Questions tagged [bias]

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

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-3 votes
0 answers
28 views

why is black colour associated with luxury and prestige

Why is the color black perceived as a symbol of luxury and high profile when associated with automotive vehicles? Additionally, in the context of e-commerce A/B testing, there is solid evidence that ...
6 votes
1 answer
302 views

Wisdom of crowds vs group polarization

I'm having a hard time understanding two concepts: wisdom of crowds and group polarization, at the same time. Wisdom of crowds states that aggregation of information or prediction, in groups, are ...
0 votes
0 answers
10 views

Integrative Complexity and Intelligence

In this paper a leading researcher on Integrative Complexity suggests that it's only weakly connected to intelligence. Is this disputed in any papers? A friend with Master's in Neurophilosophy is ...
0 votes
0 answers
30 views

Is there a special name for cognitive biase that moves us to identify a specific scientist with some industry?

Example: The Wright brothers did not invent the glider or the internal combustion engine. They invented the roll control system, which became the final element for controlled flight of the aircraft. ...
2 votes
0 answers
41 views

The "Linking" Trick

This is more of a persuasion/manipulation tactic I see mostly media outlets employ. Linking is the name I came up with to describe when something is intentionally associated with something else to ...
0 votes
0 answers
17 views

Looking for a term for acting on incorrect information

I'm looking for a term to describe one of my favorite aphorisms: "It's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you think you know that's wrong." Is there a term for ...
20 votes
4 answers
10k views

What is the primary source of the "mount stupid" graphic?

Online descriptions of the Dunning-Kruger effect are often accompanied by a "mount stupid" graphic similar to the below - from a Psychology Today article: However, the research paper does not contain ...
3 votes
2 answers
149 views

What is the term for the inability to see past one's own current emotional state?

I'm looking for a specific latin or greek word that describes something like the inability to empathize with emotions that are not in line with one's current affective state. It could probably be ...
5 votes
2 answers
919 views

How might the "Imposter Syndrome" typology be reconciled with the robustness of the "self-serving bias"?

TL;DR What on Earth is going on in someone's head to invert a cognitive bias that is robustly observed in people who are psychologically healthy (Cohen's d = 1.28) and still present in depression (...
8 votes
1 answer
1k views

Thinking Fast and Slow: Similarity of Linda problem and Dinnerware case

While reading Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" I've been stuck on the claim that Linda case and Dinnerware case have the same structure. Linda problem: Linda is thirty-one years old, ...
0 votes
1 answer
35 views

Belief that I have more holistic understanding and other are just stuck to their details

In meetings and online discussions I've noticed that there are often confident people who don't just believe that they are always right, but specifically assert that (only) they have holistic (gestalt)...
0 votes
1 answer
31 views

What is the mechanism that makes people more likely to act when provided with proof of non-new (and often trivial) information?

Is there a name for the psychological mechanism according to which a person is more likely to act when provided with proof of information they are already convinced about? Information which is often ...
0 votes
1 answer
113 views

Is it a cognitive bias: "if you guess what I think you do, then what I think of you is true"

"If you've guessed what I am thinking (that you do / you have done / you will do / you are), then what I'm thinking of you is True" Is this considered a cognitive-bias ? And if not what is ...
10 votes
1 answer
433 views

Does Golden Hammer really exist?

Note: I am not talking about Law of the instrument. I am referring to the following (anti-)pattern of behavior: A person very competent in one area (say, Philosophy) peremptorily expressing his ...
1 vote
1 answer
84 views

Response bias in physical and sexual attraction/attractiveness surveys

There are a few potential sources of response bias in surveys intended to measure attractiveness levels of individuals, especially in the context of differences in personal qualities of judges. ...
3 votes
1 answer
62 views

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 ...
2 votes
0 answers
36 views

I'm looking for "The Cannonball Fallacy."

The "shell fallacy" as I see it is this: someone walks into a crater created by a shell on the battlefield and says, "There's no way any more shells are going to fall here. "No ...
5 votes
2 answers
2k views

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 ...
3 votes
0 answers
20 views

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,...
1 vote
0 answers
39 views

Is this a confirmation bias or does such an effect have a more specific name? [closed]

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? ...
5 votes
3 answers
782 views

How can we get rid of the problems of misconception, assumption, and expectation?

I watched a TedX Talk that called "The Surprising Secret of Solving Problems Quickly" by Collins Key, about 3 problems that most greatly hinder our ability to solve intriguing problems. These 3 ...
4 votes
1 answer
86 views

is there a well recognized bias towards observations that can be measured?

It seems that people and orgnaizations have a tendency to make decision that will improve a measurement when the downsides of this decisions cannot be measured or (alternatively) can be measured but ...
0 votes
2 answers
444 views

Bias caused by the opinion of a famous person on matters they are not well-educated on?

What is the name of the bias caused by the fame of a person on subject matters they are not experts on? E.g: If a celebrity they like talks about climate change, people might tend to read, discuss, ...
10 votes
3 answers
3k views

Name of cognitive bias that causes experts to overestimate their ability in other areas?

Is there a name for a cognitive bias that causes people who have been successful in one area to be overconfident in their level of knowledge / ability in another unrelated area? It's related to the ...
4 votes
0 answers
58 views

Does the wording of official ethnicity questions influence perceptions in the longer term?

