Post No.: 0850
Fluffystealthkitten says:
After hacking through the thicket of fallacies, superficial appeals, flawed arguments and faulty reasonings that came to a climax after Post No.: 0672, we’ve buddied up again to tackle some common biases, heuristics and psychological effects.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Yeah, we enjoyed it so much we’re at it again! Once more Wikipedia has been our main source of information and we’re going to approach all these in a similar way as last time. And again the primary mission is for us to be at least aware of these biases and other things so that we can hopefully remember to watch out for them.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
So without further ado, let’s fire up the engines!
Furrywisepuppy says:
…And we have lift off. We’re going to begin with some typical biases of perception and belief.
Agent detection – this concerns how people have a predisposition to believe that sentient or intelligent agents, like gods or ghosts, are responsible for some deliberate interventions, particularly to explain hitherto unexplainable events.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Anthropocentric thinking – this is the tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, phenomena.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Anthropomorphism or personification – the behaviours and characteristics of non-human animals, objects or concepts are prone to being anthropomorphised with human-like traits, thoughts, feelings and intentions. (Conversely, humans can frequently be dehumanised or objectified when we fail to attribute people human feelings or thoughts.)
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Apophenia – the way we tend to perceive meaningful connections or patterns even between unrelated or random things. This is how conspiracy theories form.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Assumed similarity bias – assuming we have more traits in common with others than we really do.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Attentional bias – the tendency for our perception to be affected by the thoughts we keep on thinking about or the things we keep mentally focusing on.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Availability cascade – a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility the more it is publicly reiterated. It’s the notion of ‘repeat something long enough and it’ll become true’.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Yes, repeat something long enough and it’ll become true.
Furrywisepuppy says:
That’s what I said – repeat something long enough and it’ll become true!
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Availability heuristic – the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events that are more ‘available’ in one’s memory. This can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual, mentally vivid or emotionally salient they may be. So we tend to make judgements concerning the probability of an event according to the ease with which examples come to mind, thus an easy-to-recall event will seem to occur more frequently, when it may actually be easy-to-recall simply because it happens rarely, only happened quite recently, is more saliently vivid and/or gets reported more and thus gets reminded of more.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Belief bias – when our assessment of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of its conclusion.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Bias blind spot or objectivity illusion – this is seeing oneself as less biased or more objective than others, or as more able to identify cognitive biases in others than in oneself. It’s the bias of thinking we aren’t biased or are less biased than others, to the extent that we can spot when others are being biased but not when we are, including when being susceptible to this very bias itself!
Furrywisepuppy says:
Cheerleader effect – the tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Contrast effect – how the perception of a stimulus can appear enhanced/reduced when compared with a contrasting object that’s been brought to mind. Well all qualitative judgements require something we’re comparing to, like something being ‘pretty’ or ‘ugly’ depends on what our reference objects are.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Curse of knowledge – when better-informed people find it hard to think about problems from the viewpoint of lesser-informed people. We assume they should know what we know.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Distinction bias – how two options can be deemed as more dissimilar when assessing them side-by-side than when assessing them separately.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Duration neglect – the neglect of the duration of an event when determining its value or impact.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Empathy gap – the tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings in either oneself at a different time (like oneself in the future or in another context), or in others. We can therefore fail to empathise with what others are feeling.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Exaggerated expectation – our expectations or anticipations tend to be more extreme than what’ll actually happen.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
False uniqueness bias – the tendency of us to see ourselves or our projects as more unique or special than we or they actually are. Our ideas are seldom as original as we think!
Furrywisepuppy says:
Focusing effect – the tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Framing effect – drawing different conclusions from the exact same information, depending on how or by whom that information is presented.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Frequency illusion or Baader-Meinhof phenomenon – this occurs when you didn’t notice a certain thing but then, after recently being brought attention to it, you now notice it everywhere. Or the effect of suddenly noticing things that were not noticed previously and, as a result, wrongly assuming that its frequency of appearance has increased rather than merely our perception of it around us has increased.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
G.I. Joe fallacy – the bias in thinking that merely knowing about a cognitive bias is sufficient to overcome it!
Furrywisepuppy says:
Hard-easy effect – the tendency to overestimate one’s ability in completing difficult tasks, and to underestimate one’s ability in completing easy tasks.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Hostile media effect – the tendency to see a media report as being biased against one’s opinions, owing to one’s own strong partisan and biased opposing opinions. It’s like if someone doesn’t agree with us then they’re biased (against us)!
