Cognitive bias

Timeline

• 2016Lazer, Baum, and Grinberg (2018) analyzed over 16,000 false news stories shared by millions of Twitter users during the 2016 U.S.

Read

• Social cognitionSusan T. Fiske · 1984Book
• Cognitive Bias in Intelligence AnalysisMartha Whitesmith · 2020Book
• Blindspots Between UsGleb Tsipursky · 2020Book
• DESIGN FOR COGNITIVE BIASDavid Dylan Thomas · 2020Book

Watch

• Cognitive Bias, Why You’re Rightfully Wrong | Yaqine Saada | TEDxClearLakeHighSchoolYouTube
• The psychology behind irrational decisions - Sara GarofaloYouTube
• The Most Common Cognitive BiasYouTube
• Confirmation Bias: Learn to overcome this common cognitive biasYouTube
• 12 Cognitive Biases Explained - How to Think Better and More Logically Removing BiasYouTube
• Introduction to Cognitive Bias: Crash Course Scientific Thinking #1YouTube
• 12 Cognitive Biases Explained In 5 MinutesYouTube
• 3 Cognitive Biases That Mess With Your Mental Health Every DayYouTube
• What are Cognitive Biases? (In Hindi)- PsychologyYouTube
• What is Cognitive Bias | How to avoid biases? Explained in Hindi by Beyond The BeliefYouTube

Listen

• Cognitive BiasThe Cognitive Bias ThinkboisPodcast
• Cognitive Bias - StereotypingBaptiste MARGUERITEPodcast
• Mind Traps: The Cognitive Bias PodcastDanny CodellaPodcast
• The Cognitive Bias PodcastDavid Dylan ThomasPodcast

Voices to follow

• Pierre Boc@pierreboc · XFrench speaker and mentalist

Debates

• Are cognitive biases always irrational or do they serve adaptive functions?One view: Biases often lead to errors, demonstrating irrationality and hindering optimal decision-making. · Another: Biases can be mental shortcuts that promote quick decisions, which can be adaptive in uncertain environments.Open question
• Can individuals truly overcome their cognitive biases through awareness and training?One view: With conscious effort and specific debiasing techniques, people can reduce the impact of their biases. · Another: Biases are deeply ingrained mental processes, making them difficult to fully eliminate even with awareness.Open question

Glossary

• Cognitive biasA systematic error in thinking that affects the decisions and judgments people make.
• HeuristicA mental shortcut or rule of thumb used to solve problems or make judgments quickly.
• Confirmation biasThe tendency to seek out, interpret, and remember information that confirms one's existing beliefs.
• Anchoring biasRelying too heavily on the first piece of information offered when making decisions.
• Availability heuristicOverestimating the likelihood of events that are easily recalled from memory.
• Framing effectHow the presentation of information influences an individual's choices.

Careers

Roles this can lead toward

Student research

Published policy papers by One Young India delegates — every delegate leaves published under their own name.

• Bridging the Synaptic Gap: From Neuroplasticity to Cognitive RenewalAmay Kashyap Deka
• Prompt Engineering as a Cognitive Tool in Today’s WorldViraj Patra

Threads 14

Where this connects to other fields — and why it's worth knowing.

• Aesthetics Arts

  Ever notice a face or a song just feels 'right'? Often that's your brain enjoying how easily it figured the thing out, a smoothness scientists call processing fluency. We feel that easy click and think the beauty is out there in the object, when really it's happening inside our own heads.

• Logic and Valid Reasoning Philosophy

  Give people a dry logic puzzle with letters and numbers and most flub it. Reword the exact same puzzle as 'catch the person cheating you,' and suddenly almost everyone nails it. That's a clue our brains didn't evolve for pure logic, they evolved to spot cheaters, and reasoning runs best on social fuel.

• Conversion and New Religious Movements Religion

  A cult predicts the world ends Tuesday. Tuesday comes, nothing happens, and instead of quitting, many members believe harder. Being proven wrong creates a painful clash in the mind, and it's often easier to double down than admit you were fooled. Psychologists call that mental squirming dissonance reduction.

• Concepts of God Religion

  If a bush rustles, the ancestor who assumed 'hidden creature!' and ran survived; the one who assumed 'just wind' sometimes got eaten. So our brains are tuned to sense unseen agents everywhere, even when nothing's there. Belief in invisible gods may ride on that same jumpy, better-safe-than-sorry wiring.

• Natural Hazards and Disaster Geography Geography

  After a flood everyone rushes to buy flood insurance, but almost nobody preps for the quiet earthquake slowly building underneath. Your brain trusts whatever disaster it remembers most vividly, not whatever's actually most likely. So we keep guarding against the last catastrophe instead of the next one.

• The US-China Rivalry Politics

  Your brain hates losing something you already have far more than it enjoys gaining something new. Scale that up to countries: a fading superpower will fight desperately to keep its top spot, harder than a rising one fights to take it. That's what makes a nation in decline so dangerous. It feels its slipping like a painful loss.

• Nuclear Energy Technology

  We're terrified of a rare nuclear meltdown, but barely worried about coal smoke that quietly kills far more people every year. It's the fear, not the actual physics, that keeps the deadlier coal plants running and the safer nuclear ones shut.

• Famous Artists and Paintings Arts

  Your brain tends to like things just because it's seen them a lot, a quirk called the mere-exposure effect. So we half-believe a painting is 'great' partly because it's printed everywhere. The list of 'masterpieces' might be familiarity in disguise, dressed up as good taste.

• Pandemics Science

  Human brains are terrible at feeling how fast doubling grows. So an outbreak with a few cases looks harmless right up until it explodes. That blind spot makes us wait to act exactly when acting would have been cheapest and easiest.

• Taxation Economics

  Taxes get quietly taken from your paycheck before you ever see the money, and that's on purpose. Our brains hate losing money we're holding far more than money we never touched. If people had to write one big tax cheque every April, they'd revolt; the trick is just clever framing.

• Vaccines Health

  Our brains fear harm we cause more than bigger harm we allow. A rare vaccine side effect feels scarier than the disease it prevents, even when the disease is far more dangerous. That mental glitch, called omission bias, quietly drives a lot of vaccine hesitancy, not simple ignorance.

• Extreme Weather Environment

  People keep rebuilding homes in flood zones because our brains misjudge rare disasters. Before a flood hits, it feels impossible; right after, it feels safe again, 'lightning won't strike twice.' The mind systematically underrates those rare, catastrophic events, so we bet against them and lose.

• Climate Change Science

  Climate change is almost perfectly built to slip past the human brain. The danger feels far away in time, far in space, and only maybe, so our minds treat it as not real yet. We're wired to shrug at exactly this kind of slow, distant threat.

• Renaissance and Enlightenment History

  The Enlightenment bet everything on one idea: humans are basically rational, so give people reason and freedom and they'll think clearly. Modern psychology partly lost that bet — our minds run on predictable glitches, so the perfectly rational person it imagined never really existed.