomes of future events).
- “After an event occurs, in hindsight, there is a bias to see it as having been predictable even though there was no real objective basis on which it could have been predicted.” — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann (Super Thinking)
18. Hyperbolic Discounting
Given two similar rewards, people show a preference for one that arrives sooner rather than later. Humans are said to discount the value of the later reward, by a factor that increases with the length of the delay. The most important consequence of hyperbolic discounting is that it creates temporary preferences for small rewards that occur sooner over larger, later ones.
- “In personal situations, most people discount the future implicitly at relatively high discount rates. And they do so in a manner that is not actually fixed over time, which is called hyperbolic discounting. In other words, people really, really value instant gratification over delayed gratification, and this preference plays a central role in procrastination, along with other areas of life where people struggle with self-control, such as dieting, addiction, etc.” — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann (Super Thinking)
19. In-Group Out-Group Bias
Favoring members of one’s in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways. This effect has been linked to many theories related to group conflict and prejudice. In-group favoritism arises as a result of the formation of cultural groups. These cultural groups can be divided based on seemingly trivial observable traits, but with time, populations grow to associate certain traits with certain behavior, increasing covariation. This then incentivizes in-group bias … Perception of out-group members as more similar to one another than are in-group members (e.g. “they are alike; we are diverse”). Perceivers tend to have impressions about the diversity or variability of group members around those central tendencies or typical attributes of those group members. The out-group homogeneity effect has been found using a wide variety of different social groups from political and racial groups to age and gender groups.
- “People are susceptible to the black-and-white fallacy because of the natural tendency to create us versus them framings, thinking that the only two options are ones that either benefit themselves at the expense of ‘others,’ or vice versa. This tendency arises because you often associate identity and self-esteem with group membership, thereafter creating in-group favoritism and, conversely, out-group bias.” — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann (Super Thinking)
- “First, groups often form based on minor, even trivial, criteria … Second, you perceive people outside your own group to be more similar than they actually are. This is called the out-group homogeneity bias … Third, since groups often form on the basis of common values, group members receive a disproportionate amount of support for their own views … Prejudice and aversion are biological responses to anything foreign. Identifying with a group has been a survival strategy for hundreds of thousands of years. Not any longer. Identifying with a group distorts your view of the facts.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
20. Introspection Illusion
Wrongly thinking one has direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others’ introspections as unreliable. The illusion has been suggested as a basis for biases in how people compare themselves to others. When people mistake unreliable introspection for genuine self-knowledge, the result can be an illusion of superiority over other people.
- “Introspection is not reliable. When we soul-search, we contrive the findings … The belief that reflection leads to truth or accuracy is called the introspection illusion … Nothing is more convincing than your own beliefs. We believe that introspection unearths genuine self-knowledge. Unfortunately, introspection is, in large part, fabrication posing two dangers: First, the introspection illusion creates inaccurate predictions of future mental states. Trust your internal observations too much and too long, and you might be in for a very rude awakening. Second, we believe that our introspections are more reliable than those of others, which creates an illusion of superiority.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
21. Just-World Fallacy
Assuming that actions will have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor (e.g. “people get what they deserve,” “what goes around comes around,” “everything happens for a reason”). The assumptions that noble actions will eventually be rewarded and evil actions will eventually be punished fall under this hypothesis. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to (or expect consequences as the result of) either a universal force that restores moral balance or a universal connection between the nature of actions and their results.
- “It can be challenging to acknowledge that a good portion of your success stems from luck. Many people instead choose to believe that the world is completely fair, orderly, and predictable. This view is called the just world hypothesis, where people always get what they deserve, good or bad, because of their actions alone, with no accounting for luck or randomness. This view is summed up as you reap what you sow.” — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann (Super Thinking)
22. Loss Aversion
Preference for avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains (some studies have suggested that losses are twice as psychologically powerful as gains).
- “We fear loss more than we value gain … In fact, it has been proven that, emotionally, a loss ‘weighs’ about twice that of a similar gain … The fear of losing something motivates people more than the prospect of gaining something of equal value.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
23. Self-Serving Bias
Maintaining and enhancing self-esteem, or perceiving oneself in an overly favorable manner.
- “We attribute success to ourselves and failures to external factors … Even if you have never heard the expression, you definitely know the self-serving bias from high school. If you got an A, you were solely responsible; the top grade reflected your intelligence, hard work, and skill. And if you flunked? The test was clearly unfair.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
24. Social Loafing
Exerting less effort to achieve a goal when working in a group than when working alone. It is seen as one of the main reasons groups are sometimes less productive than the combined performance of their members working as individuals. Many of the causes of social loafing stem from individual members’ feeling their individual effort will not matter to the group.
- “Occurs when individual performance is not directly visible; it blends into the group effort … Why invest all of your energy when half will do—especially when this little shortcut goes unnoticed? Quite simply, social loafing is a form of cheating of which we are all guilty even if it takes place unconsciously … When people work together, individual performances decrease … People behave differently in groups than when alone (otherwise there would be no groups). The disadvantages of groups can be mitigated by making individual performances as visible as possible.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
25. Survivorship Bias
Concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility (can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored).
- “In daily life, because triumph is made more visible than failure, you systematically overestimate your chances of succeeding. As an outsider, you succumb to an illusion, and you mistake how minuscule the probability of success really is … Survivorship bias means this: People systematically overestimate their chances of success. Guard against it by frequently visiting the graves of once-promising projects, investments, and careers. It is a sad walk but one that should clear your mind.” — Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
🧠 For a full list of 100+ cognitive biases (across self, interpersonal, belief, perception, emotion, planning, judgment, decision making, memory, learning, and more) check out Mini Mind: 365 daily emails of bite-size brain food
You May Also Enjoy:
- “Super Thinking” by Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann: Book Summary + 🔒Premium Summary
- “The Art of Thinking Clearly” by Rolf Dobelli: Book Summary + 🔒Premium Summary
Leave a Reply