Furrywisepuppy says:
Hot-cold empathy gap – the tendency to underestimate the influence of drives like hunger, thirst or sexual arousal on one’s attitudes, preferences and behaviours. It’s a specific example of the empathy gap above.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Illusion of control – overestimating one’s degree of influence over external events. Superstition is related to this, like thinking that wearing a certain shirt will influence the result of a sports match.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Illusory correlation – erroneously perceiving or remembering a relationship between two unrelated events.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Impact bias – the tendency to overestimate the duration and/or intensity of the impact of future affective states when affective forecasting, like presuming we’d stay just as elevated in happiness a year later after winning the lottery as we would on the first day, if we were to ever win the lottery.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Implicit association – here, the speed in which we can match words depends on how closely we believe they are associated.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Implicit egotism, name-letter effect, birthday-number effect and nominative determinism – a set of biases where we have an unconscious preference for anything that’s associated with ourselves, such as preferring the letters present in our names over other letters, preferring the numbers present in the date of our birthday over other numbers, or seeking careers that fit our names.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Impostor syndrome – this regards how we can seriously doubt our own abilities or accomplishments and feel a persistent internalised fear of being exposed as a fraud.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Naïve realism – the belief that we personally perceive reality as it really is, objectively and without bias, and that the facts are plain for all to see, so therefore everyone should agree with us unless they’re irrational, uninformed, lazy or biased!
Furrywisepuppy says:
Negativity bias – more easily remembering, or reading more into, unpleasant information compared to pleasant information.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Omission bias – the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse or more immoral than equally harmful inactions.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Optimism bias, positive outcome bias or valence effect – the tendency to be over-optimistic, thus overestimating the likelihood of desirable outcomes, and vice-versa; especially towards oneself relative to others, like believing one has less chance of developing heart disease than others in similar situations to us.
This is related to wishful thinking, albeit this bias can sometimes increase one’s self-motivation, like to live more healthily to reduce the chances of developing heart disease, thus in some cases it can actually lead to more positive outcomes. The other approach though is hubris and thinking that we’ll be fine whatever we do or not do.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Overconfidence effect – having excessive confidence in one’s own answers to questions or predictions.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Pareidolia – perceiving a vague and random stimulus as significant, like a face in a cloud or hidden message in a recording. It’s a form of apophenia.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Pessimism bias – the tendency to be over-pessimistic, thus overestimating the likelihood of undesirable outcomes, and vice-versa; particularly when faced with a threatening stimulus or if one has depression.
This bias can sometimes lead to self-defeating behaviours though, thus in some cases will actually lead to more negative outcomes. Although it could at other times lead to us being more proactive in reducing or mitigating a threat.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Plant blindness – how people can fail to recognise and appreciate the utility of plants in the environment to all life on this planet :(.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Positivity effect – reading more into positive information than negative information. (Older adults apparently tend to pay more attention to positive over negative stimuli/memories compared to younger adults.)
Furrywisepuppy says:
Pro-innovation bias – the tendency to be excessively optimistic about an invention’s usefulness for society, while often failing to appreciate its limitations.
That’s why we’re not all travelling around on a Segway or Sinclair C5!
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Projection bias – the tendency to subconsciously assume that others, or one’s own future selves, share one’s current emotional states, thoughts and values.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Recency illusion – the belief that the things that you have only noticed recently are recent when in fact they’ve been around or known for a while. Consequently, one can easily believe that one’s ideas must be original because one hasn’t personally heard about them from elsewhere before.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Rhyme-as-reason effect – rhyming statements are somehow perceived as being more truthful.
Like ‘if you weren’t born with a tail, your life is gonna fail’?(!)
Furrywisepuppy says:
Salience bias – how we tend to focus on more prominent or emotionally striking things while we ignore more mundane or unremarkable things, despite no objectivity as to why.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Saying-is-believing effect – how we might believe that something will come true if we say it, as if we will ‘will it into existence’ or ‘jinx’ it.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Selective perception – how our expectations tend to affect our perceptions.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Semmelweis reflex – the tendency to dismiss new evidence that contradicts an established norm, belief or paradigm.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Subjective validation – perceiving a piece of information to be correct if it has any personal meaning or furry significance to us. Or perceiving two unrelated events (a coincidence) to be related because of our personal hopes for them to be related.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Tachypsychia – when the perception of time can distort for us.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Weber-Fechner law – the difficulty in perceiving small differences between large quantities of something. Like in the contrast effect, differences are always judged relatively.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Zero-sum bias – incorrectly assuming a situation to be zero-sum (that gains and losses are correlated, or one person can only gain at the expense of another). For example, those with a high ‘social dominance orientation’ personality factor tend to believe that helping the disadvantaged will necessarily harm the advantaged.
Furrywisepuppy says:
…We’re going to have to halt here and take a break.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Mhm. This outer space is so vast, it’s going to take several more posts.
Furrywisepuppy says:
I want to play some zero-G baseball.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
I want to see what this freeze-dried ice cream tastes like too. Meow!
Furrywisepuppy says:
Save some for me. Woof!
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