Questions tagged [bias]
For questions about systematic patterns of deviation in judgment from normative decision-theoretic expectations.
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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 ...
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"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 ...
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20 views
Why humans tend to bias themselves in self serving way?
Recently, I have started to notice people who think they are smarter than other people. Actually, they really look like smart people - they do their intellectual work fast and good, they talk smart ...
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32 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 ...
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28 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....
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122 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.'
'...
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36 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 ...
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21 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 ...
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1answer
41 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 ...
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2answers
52 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 ...
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34 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....
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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 ...
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27 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
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1answer
63 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 ...
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1answer
47 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 ...
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1answer
364 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 ...
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1answer
30 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
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1answer
42 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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2answers
65 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 ...
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1answer
42 views
Why is the shoemaker badly shod?
In other words, why are professionals/experts good at doing what they know to do for others but not for themselves ?
What is the psychological bias behind this ?
Of course this questions comes from ...
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47 views
Research on the psychopathology of rapists
Since not all sexual assaulters are psychopaths or sadists as the media often chalks them up to ,there is scope to at least mend the thinking of some of the rapists, or any which haven't yet given in ...
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1answer
21 views
Is there a formal name for the effect/cognitive bias of seeing something new
I'm wondering if there is a formal neuroscience or psychology term for the following: We see something new, fresh, and different and as a result pause just a little bit longer to look it over.
Imagine ...
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1answer
27 views
Are we biased against other people's suggestions?
Recently, I have realized that whenever my friends suggest me a movie or a tv show to watch, there is an instinctive response inside me that always tells me to not try the suggestion. I then realized ...
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1answer
96 views
What is the difference between naive cynicism and naive realism?
I understand Naive realism as: I am objective and whoever disagrees with me is biased.
I don't get Naive cynicism though. Does is stand for: I am objective and others are more selfish than me?
What is ...
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41 views
Is the Sagan standard a kind of proportionality bias?
Is the Sagan standard, which says that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", a kind of proportionality bias?
Since the proportionality bias is a tendency to believe that ...
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2answers
51 views
What heuristic or bias is at play when drawing conclusions from headlines only?
I'm wondering why many people just read headlines when they scroll through social media and make up their minds based on this? What bias or heuristic is at play? Why don't people read the article?
I ...
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1answer
64 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, ...
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2answers
932 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 ...
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46 views
How do we call a tendency of young children to accept things as facts without doubting them?
I have noticed that young children don't doubt a lot of things. If a teacher tell them "1+1=2", they usually just learn it without questioning. When those children get older, they often start to ...
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1answer
67 views
Humans don't understand the accumulation of small numbers - what is this phenomena called?
I find that if you tell someone to give you 20$ vs. giving you 1$ everyday for 20 days - people react differently.
Similarly ...
6
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2answers
151 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 ...
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2answers
55 views
How can humans tell when something diverges from the norm
With this I mean the notion of humans being able to, for example, look at a painting and tell that something doesn't belong in there. For example sun glasses on the Mona Lisa, without prior knowledge ...
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1answer
887 views
Can one claim that a person is having cognitive distortion and be always correct?
What is cognitive distorion?
According to Wikipedia, "cognitive distortion are thoughts that cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately". It is a negative outlook on reality, ...
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31 views
What is the phenomenon of devaluing others' abilities called?
The Dunning-Kruger describes a cognitive bias where people evaluate their own skills as greater than reality.
I wonder about a similar situation wherein one underestimates the abilities of others. I ...
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1answer
52 views
Cognitive bias with trial and error problem solving
I found through self-observation that while solving some problem I am more inclined sometimes to first try and manipulate the variables that require the least amount of effort to manipulate, rather ...
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15 views
Is there a link between confirmation biases and a tendency to subscribe to religions?
I've just read Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly, as well as Mark Manson's Everything is F*cked, which I stumbled upon the concept of cognitive biases.
In the books they mentioned how ...
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1answer
53 views
Believing only one thing matters, when in reality, it was a chain reaction. What's the bias called?
Assume I had a business. That business would've been very close to be sold to a bigger company, if only I didn't mess up some of my papers. Thing is though, I didn't really only mess these papers. The ...
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I can't understand the comparison made by Kahneman [closed]
The chapter "Risk Policies", in Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", opens with this example, which makes vivid the pitfalls of relying on our intuitions in choosing between bets:
Imagine that you ...
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2answers
130 views
Does sexual orientation influence gender bias?
Let's take three people: Alice, Bob, and Carol. Suppose Alice is heterosexual. That should imply that Alice finds Bob attractive at some level, but not Carol. Does this mean Alice is more likely to be ...
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2answers
86 views
Cognitive bias believing you are good at the things you are bad at, as successes are more vivid?
What is the name for this cognitive bias?
Scenario
I am bad at socializing with people. For 95% of the time I talked to people, I was very awkward. Yet, mostly only 5% of the opposite time stuck to ...
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2answers
82 views
What is the name for this form of "influence"?
I have found that people are often "roused to action," activism and even zealotry by attributing either extreme of "nobleness" or "despicability" to their self or group ...
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2answers
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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 ...
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0answers
42 views
Can you prevent your biases from swaying your logic if you're aware of them?
As in the title.
Assuming you are aware of all your biases,and how they interact with your ideas, can you foresee how your biases will warp your judgement or logic, and stop that from happening?
...
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3answers
70 views
What is the term for the rhetorical, "How hard could it be?"
I looked through the wikipedia page listing cognitive biases looking for a bias that describes the tendency to assume a poorly understood problem must be simple. Planning fallacy is kind of in the ...
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2answers
59 views
Name of cognitive bias where people try to use all given information regardless of quality?
In psych class, I recall learning about a cognitive bias where people are inclined to use all information available to them when making a decision, even if some of the information would be better ...
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0answers
50 views
How is illusory superiority reconciled with the false-consensus effect?
On one hand, people often seem to exhibit various forms of illusory [self-]superiority, perhaps the best known example of that being the Dunning–Kruger effect.
On the other hand, the false consensus ...
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37 views
Do any personality factors reduce illusory superiority?
Apparently individuals suffering from schizotypy lack illusory superiority in one particular domain: evaluation of their affect. That is to say, neurotypicals overrate their positive affect (and ...
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1answer
260 views
What is the psychology behind blind spots? Why do we fail to see, what others see so clearly about us?
It’s absolutely imperative to identify our blind spots. I believe that they are impediment for one to reach his full potential. But how does one, see his blind spot - #oxymoron?
What is the ...
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42 views
In what contexts is loss aversion least controversial?
Loss aversion (and related phenomena like the endowment effect) are somewhat controversial, it seems; from Wikipedia:
Recently, studies have questioned the existence of loss aversion. In several ...
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1answer
138 views
How do you predict a cognitive bias theoretically using dual process theory?
Disclaimer: I am a complete layman in psychology, with no education in the field whatsoever. This question was prompted by my reading Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow", in which he discusses the ...
