Categorizing and Identifying Key Cognitive Biases

We are all biased. Very biased apparently.

1. Too much information — So we make the decision to focus in on specific parts of the information.

2. Not enough meaning — So we fill in the blanks with what we think we know it should be.

3. Need to act fast — So we shoot first and ask questions later.

4. What should we remember — So we control the amount of information entering and remember what we feel seems most important to know for the next time.

1. Ignorance-based decision making — It doesn’t take a lot of information to make a decision so search until you recognize something and then stop.

2. One-reason decision making — Take a step beyond recognition and recall one important thing that you know and then stop.

3. Elimination decision making — When you have more than two options and one choice, whittle down your categories of choices until you have only one left, pick from that and then stop.

4. Satisficing — When all the choices aren’t immediately available and we have to go looking for options, search until you find a satisfactory solution that will suffice (satisfactory + suffice = satisfice!). This category often happens as a result of limitations — on time or on working memory or perceptual limitations.

Now, here are a few important cognitive biases that commonly afflict all of us:

1. Confirmation bias — The tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information such that it confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs.

2. Fundamental attribution error — Undo emphasis on internal characteristics instead of external factors to explain other people’s behaviours (i.e., what people do truly reflects who they are.).

3. The bias blind spot — The feeling that one is less biased than the average person.

4. The anchoring effect — Relying too heavily on an initial piece of information offered — known as the ‘anchor’ — when making decisions.

5. The representative heuristic — Estimating the likelihood of an event by comparing it to an existing model already in our minds, which we feel represents the most typical or relevant example of that model.

6. Projection bias — The assumption that everyone else’s thinking is the same as one’s own.

Whether it is 6 or 36 or 200 important biases, I think it is interesting to reflect and realize how as both a learner and as a teacher our thinking, decisions and actions can often be less than optimal. So how does one go about being less biased? How do you make more correct decisions? The key isn’t necessarily about being right or wrong, it’s about optimizing the decision making process. More on that next time.

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