Cognitive Biases

Loaded language (also known as loaded terms or emotive language) is rhetoric used to influence an audience by using words and phrases with strong connotations.

A euphemism is a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.

The paradox of choice is the idea that having too many options can make decisions harder, reduce satisfaction, and even lead to decision paralysis.

The choice overload effect occurs when having too many options makes it harder to decide, reduces satisfaction, or leads people to avoid choosing at all.

Procrastination is the action of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so.

The time-saving bias describes the tendency of people to misestimate the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) speed.

Temporal discounting (or hyperbolic discounting) is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs.

The ambiguity effect is a cognitive bias where decision makers avoid options that are considered to be ambiguous or to have missing information.

The recency illusion is the tendency to believe that something we have just noticed is new, when in fact it has existed for a long time.

Salience bias is the tendency to focus on the most noticeable or emotionally striking information, while ignoring less vivid but often more important data.

Negativity bias is the tendency to give more weight to negative experiences or information than to positive ones of equal intensity.

The nocebo effect occurs when negative expectations or beliefs about a treatment or situation produce harmful or unpleasant outcomes.

The placebo effect is the phenomenon where a person's symptoms improve after receiving an inert treatment, driven by expectations, meaning, and context rather than active ingredients.

The mere exposure effect is the tendency to develop a preference for things simply because we are familiar with them.

The frequency illusion is the tendency to notice something more often after we first become aware of it, making it seem like it suddenly occurs more frequently.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is the anxious feeling that others are having rewarding experiences without you, driving constant checking and overcommitment.

Automation bias is the tendency to over-trust computer systems and automated recommendations, discounting or overlooking contradictory human judgment or real‑world evidence.

The affect heuristic is a mental shortcut where people make decisions and solve problems by relying heavily on their current emotional state.

The representativeness heuristic is the tendency to judge the probability of an event by how much it resembles a typical case, often ignoring base rates and statistical logic.

The Einstellung effect is the tendency to stick with familiar solutions and strategies even when better or simpler options are available.

The law of the instrument is the tendency to overuse familiar tools or approaches, seeing problems mainly in terms of the solutions we already have.

Functional fixedness is the tendency to see objects and resources only in terms of their usual functions, making it harder to spot creative uses.

Congruence bias is the tendency to test only one favored hypothesis and to ignore or underexplore alternative explanations.

The ostrich effect is the tendency to avoid or ignore negative information, especially about risks or losses, in order to reduce anxiety.

Information bias is the tendency to seek or value information that does not meaningfully improve decisions, simply because more information feels better.

Ambiguity aversion is the tendency to prefer known risks over unknown or poorly defined risks, even when the expected outcomes are similar.

Commitment bias is the tendency to stick with past decisions or stated positions, even when they are no longer optimal, in order to appear consistent.

Irrational escalation is the tendency to continue investing in a failing course of action because of past investments, even when changing direction would yield better outcomes.

Mental accounting is the tendency to treat money differently depending on where it came from or how we label it, rather than viewing all funds as interchangeable.

The denomination effect is the tendency to spend money more easily when it is in smaller units (like coins or small bills) than when it is in larger units.

Unit bias is the tendency to view a single unit of something—such as a portion, package, or task—as the appropriate or complete amount, regardless of its actual size.

Money illusion is the tendency to think in terms of nominal currency values rather than real purchasing power adjusted for inflation.

Distinction bias is the tendency to overemphasize small differences between options when comparing them side by side, even though those differences matter little in isolation.

The contrast effect is the tendency to judge something as better or worse depending on what it is compared to, rather than on its absolute qualities.

The Forer effect (also known as the Barnum effect) is the tendency for individuals to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

The rhyme-as-reason effect (or Eaton-Rosen phenomenon) is a cognitive bias where a saying or aphorism is judged as more accurate or truthful when it is rewritten to rhyme.

The fluency heuristic is a mental shortcut where the ease of processing information (fluency) is used as a proxy for its truth, value, or likelihood.

The illusion of explanatory depth is the tendency for people to believe they understand how something works much better than they actually do.

Declinism is the belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition to view the past more favorably and the future more negatively.

Motivated reasoning is the tendency to process information in a way that suits our desired conclusions, rather than seeking objective truth.

Post-purchase rationalization is the tendency to justify a purchase after the fact by focusing on its positives and downplaying its drawbacks.

Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort we feel when our beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors conflict, often leading us to change one of them to restore harmony.

Belief perseverance is the tendency to cling to initial beliefs even after the evidence used to form them has been discredited or overturned.

Zero-risk bias is the tendency to prefer options that completely eliminate a small risk over options that achieve larger overall risk reductions but leave some risk remaining.

The endowment effect is our tendency to value things we own more highly than identical things we do not own, simply because they are ours.

Overvaluing things we partially created.

Overemphasizing one aspect while ignoring others.

Overestimating emotional impact of future events.

Overestimating our self-control.

Assuming our future preferences will match our current ones.

Overvaluing immediate rewards.

Preferring smaller, sooner rewards over larger, later ones.

Underestimating the likelihood of disaster.

Judging decisions by results, not quality.

Overestimating our influence over outcomes.

The planning fallacy is a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias and underestimate the time needed.

Overestimating our knowledge and abilities.

The conjunction fallacy is the tendency to judge a specific, detailed scenario as more likely than a more general one that contains it, violating basic probability rules.

The base rate fallacy is the tendency to ignore or underweight general statistical information (base rates) in favor of vivid or specific case details when judging probability.

Regression to the mean is the statistical tendency for extreme performances or measurements to be followed by more average ones, often misinterpreted as real change or the effect of interventions.

The hot-hand fallacy is the belief that a person who has experienced a streak of success is more likely to continue succeeding, even when outcomes are independent and random.

The gambler’s fallacy is the mistaken belief that past random events make future independent events more likely to be the opposite, such as expecting a tail after many consecutive heads.

Pessimism bias is the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes and underestimate the likelihood of positive ones, especially for oneself.

Optimism bias is the tendency to underestimate the likelihood of negative events and overestimate the likelihood of positive ones, especially for ourselves.

The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to continue a course of action because of past investments of time, money, or effort, even when changing course would lead to a better outcome.

Status quo bias is the tendency to prefer the current state of affairs and avoid change, even when alternatives are objectively better.

The framing effect is a cognitive bias where people decide on options based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations; e.g. as a loss or as a gain.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.

The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater 'availability' in memory, which can be influenced by how recent, unusual, or emotionally charged the memories are.

The tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information encountered (the 'anchor') when making decisions, even when that information is irrelevant or arbitrary.

The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information that confirms pre-existing beliefs while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.