3 Cognitive Biases That Change Your Thinking

There are too many fields of cognitive function (thinking, knowing, and remembering) to summarize in a short article, so I hope to provide some quick information that is easy to read and understand, and I would like to touch on some useful examples instead of definitions, statistics, or clinical terms.

Note: This article is from blogger Steven Aitchison, who talks about cognitive biases.

Cognitive bias is defined as a pattern of skewed judgment. Influences on people and situations can appear in an irrational way. Cognitive bias is a general term used to describe most observer effects in the human mind, some of which can lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, or irrational interpretation.

In general terms: it is a gap between the way we ought to think and the way we actually think. It is irrational thinking, such as judging or unfairly favoring a particular person, group, or thing.

You may not have noticed it, but biases are ingrained in the decisions we make from the time we are born. Biases are one of the most intriguing phenomena of the evolving mindset. The brain has evolved to make us believe that we are special, valuable, and capable of anything.

Biases help you feel special and overcome stressors, struggles, and challenges in your life. It also helps you avoid doubting yourself or feeling foolish. We take sides in a variety of areas of bias for living in certain climates and temperatures to seeking out certain types of foods and tastes.

You can imagine the potential time pressures our ancestors faced. This is because the ability to make split-second decisions is essential for survival, and it has been speculated that biases may have evolved in part to help us make decisions quickly and effectively. This is to do quick checks on the information available to us and to focus on the parts related to our task or our current situation. In short, biases help guide us and keep us safe.

Research into human choices and decision-making over the past 60 years in cognitive science, social psychology, and behavioral economics has found a growing and evolving list of cognitive biases. Although cognitive biases help us feel amazing about our own abilities and self-image, they also have disadvantages and lead to poor choices, bad judgments, and false visions.

The effect of cognitive biases

The influence of cognitive biases includes memory, motivation, decision-making, likelihood of making judgments, perceived reasons for events, group evaluation and choice, and having a positive attitude towards oneself.

Biases emerge from a variety of mental processes that can be difficult to pinpoint. These mental processes include inference (the mind's shortcuts to solve problems), framing (presentation), mental noise, moral and emotional motives, and social influences.

The goal is not to completely remove your biases, but to become aware of them and adapt to them by recognizing that your thinking is being influenced. You can operate with a greater level of control, and you can simultaneously correct and broaden your viewpoint. So it's really fun to start noticing your biases, confronting them, and deconstructing your perceptions.

The danger of not realizing your own biases lies in believing that you are always right. It is important to note that the world looks different to others. Dropping our biases enables us to listen and communicate with each other more effectively.

3 Predictable cognitive biases

While these biases may be a little exaggerated, they are more or less the same among most people, and it doesn't take long for you to discover that you are using and adapting to these things.

1. Confirmation bias

“The tendency to seek out or interpret information that confirms your preconceptions.”

You want to be right about the way you see the world. Your opinions are the product of a constant search for information that confirms your beliefs while ignoring contradictory information that does not. You would love someone to tell you what you already know, so you use a tool called confirmation bias. Your brain helps confirm that you've made the right decision, and focusing on certain things can help keep you from getting lost. Confirmation bias is essential to an interconnected world.

Visiting political sites with similar views, watching news channels that tell you what you want to hear, and keeping company with people who share your beliefs. These are all examples of confirmation bias.

These preferential behaviors put you at ease and help you avoid cognitive dissonance. The thing that has exacerbated this behavior is the internet, for example, if you buy a car of a certain brand, you can start noticing your chosen brand wherever you look.

2. Priming

“The implicit memory of exposure to one stimulus affects the response to another stimulus.”

A priming is exposure to something that affects your subsequent behavior in some way without realizing the previous effect. The effects of an unconscious priming can be very noticeable, and can persist long after you have forgotten about them.

For example, craving food you saw in a movie, walking slowly after thinking of old people, the effect of a certain TV show on your behavior, being patient after reading a few words related to politeness - these are all examples of priming.

A particular word can simply be read earlier in the day, and if you are later asked to complete a word that begins with the same letters as the word you read earlier, you are more likely to write the same word because you were prepared for that previously.

3. Framing effect

“Reacting to a particular option in different ways depending on how it is presented, that is, if it is presented as a loss or a gain.”

You routinely reach different conclusions about the same problem depending on how you present it. The perception of loss or gain has an impact on decision-making in every aspect of our existence. You avoid risk (risk aversion) when something is presented in a negative frame. But you seek risk (risk-seeking) when something is presented in a positive frame.

Phrasing also plays a major role in framing, and can elicit completely different reactions to something. The different response after hearing the phrase “global warming” versus “climate change” is an example of the framing effect.

I'm going to talk about a framing experiment conducted by a psychologist:

Participants were offered two alternative solutions for dealing with 600 people with a hypothetical fatal disease:

• The first option: Save 200 lives.
• The second option: They have a low chance of saving all 600 people and a higher chance of saving no one.

72% of the participants chose the first option.

The same scenario was then presented to another group of participants, but the wording was different:

• In a third option: 400 people may die.
• In a fourth option: There is a small chance that no one will die but a greater possibility that 600 people will die.

In this group, 78% of the participants chose the fourth option (equivalent to the second option).

The above experience illustrates the nature of framing, the two groups preferred different options because of the way those options were presented. The first group of participants gave a positive frame (focusing on the lives that would be saved) and the second group a negative frame (focusing on the lives that would be lost).

In conclusion

It is great to be aware of the processes that influence our judgments. This is because having a basic knowledge of how our brains actually work is essential for logic, reasoning, argumentation, and critical thinking, and it also allows us to recognize the manipulation and influence of others on these biases (marketing firms and political campaigns).

Cognitive biases are also associated with the persistence of superstitions and larger social issues such as intolerance, and they also act as an impediment to the acceptance of counterintuitive scientific knowledge by people.