Psychology and Neuroscience Stack Exchange
Psychology and Neuroscience Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [bias]

For questions about systematic patterns of deviation in judgment from normative decision-theoretic expectations.

Cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations, leading to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Implicit in the concept of a "pattern of deviation" is a standard of comparison with what is normatively expected.

Questions having the bias tag regards cognitive bias in general.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

206 questions
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What differences of opinion led to the Kahneman-Gigerenzer feud?

I have found many allusions to this feud, e.g. from http://nickdunbar.net/2012/05/23/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel-kahneman/ and in Kahneman's trade book "Thinking, Fast and Slow". However, I have not found any concise explanation of what…
user1205901 - Слава Україні
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What is the difference between hindsight bias and confirmation bias?

I'm trying to understand better the influence of psychological biases on the financial market decision-making process. Wikipedia describes hindsight as follow: Refers to the common tendency for people to perceive events that have already occurred…
Daniel Chepenko
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Are people who have a crush on someone generally delusional with respect to their crush?

This question came up in relationships.SE (still in beta) in this lengthy thread (which I hope you can get access to). Basically the disagreement goes as follows: Telling somebody with a crush It's possible that your crush object may never see you…
CMW
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What cognitive bias prevents you from discarding stuff?

Let's say person is moving homes and has lots of kids toys, suits, shirts, ties and other stuff that he seldom uses. He is am planning to sell it all in a car boot sale even if he knows that it's counter productive. He would have to use ~30£ on…
Matas Vaitkevicius
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Cognitive bias - Confirming the attitudes of your peers

Is there a well-studied cognitive bias that describes a situation in which a person expresses a positive attitude towards something because his or her's friends have a positive attitude about that thing as well? I am speaking mostly in the context…
Marius Danila
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Is there a special name for rejection of extremes in the list of cognitive biases?

Is there a special name for the cognitive bias that causes a person choose a compromise solution even the extreme solutions are better or causes person prefer a middle value even the extreme values are more suitable?
Arseniy
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What is the term for the increased willingness to spend "bonus" money over savings? Is it the opposite of the endowment effect?

The effect can be described as following: Consider two hypothetical scenarios. In one, I have had \$10,000 in the bank for a while. In another, I have had \$8,000 in the bank, and suddenly I won \$2,000 randomly, either as a gift, a lottery ticket,…
Bridgeburners
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What is the cognitive bias called where you put an ethical boundary just above where you are?

What is the cognitive bias called where you put an ethical boundary just above where you are? It's where people often say that something is morally acceptable to do something up to a certain point in which in then becomes immoral/unethical, however…
batv1
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I can't understand the comparison made by Kahneman

The chapter "Risk Policies", in Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", opens with this example, which makes vivid the pitfalls of relying on our intuitions in choosing between bets: Imagine that you face the following pair of concurrent decisions.…
Narek
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Is there a bias where long statements, books, articles, etc. are seen as more truthful?

Is there a cognitive biasing effect that makes people believe that long statements / expressions / articles / books are more truthful than short ones (assuming that they are equal semantically)?
user626528
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What heuristic or bias is at play when drawing conclusions from headlines only?

I'm wondering why many people just read headlines when they scroll through social media and make up their minds based on this? What bias or heuristic is at play? Why don't people read the article? I have considered availability bias because people…
Tea Tree
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Name of cognitive bias where people try to use all given information regardless of quality?

In psych class, I recall learning about a cognitive bias where people are inclined to use all information available to them when making a decision, even if some of the information would be better ignored. I believe the example given was a study in…
ChaseMedallion
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Perfect events in a random world?

I have a friend. They believe that God exists because they have experienced a large amount of 'perfect coincidences', or rather, events that are too perfect to be coincidences. What kind of cognitive bias/fallacy is this? (They assure that it is…
Buddha
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Do other forms of bias have their own terminologies, similar to "Stockholm Syndrome"?

Three examples would be: Someone who makes an expensive purchase, and even when they are met with objective facts stating why it was a inferior purchase, they continue to sing it's praise. Someone who blindly follows and defends their political…
Scott Taylor
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Is this a confirmation bias or does such an effect have a more specific name?

What is the name of an effect when a person debating with you says that you want them to do Z while you did not have this in mind and did not intend to get to this? For example, from a conversation with a software engineer colleague. Me: I think we…
Mike
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