Cognitive Biases
While Economics has long focused on the theory of the actions of a rational man, the field of Behavioural Psychology has spent much effort understanding why and how humans are irrational, and predictably so. The term “Cognitive Bias”, coined by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s has since been taught in business school courses and the like.
Today’s thought is a reminder that there are a huge number of biases, but not that we should be discouraged, but rather that through these biases we have also come to better understand how our brains work.
I like the infographic above, because it illustrates the volume of biases in such an elegant, beautiful way.
Here’s the higher-level groupings as a list:
Too Much Information
- We notice things already primed in memory or repeated often
- Bizarre/funny/visually-striking/anthropomorphic things stick out more than non-bizarre/unfunny things
- We notice when something has changed
- We are drawn to details that confirm our own existing beliefs
- We notice flaws in others more easily than flaws in ourselves
Not Enough Meaning
- We find stories and patterns even in sparse data
- We fill in characteristics from stereotypes, generalities, and prior histories
- We imagine things and people we’re familiar with or fond of as better
- We simplify probabilities and numbers to make them easier to think about
- We think we know what other people are thinking
- We project our current mindset and assumptions onto the past and future
Need to Act Fast
- To act, we must be confident we can make an impact and feel what we do is important
- To stay focused, we favour the immediate, relatable thing in front of us
- To get things done, we tend to complete things we’ve invested time and energy in
- To avoid mistakes, we’re motivated to preserve our autonomy and status in a group, and to avoid irreversible decisions
- We favour simple-looking options and complete information over complex, ambiguous options
What Should We Remember?
- We edit and reinforce some memories after the fact
- We discard specifics to form generalities
- We reduce events and lists to their key elements
- We store memories differently based on how they were experienced
If you are interested in the details — read more about it from Buster Benson, who was the mastermind in the categorization.
