I suspect that the term “cognitive” is often over/misused.
Let me explain what my understanding of the term is. I think of it as “a disagreement with behaviorism”. If you think about how psychology progressed as a field, first there was Freudian stuff that wasn’t very scientific. Then behaviorism emerged as a response to that, saying “Hey, you have to actually measure stuff and do things scientifically!” But behaviorists didn’t think you could measure what goes on inside someone’s head. All you could do is measure what the stimulus is and then how the human responded. Then cognitive people came along and said, “Er, actually, we have some creative ways of measuring what’s going on in there.” So, the term “cognitive”, to me at least, refers very broadly to that stuff that goes on inside someone’s head.
Now think about a phrase like “cognitive bias”. Does “cognitive” seem appropriate? To me it seems way too broad. Something like “epistemic bias” seems more appropriate.
The long standing meaning of “cognitive” for hundreds of years before cognitive psychologists was having to do with knowledge, thinking, and perception. A cognitive bias is a bias that affects your knowledge, thinking, and/or perception.
Epistemic bias is a fine term for those cognitive biases that are specifically biases of beliefs. Not all cognitive biases are of that form though, even when they might fairly consistently lead to certain types of biases in beliefs.
Hm, can you think of any examples of cognitive biases that aren’t about beliefs? You mention that the term “cognitive” also has to do with perception. When I hear “perception” I think sight, sound, etc. But biases in things like sight and sound feel to me like they would be called illusions, not biases.
The first one to come to mind was Recency Bias, but maybe I’m just paying that one more attention because it came up recently.
Having noticed that bias in myself, I consulted an external source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases and checked that rather a lot of them are about preferences, perceptions, reactions, attitudes, attention, and lots of other things that aren’t beliefs.
They do often misinform beliefs, but many of the biases themselves seem to be prior to belief formation or evaluation.
Ah, those examples have made the distinction between biases that misinform beliefs and biases of beliefs clear. Thanks!
As someone who seems to understand the term better than I do, I’m curious whether you share my impression that the term “cognitive” is often misused. As you say, it refers to a pretty broad set of things, and I feel like people use the term “cognitive” when they’re actually trying to point to a much narrower set of things.
I suspect that the term “cognitive” is often over/misused.
Let me explain what my understanding of the term is. I think of it as “a disagreement with behaviorism”. If you think about how psychology progressed as a field, first there was Freudian stuff that wasn’t very scientific. Then behaviorism emerged as a response to that, saying “Hey, you have to actually measure stuff and do things scientifically!” But behaviorists didn’t think you could measure what goes on inside someone’s head. All you could do is measure what the stimulus is and then how the human responded. Then cognitive people came along and said, “Er, actually, we have some creative ways of measuring what’s going on in there.” So, the term “cognitive”, to me at least, refers very broadly to that stuff that goes on inside someone’s head.
Now think about a phrase like “cognitive bias”. Does “cognitive” seem appropriate? To me it seems way too broad. Something like “epistemic bias” seems more appropriate.
The long standing meaning of “cognitive” for hundreds of years before cognitive psychologists was having to do with knowledge, thinking, and perception. A cognitive bias is a bias that affects your knowledge, thinking, and/or perception.
Epistemic bias is a fine term for those cognitive biases that are specifically biases of beliefs. Not all cognitive biases are of that form though, even when they might fairly consistently lead to certain types of biases in beliefs.
Hm, can you think of any examples of cognitive biases that aren’t about beliefs? You mention that the term “cognitive” also has to do with perception. When I hear “perception” I think sight, sound, etc. But biases in things like sight and sound feel to me like they would be called illusions, not biases.
The first one to come to mind was Recency Bias, but maybe I’m just paying that one more attention because it came up recently.
Having noticed that bias in myself, I consulted an external source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases and checked that rather a lot of them are about preferences, perceptions, reactions, attitudes, attention, and lots of other things that aren’t beliefs.
They do often misinform beliefs, but many of the biases themselves seem to be prior to belief formation or evaluation.
Ah, those examples have made the distinction between biases that misinform beliefs and biases of beliefs clear. Thanks!
As someone who seems to understand the term better than I do, I’m curious whether you share my impression that the term “cognitive” is often misused. As you say, it refers to a pretty broad set of things, and I feel like people use the term “cognitive” when they’re actually trying to point to a much narrower set of things.