140 Cognitive Biases You Should Know
I’m excited to announce my list of ∼140 cognitive biases.
Become aware of your biases. Make better decisions. I adapted most biases from Wikipedia’s list of cognitive biases. Download my biases as Anki flashcards here.
My favourite biases
Backfire Effect
You reject evidence opposing your opinion, and you strengthen your original opinion.
Curse of Knowledge
You assume that the listener has the background knowledge to understand you.
Dilution Effect
You under-utilise useful information when useless information is present.
False Consensus Effect
You see your actions as more common than they are.
Google Effect
You forget information that you can find online.
Illusion of Transparency
You overestimate how much others are aware of your mental state.
Overjustification Effect
You have less intrinsic motivation to act if you are externally rewarded for it.
Self-Reference Effect
You remember information better if you are related to it.
Zeigarnik Effect
You remember unfinished tasks better than finished tasks.
What you can do
Share the list of biases with a friend.
Check out my website for more.
Suggest a new bias in the comments.
Please give me feedback in the comments or directly in the Google Doc.
The ones I have found most important in my own journey:
The fallacy of one cause, manifests as a bias towards monocausal explanations which is an appeal to simplicity, related to the certainty effect as well.
Attribute substitution: these fly by unconsciously all the time
Inaction bias: doing nothing is treated as a special action that avoids blame
Internal illusion of transparency (introspective transparency illusion)
Homeostatic prior: automatically work towards maintaining things as they are including unpleasant things
Scope neglect
Thanks for the insightful comment! I added these four biases to the Doc:
Single Cause Fallacy
You think there’s one cause when there are many.
Attribute Substitution
You value insurance on terrorism higher than on death of any kind.
Introspection Illusion
You confidently but falsely explain the origin of your beliefs.
Status Quo Bias (aka homeostatic prior)
You want things to stay as they are.
Quote for you on inaction bias: “The mistakes that have been most extreme in Berkshire’s history are mistakes of omission.” -Warren Buffett
I might be a bit off base on this but . . .
Is there a major named bias that reflects the thought (I was about to say “fact” but seems a very wrong word to use given the nature of this comment) that one’s own beliefs and knowledge set is actually the hypothesis that is being tested in real time? Our believes and knowledge are not just the check against the other views and external view.
Seems that is a very Bayesian view but also something of the characteristic of most other biases: our belief in our self, in our experts, in our peer group and class, etc. Seems like if we make a core rule of asking “What do I need to update here?” a lot of the other bias problems diminish.
Would “The bias of no self-skepticism” be a good term? (Or is that already in the list I have not looked at yet!)
Do you mean confirmation bias, or implicit bias? I cannot find ‘bias of no self-skepticism’ on Google.
I would have laughed if you could find that phrase on Google.
What I was getting at was the number of named biases. I suspect many are similar and possible stem from some common underlying cause. I wonder just how many can be explained by people not simply viewing their one beliefs and assumption about their “knowledge” and set of facts without sufficient skepticism.
If we can explain a number of these named biases with a common root then we’re closer to having the gear that is driving the bad thinking than if we just labelled several items in some common set as if they are really different.
This bias infographic shows you biases grouped by common root: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/all-188-cognitive-biases.html
Thanks!