List of cognitive biases

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

by olalonde • 14 years ago

101 17 14 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

This is wonderful. I have been keeping a personal list from the books I have read. Using these can really help your business be user friendly and frame things in a way that users will see the most value in them. Great post... thanks!

dudurocha3• 14 years ago

Well, I'm reading about the biases for quite a long time, but I have a question for you guys:

How do I really think better? In my experience, just knowing about the biases didn't helped me in becoming more rational and being able to think better. Any suggestion?

slackson• 14 years ago

A large part of learning how to lucid dream is learning what clues there are that you might be dreaming, and making it a habit to check whether or not you're dreaming. I think the idea when it comes to avoiding the biases is learning to identify when and how you're making these biases. Go through the list of biases and think of specific examples from the past few days for as many of them as possible, and check if they've been affecting you. Keep repeating this so you learn what it feels like when those biases are affecting you and so you can avoid it in the future. Also make it a habit to check your reasoning before committing to decisions, to see if you can identify any biases soon after they've been committed and before they can do any damage. This is all speculation. Feel free to ignore any of this advice, especially since I haven't consciously followed it myself.

There are also books that supposedly help with effective decision making, such as Judgment in Managerial Decision Making. I haven't tried any, so I can't recommend any in particular. I'm sure there are recommendations out there.

http://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Managerial-Decision-Making-Ba...

stewbrew2• 14 years ago

I think that would be called anchoring, wouldn't it?

stewbrew2• 14 years ago

Take courses in philosophy and mathematics/statistics. I think it's important to engage in discussions with peers so just reading books at home won't be of much use unless you already have some basic training.

But you'd have to define what "thinking better" means to you. Do you also want to act in a more rational way?

dudurocha3• 14 years ago

Maybe a little too late, but yes, I want to think more rational.

What kind of disciplines or subjects do you recommend in those fields? I'm a ongoing undergrad in Computer Engineering, and I have a little bit of background in Math, it is not so great, but is solid. But philosophy is something I'm a enthusiast but do not have any solid knowledge.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

Just practice humility.

Arrogance is the most common mistake people make. Because they're ashamed of being wrong. Just don't be. Embrace that you're human and you're likely wrong about most of what you understand. Simply because you're human. If you notice, about 90% of all cognitive biases derive from arrogance.

After you understand how prone to cognitive bias human beings are. You should understand that the chance of you being wrong about something you're absolutely positive about. Is actually huge. You're wrong more often than not.

The practical advice to take from this is to simply be careful, be skeptic, doubt yourself. Just practice, stepping back for a second and assume that you might be wrong before jumping into conclusions. Doing that, you'll find that you were wrong much more often than you thought. And after you note that you're wrong, you can then improve your opinion.

Unless I'm mistaken, of course :)

jk4930• 14 years ago

You might be interested in the discussion there: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3427488

dudurocha3• 14 years ago

Thank you so much.

zerostar07• 14 years ago

Avoid all logical fallacies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Anderkent• 14 years ago

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences

http://lesswrong.com/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers_blog_posts/

Are good places to start - but it takes a lot of work to make ones thinking better. You're right, just knowing about biases is not enough - you have to be able to recognize when your thinking becomes bias, take a step back and recalibrate.

locopati• 14 years ago

It's not enough to know your biases intellectually. Even if I know how any or all of those biases apply to me, there's still a gap between my knowing as an intellectual exercise and my fully experiencing it such that I can act freely when the bias might otherwise direct my actions.

For me, the best practice that I've found at identifying and getting past biases has been meditation. Finding a teacher or a style that fits your biases is important to keep you motivated until the self-motivation kicks in.

yatsyk• 14 years ago

I've created document with pages from this list [1] It could be little outdated.

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/sh/75vmgs6qspjf9q3/Uaw-jNBU9l/List%2...

anxiousape• 14 years ago

Biases sound negative, not necessarily always. Conditioning/automation could save your life in a time-crucial moment.

zerop• 14 years ago

Love the Google effect: the tendency to forget information that can be easily found online.

'Google Effect' seems most common.

ordinary• 14 years ago

The Google effect has an inverse too: the tendency to ignore information that can not be easily found online.

VMG• 14 years ago

For those who are interested in this kind of stuff, I recommend "The Skeptics Guide To The Universe" podcast and the book "Thinking - Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

List of cognitive biases

Related Stories