It is well known that the sequence in which questions are asked in a survey can affect answers as earlier questions can influence the frame of mind in which a respondent answers a subsequent question. ...
4 votes
2 answers
196 views

Gestalt Principles of Perception

I have studied that Gestalt Principles are principles/laws of human perception that describe how humans group similar elements, recognize patterns, and simplify complex images when we perceive objects....
0 votes
0 answers
26 views

The effect of reading news on a topic you know, understanding it is misleading at best - and what this says about all other news stories [duplicate]

Sometimes you will read a news-article, and because you have deep knowledge about the topic of the article, you understand that the articles is at best half-truth - but quite often just plain wrong ...
3 votes
1 answer
84 views

"Polysemous heuristics": people trusts Tesla Inc more if they already trusted Nikola Tesla, even though those two are unrelated

For example, because of massive number of films and online short videos, the population is convinced that Tesla is a great inventor. The population is more likely to give a positive opinion (or ...
3 votes
1 answer
78 views

Source of sensory data related to cognitive effort

How does the brain assess cognitive effort? Is there a chemical that is being created or consumed at a rate that is proportionate to the amount of effort felt? I'm mostly interested in short term ...
1 vote
1 answer
58 views

What is the name of the cognitive bias about groups of people with the same beliefs about others?

Last year I read an interesting magazine article about some papers on a cognitive bias about group beliefs. The papers highlight the fact that we tend to judge in a stronger way the same behavior if ...
1 vote
0 answers
43 views

Why do Many People Tend to Think That Natural Things are Better than Artificial? [closed]

It is common for some people to think that natural things and products are better while many artificial products are seen as bad. Why are many people subjects to this fallacy? What in our psychology ...
3 votes
0 answers
20 views

Alternative to the Beads Task for the role of emotion in belief revision

Context I'm interested in understanding how emotion / affect is linked to belief revision. My supervisor suggested I use the classic beads task or something similar to it to get at this problem. ...
4 votes
0 answers
54 views

What underlying psychological mechanisms could cause a person or a group to experience the bandwagon effect?

People in a target audience are likely to experience the bandwagon effect [1] because they rely on others' assessment of information. Overall, taking advantage of the bandwagon effect can be ...
8 votes
3 answers
722 views

What is the psychological term for disregarding correct but unwanted information?

Sometimes people seem to be very resistant to information that is in conflict with prior beliefs, even when this new information is very plausible. For example, a patient might change a doctor, ...
1 vote
0 answers
39 views

Is cognitive distortions more fixated than cognitive biases?

I get that due to our heuristic, we can have cognitive bias. However, it is simply out of our awareness, and if someone else points them out correctly, we are easy to accept that (maybe with ...
6 votes
1 answer
801 views

Is most of Kahneman's 'Thinking fast and slow' not supported by evidence/non replicable?

'So, replicability [of all studies in this book] is somewhere between 12% and 46%. Even if half of the results are replicable, we do not know which results are replicable and which one’s are not.' '...
2 votes
0 answers
43 views

Where and why would "skill" not increase monotonically with time invested?

I'm a fan of games and activities with steep learning curves and high skill ceilings, and very precarious lines between success and failure. Such success may not be strictly linear or predictable (e.g....
2 votes
0 answers
49 views

Has research established a negative relation between gender-neutral language and gender stereotyping of known individuals?

There has been some research on the effect of gender-neutral language on gender stereotypes. For instance, Lindqvist et al. (2017) studied the effect of gendered and non-gendered pronouns on ...
0 votes
0 answers
25 views

Looking for a study featuring a self-reflection growth/distribution curve

What I mean is a graph that would either feature: a histogram of self-reflection distribution in the general population a curve reflecting the growth in self-reflection resulting from a therapy or a ...
0 votes
1 answer
57 views

Type of Cognitive Bias where someone continues to justify their suffering

It seems to me that there is a type of Cognitive Bias where someone continues to justify their suffering by claiming it was "meaningful" or "necessary" even in the face of clear ...
3 votes
2 answers
143 views

Term for the tendency to relate events that occurred in proximity?

What is the correct scientific term for the tendency to wrongfully relate arbitrary observations to a significant event, just because they occurred in temporal or spatial proximity? Most recently I ...
3 votes
2 answers
169 views

Bias distrusting area of expertise while implicitly trusting other domains?

I've run across descriptions of this bias before, but cannot find it right now... I checked Wikipedia's list of cognitive biases to no avail. Basically, people working in some domain and having ...
1 vote
1 answer
130 views

Do people have an innate preference to take matters into their own hands?

People usually want to make their own decisions. Those looking for spouses often listen to their inner romantic instincts and reject advice from more experienced people. Drivers are skeptical about ...
1 vote
0 answers
23 views

Is there a cognitive bias that makes people consider information coming from someone they don't like as more likely to be wrong?

Frequently I noticed this happening with people. When A dislikes B, A tends to think B is wrong all the time. And it seems to be persistent, even when B is proven correct multiple times, it doesn't ...
3 votes
0 answers
28 views

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 ...
3 votes
1 answer
281 views

Pygmalion effect and negative expectations

I've been reading about the Pygmalion effect. From what extracted, it means positive expectations positively influence performance. Now I'm curious to know this... does the Pygmalion effect also apply ...
7 votes
2 answers
400 views

Is there evidence to support the Dunning-Kruger effect?

The well known Dunning-Kruger effect is oft cited as a general explanation for why people with limited expertise overestimate their abilities. Other than the initial research that described this ...
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

What is the difference between Cognitive Bias and Cognitive distortion?

I was asked by my professor to give a presentation on the topic "Cognitive biases and distortions" and during my prep I had this question. Could anyone please shed some light? I tried ...
1 vote
1 answer
37 views

How can we overcome positional bias when selecting an option on a screen/document?

I think the question is best described by an example: You are at a doctors office and are about to have a conversation about you birth control prescription. Before you can enter you have to decide if ...
3 votes
1 answer
63 views

What is the scientific term for the expectation, that a personal experience positively deviates from what first- or second-hand experience suggests?

What is the scientific term for the tendency of people to believe, that their expected experience positively deviates from what their first- or second-hand experience suggests? An example for this ...

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