Cognitive Biases
13 concepts
- Cognitive Biases (General)When your confident judgment turns out to have been predictably wrong — in the same direction as everyone else's.
- HeuristicsWhen a four-variable decision tree outperforms physicians' holistic judgment on cardiac triage because ignoring most information captures more signal.
- Confirmation BiasWhen people read identical mixed evidence on capital punishment and both sides walk away more convinced of their original position.
- Sunk Cost FallacyYou catch yourself justifying continued investment with "I've already put so much in" rather than evidence of future value.
- Dunning-Kruger EffectWhen a complex topic feels straightforward and the experts seem like they're overcomplicating things.
- Loss AversionYou are about to decline an opportunity because the potential loss feels vivid while the equivalent gain feels abstract.
- Anchoring BiasAn early number — a price, estimate, or headline — is shaping your evaluation before you've done your own analysis.
- Availability BiasAfter watching a documentary about shark attacks, you cancel the beach trip -- even though you drove there last year without a second thought about the car ride.
- Hindsight BiasAfter the project fails, you hear yourself say 'I had a bad feeling about that from the start' -- but your notes from the kickoff show only optimism.
- Survivorship BiasThe strategy looks proven, until you ask what happened to everyone who tried it and never got to report back.
- Availability CascadeYou're confident about a claim you've never investigated because you've encountered it so many times it feels like established fact.
- GroupthinkThe plan converges toward consensus faster than complexity warrants, and the room's smoothness feels less like alignment than silence.
- Peak-End RuleYou call it the best vacation ever, but only one sunset and the last evening actually stand out.