Questions tagged [bias]
For questions about systematic patterns of deviation in judgment from normative decision-theoretic expectations.
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Books on bias theory [closed]
I'm looking for some books that treat the cognitive biases categorically,e.g. decision making biases, behavioral biases, etc. The most commonly studied biases have been categorized into few groups. I ...
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10 views
Why does a shuffled deck of cards feel less “lucky” than rolling dice?
There's a popular co-operative board game called Pandemic. Although largely strategic it has one key random element, a deck of cards that determines where new diseases will spring up.
While player ...
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What could explain the apparent association between high IAT bias scores and percentage of black americans per state?
The implicit Association test (IAT) measures your subconcious preference for white over black or the other way around. It does so by letting you do a task where you have to categorize black and white ...
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36 views
Defensive attribution vs Self-serving bias
What is the difference between "Defensive attribution" and the "self-serving-bias"?
Both seem to involve a practice where one would attribute our failures to circumstances and our successes to ...
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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 ...
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1answer
80 views
Why do people bid on online auctions sooner than a few seconds before it ends? [closed]
This is something that has always puzzled me about human behavior on online auction platforms. I am talking about a specific platform where you can sell almost any item you want with a starting bid ...
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34 views
Compendium of questions in the Kahneman/Tversky Heuristics and Biases tradition
It's well known that many of Tversky and Kahneman's studies (and many studies of their followers) involved giving questions of the following general type to subjects.
Linda is 31 years old, single, ...
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1answer
23 views
Cognitive biases ontogenesis
Are cognitive biases "hardcoded" into our brain or learned?
And have they evolved over time e.g. more cognitive biases could emerge evolutionally?
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38 views
Why don't the Big 5 personality traits have more neutral names?
Lots of different areas of study appropriate common-language terms as jargon words with a specific meaning in the context of that particular field, but the names of the Big 5 personality traits have ...
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1answer
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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 ...
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1answer
177 views
Is the placebo effect a form of cognitive bias? [closed]
Recently I’ve been trying to get a better understanding for the cause and mechanism of the placebo effect. A friend suggested that the placebo effect is a form of cognitive bias, but I’ve had trouble ...
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1answer
44 views
Does psychology lose it's validity when the subject is versed in psychology?
Quite often, I find myself conforming to typical psychological principals, and exhibiting predictable behavior based on external stimuli. However, upon better research of the psychology behind past ...
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1answer
28 views
Need to define observation/phenomenon in order to study it, same replies to same political topics, different individuals
I was wondering if anyone could help me define my observation, in order to read some literature on the subject. I have some Cog. Psych. background but have never encountered this during my studies. It ...
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1answer
60 views
What is the bias that arises because a thing is way more common than the rest?
So I have a sentence: Hence this option is free of abundance bias
I've made up the phrase "abundance bias" and I want to replace it with the proper scientific term....
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1answer
507 views
What is the name of the bias that associate a thing as good because it has a relation to another good thing?
A customer buys X from "brand A" and has positive experience with it. "Brand A" also sells Y. Now the customer things it is good to buy Y because of his/her positive experience with buying X from ...
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1answer
66 views
Is there a name for the phenomenon of perceived repeated interruption?
Is there a documented name for the phenomenon of repeated social interruptions. It's something I've discussed with others who seem to share the observation that often, when one is alone in a public ...
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1answer
110 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 ...
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1answer
62 views
Is the belief that a consultant knows more than the team a form of cognitive bias?
I've noticed that many people assume that consultants know more than they themselves do and/or more than their team does. That is, when a team is stuck on a problem, some people believe that a ...
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1answer
36 views
What research is there on how people go from examining/gathering evidence to executing on a decision?
I'm curious what research there is about when/how people decide to stop evaluating or gathering evidence, and actually begin executing on an action, and how the order of information presented could ...
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3answers
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Term for when the more you invest yourself in something, the less you agree to drop it
I have got a few examples::
For instance when someone buys something and it turns out that it wasn't worth it, and this person tries to convince himself that he made a good choice or that the product ...
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20 views
What is it called when I a person transfers his angry towards another person, instead of the person that cause and anger? [duplicate]
My significant other has described to me how he has always been the good child who received 4.0 in school, went to the marines was honorably discharged and always do things for his family. He says ...
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55 views
Correlation of g and Honesty, Rationality, etc?
Are there any meta-analyses reporting the correlations of g (IQ, general mental ability) with:
Honesty-Humility (e.g. in HEXACO model).
I know Conscientiousness (of Big Five) generally has zero ...
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1answer
80 views
Bias of finding others guilty of own shortcomings
I haven't been in cognitive sciences for long, but in my work I have noticed a curious pattern: Individuals who overwhelmingly attribute the responsibility of their own actions to external causes, ...
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1answer
29 views
What is a effective and interactive exercise to demonstrate cognition to a class
I'm new to this site so I may mess up here and there with the question process.
I need to come up with an interactive exercise for a class to demonstrate cognition. The problem is, I find cognition ...
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1answer
69 views
Why do people have different opinions about an object when they are given different information about that object?
I'm studying about perception in psychology. My teacher has an example.
In an experiment, the researcher gives two groups a photo of one person. To Group 1, researcher says "This is a scientist", ...
