# Cognitive bias and fallacies list These are the biases and fallacies that define and distort how we [understand](understanding.md) the world around us. While cognitive bias and fallacy crafts a [false image](people-image-why.md) relative to [reality](reality.md), most educated people don't often realize that they're very [useful](purpose.md) at making life more [meaningful](meaning.md) or [easier](success-4_routine.md): - There's *much* less mental work from filtering out information or converting it into a [story](stories-why.md). - Quick-and-easy solutions lets us sift through *much* more information, even if it's not that thorough. - By trusting things beyond ourselves, we [get along in society](people-culture.md) more easily. - By honoring our [fear impulses](mind-feelings-fear.md), we can successfully avoid most bad things that may happen, even if [modern society](jobs-specialization.md) often requires the *opposite* approach. - We can discover [meaning](meaning.md) and [purpose](purpose.md) from observations to give us something to live for, even when there's nothing there. - Irrational behavior is often the most [compassionate and loving](people-love.md), which is where the ultimate meaning of life resides. While avoiding all these aren't necessarily important to live a [good](goodlife.md) and [meaningful](meaning.md) life, we *must* be aware of them to keep our [imaginations and predictions](imagination.md) tethered closely with [reality](reality.md). It's worth noting that awareness of these biases don't necessarily change anything. We tend to veer into an *opposite* bias while trying to be accurate, and [influencing](power-influence.md) others with incentives to be unbiased doesn't help at all. This is not a complete list, and probably can never be. Besides including all optical illusions into it, it's based on a "rational actor model", which implies that everyone is [reasonable](understanding.md) until distorted by a bias. The rational actor model is likely wrong. Other specific bias: - [Bias rooted in fear](mind-bias-fear.md) - [Bias built around social interaction](mind-bias-social.md) - [Bias about the future](mind-bias-future.md) ## Detecting Information Availability heuristic/availability bias - we believe something is likely if we find 1 instance of it Expectations bias - expectations we've predetermined define what we perceive List-length effect - as lists grow, we remember more items in that list, but a smaller percentage of it Priming - we're constantly [influenced](power-influence.md) by subconscious [triggers](habits.md) Tachypsychia - our perception of time lengthens and slows down Weber-Fechner law - we detect increases in things proportionally to how many things there were at the beginning ## Ignoring Information Banner blindness/edge blindness - we learn to ignore what we repeatedly see Cross-race effect/cross-race bias/other-race bias/own-race bias/other-race effect - we more easily recognize faces that match our racial group Google effect/digital amnesia - we remember where something is, but not what it is Memory inhibition/part-list cueing effect/repetition blindness - we don't remember some items in a list or sequence because of other items Next-in-line effect - we ignore information that came right after what we just said No true Scotsman/purity appeal/perfect solution fallacy - we reject an idea because it doesn't fit every element we feel about something Normalcy bias/normality bias - we tend to ignore threat warnings Plant bias - we ignore plants, including when valuing their [importance and use](purpose.md) Selective perception/Ostrich effect/Semmelweis reflex - we ignore details we don't like Survivorship bias/survival bias/immortal time bias/swimmer's body illusion - we neglect to notice things that don't make it past a selection process ## Mixing/Merging Information Ad hominem - we mix up what we hear and why it was said Anthropomorphism/anthropocentrism - we assume human-like traits and experiences for non-human things Appeal to probability/appeal to possibility - we assume a likely thing is a guaranteed thing Argument from ignorance - we accept strange explanations when we're [uncertain](unknown.md) Bulverism - we will claim A, and because of B want A to be true, so A is false Circular reasoning/begging the question/petitio principii - our "why" questions can be answered sequentially in a loop Cognitive dissonance - we can believe opposite things at the same time Common source bias - we mix up information when it's from the same source Composition fallacy/frozen abstraction - we assume the qualities of a part are the qualities of the whole Confabulation - we mix up information Division fallacy - we assume the qualities of the whole are the qualities of the part Fictophilic paradox - we develop and desire relationships with people we know don't exist Illicit transference - we mix up things that are general principles for categories and specific things that don't apply to everything in a category Interoceptive bias/irrational hungry judge effect - we are influenced by external, unrelated circumstances Masked-man fallacy - we believe that because A has Quality 1 and B doesn't, then B can't have Quality 2 that A has Misinformation effect - we remember the wrong information because future information mixed with it Memory misattribution/source misattribution - we forget where things went and fail in 3 ways: - Cryptomnesia - we think something we heard was our original thought - False memory - we believe something that didn't happen actually happened - Source confusion - we misplace where we perceived something Mental accounting - we group money and expected likelihoods into exclusive, unrelated categories Nietzsche-Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski hypothesis/linguistic relativity hypothesis - we form [language](language.md) to organize and understand reality, *not* to simply clarify or communicate it Placebo effect - we positively change our physiology and attitude because of things that didn't do anything Stolen concept fallacy - we use A to disprove B, but A logically depends on B to exist Surrogation - we mix up the thing and the [measurement](math.md) of that thing Telescoping effect - we misplace the chronology of past and future events Tip of the tongue phenomenon - we can remember a [feeling](mind-feelings.md) tied to a word, but not the word itself Two negative premises - we believe that because A isn't B, and B isn't C, that A is C Undistributed middle - we believe that because Object A and Object B have Quality A, that Object A is Object B ## Prioritizing Memory Attentional