Think Better: Common Cognitive Biases You’re Susceptible To

Cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking. It affects how we receive and process information, how we form and protect beliefs, how we interpret our experiences, and how we respond to change. These biases happen because our attention is limited, and so our brains develop shorthand — mental shortcuts — to help us make quick judgments. Everyone is susceptible to these errors; however, all hope is not lost. Being conscious of these blind spots in your thinking will make you a better thinker.

Common cognitive biases

Let’s talk about the top 10 most common cognitive biases, grouped into four different categories.

How we form and protect beliefs

Confirmation bias: this refers to our tendency to notice, focus on, and pay more attention to information that confirms our existing beliefs. It includes things like cherry-picking information that supports your argument or only following people who share your viewpoints and refusing to consider opposing perspectives.

Anchoring bias: this refers to our tendency to be overly influenced by the first piece of information we receive. For example, when you’re shopping, the first price told to you is the anchor, and you compare every other price to it, so that if someone sells it just slightly cheaper than that, it feels like a bargain and so you buy it. Everything else is compared to the first thing you heard.

How we process information

Availability heuristic: this refers to our tendency to think that things that happened recently are more likely to happen again. We estimate the probability of something happening based on how many examples readily come to mind. For example, if you hear about car thefts in the news, you end up believing that they are more common than they are.

Negativity bias: this bias results in negative events having a more significant impact on our psychological state than positive events. It is why we feel negative events more intensely than positive events. For example, it explains why we may obsess over small errors when the rest of the project was good.

Framing effect: this bias explains why our decisions are dependent on how options are presented to us. Information is more or less attractive depending on which features are highlighted. For example, you’re more likely to consider a treatment option if the doctor says it’s 95% effective versus if he says there’s a 5% chance it may not work.

Halo effect: refers to our tendency to use our first impression of someone to make an overall judgment about them. It explains why we think attractive people are kinder, smarter, funnier, even better people overall than less attractive people. Our initial appreciation of their beauty influences how we interpret everything about them going forward.

How we interpret our own experience

Hindsight bias: refers to our tendency to perceive events, even random ones, as more predictable than they really are. Our current knowledge of how things turned out makes us overestimate our ability to predict future events. It’s the “I knew it all along” effect.

Self-serving bias: it explains why we attribute positive outcomes to ourselves and negative outcomes to external forces. For example, if a project you’re working on goes well, you attribute it to your hard work and intelligence; if it fails, you blame your coworkers for not pulling their weight. A common one is that people attribute getting hired to personal characteristics like talent and their termination to external factors like a bad boss.

Actor-observer bias: this refers to the tendency to attribute our actions to external influences and other people’s actions to internal ones. It explains why we extend grace and understanding to ourselves that we deny others. For example, you botched an important meeting because you were recovering from the flu, but your colleague who also gave a dismal performance did so because they are lazy and incompetent.

How we respond to change

Status quo bias: this explains why we like things as they are and are resistant to change. For example, this is why even though you’re not satisfied with your current streaming service, you’re unlikely to do the research about alternative options, so you grit your teeth and shell out the money every month.