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1answer
46 views
What would be the Term for this Character Trait?
This might be the wrong place or way to ask this question but I'll give it a shot. It could be more related to literature but it does deal with a form of character or personality.
In Nathaniel ...
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3answers
91 views
Should I look at the data of an experiment before the dataset is complete?
For a research internship I am running psychological experiments online. As it takes a while until the experiment is done (meaning that enough people participated, so that a sufficient sample size is ...
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1answer
420 views
What's the difference between Confirmation Bias and the Affect Heuristic?
I've been reading "Thinking Fast & Slow," by Daniel Kahneman. At the end of Chapter 9, he introduces the "Affect Heuristic," a concept introduced by Paul Slovic that effectively states that people ...
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64 views
Cognitive Bias, illusory truth effect: its effects on Software Engineers
I have been trying to understand how illusory truth
effect creates problems for Software Engineers. I have found research on
the effects of other cognitive biases (e.g. representativeness, ...
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1answer
1k views
What's the relationship between priming and availability heuristic?
As I have understood, availability heuristic means that things that are "available" in one's cognition (one has thought recently) are prone to influence one's perception.
Priming has been explained ...
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2answers
81 views
Is there an innate human bias against admitting you are wrong or uncertain? [duplicate]
During interactions with people, I've noticed that it seems like certain people have a habit of admitting uncertainty and a willingness to admit error. There doesn't appear to be a clear group that I ...
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1answer
134 views
Bias in survey questions based on either positive or negative wording
I have this impression that if you ask respondents in a survey, questions such as "do you like the item X/ person X" or "which one of the two variations do you like more", or "what in particular would ...
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2answers
103 views
Baby Names and the Hive Mind
A couple of months ago my wife and I found out we were having a little girl and needed to start thinking seriously about picking some names. After going through a dictionary of names we narrowed it ...
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Risk aversion and/or loss aversion in partner-abuse victims who persist in their relationship with the abuser?
A recent study by Baek et al. (2017) found that depressed patients with a history of suicide attempt(s) were exhibiting risk and loss aversion much more so than the general population does. (Note that ...
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1answer
3k views
What is the difference between a bias and a heuristic explained in layman terms?
Can anyone explain the difference in a way which can be explained to some one who does not a have a clue about psychology? May be examples could help.
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1answer
55 views
Name of false answer effect in surveys
I'm looking for research I've read about a well known effect that happens when participants complete a survey, where they do not answer what they think is right, but what they think the researchers ...
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2answers
235 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 (...
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1answer
94 views
Why do we long for freedom?
Psychological reactance is the effect of irrational choice for freedom - we choose to go for a greater loss just because we like to make the bad decision for ourselves. What is the advantage behind ...
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2answers
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Is acceptance of the science of global warming by politicians primarily a result of the bandwagon effect?
While denial of global warming is without a doubt from bandwagon appeal furthered by campaign donations, I get the impression that the acceptance of global warming by politicians is also primarily a ...
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3answers
90 views
A formal term for overcoming something, or getting over something
I am trying to find a correct psychological term for a specific type of behavior.
When a person is trying to distance themselves from past suffering by projecting an idea of "I'm over it" to others. ...
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2answers
111 views
What's the technical name for this cognitive bias?
I'm pretty sure I've seen this cognitive bias described in the literature, but I can't find its official name, so I'll provisionally call it "the used-book finder's bias", based on the following ...
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223 views
Anchoring Heuristic: a type of heuristic or the mechanism of functioning of heuristics?
Heuristic is a mental shortcut that helps us to make decisions and judgments quickly, without spending time analyizing any aspect of reality.
There are several different categories of heuristics, ...
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3answers
125 views
Name of the bias towards not seeing small harm of many as important?
I observe this kind of thinking especially in politics, for instance when someone brings up that "It is fine to take a few dollars from a lot of people if it helps the country". I think the reason we ...
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0answers
56 views
To what extent is it true that both too much stress and too much relaxation lead to mental shortcuts? [closed]
Sometimes rational thought seems to be bypassed in the brain for more automatic behaviour (shortcuts, instinct, intuition, heuristics):
In The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal she writes that ...
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2answers
426 views
What is the connection between cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias?
Intuitively, I'd think that CD is one explanation of confirmation bias, since if it's the case that most people believe "I am right about most things", then admitting one is wrong about something is ...
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1answer
1k 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 ...
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2answers
101 views
Double blindedness in a fully remote trial
We are planning to do a fully remote clinical trial to test an online intervention for depression. We will be using a self-rated PHQ-9 at base-line, post intervention, and 90 days follow-up to test ...
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1answer
115 views
What cognitive bias (loosely) makes us all the more susceptible to the golden age fallacy [closed]
Why do the good ol' days seem better than they actually are? Is this a result of an error in human thought or is it because things are actually worsening?
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423 views
Name of the psychological phenomenon of doing something just because you've already started doing it?
I feel like people really often do things just because they've already started doing it.
One example could be the Electronic Evidence of Sales just established in Czechia. It's a system monitoring ...
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Are self-described “socially conscious” individuals less likely to show implicit bias as measured by the implicit association test (IAT)?
Many individuals, in particular young progressives, incorporate their attitudes on gender and race into their identity. I am wondering if people who consider themselves socially conscious in this ...