bias - we remember things better if we think about them more frequently Attribute substitution - we use simple details when things get too complicated Belief bias - we agree with conclusions based on our beliefs, not on logic Bizarreness effect/humor effect - we remember odd or [funny](humor.md) things more than mundane things Boundary extension - we imagine the background of an image as larger than the foreground Childhood amnesia - we forget most things before age 4 Continued influence effect/misinformation effect - we still remember wrong information even after we were corrected Cue-dependent forgetting/context effect/mood-congruent memory bias - we recall memories based on our present thoughts Fading affect bias - we forget negative memories faster than positive ones Generation effect - we remember things we thought more than things we observed Implicit association - we remember words based on how closely connected we've made them Isolation effect/Von Restorff effect - when we perceive multiple things, we remember the most different thing of all of them Lag effect/spacing effect - we learn more easily when the information is spaced out over time Mandela effect - we remember things that never happened Memory inhibition effect - we partially don't remember things Perky effect - we mix up imagined and real images Persistence - we re-experience [painful memories](hardship-ptsd.md) Picture superiority effect - we remember pictures more than words Reminiscence bump - we remember our adolescence and early adulthood more than most other periods of our lives Serial position effect/list length effect - we remember the first and last things in a series the easiest - Anchoring bias/contrast effect/focusing effect/primacy effect/arbitrary coherence - we rely heavily on the first observed piece of information - Availability heuristic/recency bias/suffix effect/Travis syndrome - we prioritize recent and available information over older information - Serial position-negativity effect - assuming things are the same, we dislike things later in a sequence with the same qualities Suggestibility - we mistake someone's question as our thought Unit bias - we feel one unit of something is the ideal amount ## Crafting Stories Anecdotal fallacy/spotlight fallacy/Volvo effect/hasty generalization/proof by example/no limits fallacy - we use personal experiences or isolated examples instead of sound arguments or compelling evidence Apophenia/bucket errors/clustering illusion/data dredging/illusory correlation - we connect unrelated information and believe they're connected Association fallacy - we conclude that if A is B and A is C, that B is also C Converse error/affirming the consequent - we assume only A can cause B, and B, therefore A Denying the antecedent - we assume only A can cause B, and not A, so not B False cause - we assume A coming before B means A caused B Framing effect - we change our decisions based on whether the options were positively or negatively expressed Frequency illusion/Baader-Meinhof effect - we start seeing something everywhere once we've noticed it Pareidolia/Texas sharpshooter fallacy - we create [meaning](meaning.md) out of things that have no meaning Peak-end rule/duration neglect - we measure an experience by its most intense point and how it ends, *not* by all its parts Eaton-Rosen phenomenon/rhyme as reason effect - we consider things are more true when they rhyme Levels-of-processing effect/testing effect/processing difficulty effect - we [understand](understanding.md) things better when we mentally process them more Leveling and sharpening - we omit information from stories (leveling) and add details to our stories (sharpening) Magical thinking/Tinker Bell effect - we make and believe stories that explain coincidences Modality effect - we remember things based on how they're presented Red herring - we connect concepts that are only barely related Salience bias - we focus on things that [emotionally](mind-feelings.md) affect us more than things that don't Sample size insensitivity - we judge likelihoods while ignoring the number of events that had that likelihood Storytelling effect - we remember [stories](stories-why.md) more than [facts](reality.md) Survivor's guilt - we feel guilty if we survived an event that killed those around us Verbatim effect - we remember the "gist" of something more than exact wording ## Faster Selecting Additive bias - we tend to solve problems by adding when we should be subtracting Ambiguity effect - we prioritize decisions where things are more [certain](understanding-certainty.md) Attentional bias - we filter thoughts based on what we're paying attention to Base rate fallacy - we prioritize individual information over general information Cashless effect - we spend more when we don't actually see our money Center-stage effect - we choose the middle option in a set of items Decoy effect/attraction effect/asymmetric dominance effect - we change our opinion of 2 options when a 3rd option is inherently worse than one of them and has pros and cons with the other Default effect - we tend to choose the most standard option Denomination effect - we tend to spend smaller amounts of money (e.g., coins) more quickly than larger amounts (e.g., banknotes) Distinction bias - we find more differences between two things when we examine them together versus separately Fallacy argument/fallacy appeal/Mister Spock fallacy - we assume a faulty premise automatically means a faulty conclusion False dichotomy/false dilemma fallacy - we assume an either/or extreme and ignore other possibilities Genetic fallacy - we assume something's origin defines whether it's true Golden Mean fallacy - we assume the "middle ground" between two points is the best option Group attractiveness effect - we find individual items more attractive when presented in a group Ignorance appeal/ignorance argument/lack of imagination argument/personal incredulity argument - we assume something is true or false only because it hasn't been proven otherwise Law of the instrument/law of the hammer/Maslow's gavel/golden hammer - the thing we use dictates how we perceive everything else Less-is-better effect - we prefer smaller amounts of uneven comparisons when observing them separately, then reverse our preference when they're observed together Money illusion/price illusion - we measure money based on its relative number instead of [what it can do](purpose.md) for us Prosecutor's fallacy - we reject an event's explanation even though our preferred expectation is even *more* unlikely Reactive devaluation - we assume information from an enemy has less value