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Thinking and Deciding

Study it inPsychology Level 1: How Your Mind Tricks You

Map

Arrows point from what you learn first to what it opens. Right-click a concept (or press and hold it) for its lessons and stories.

  • Proven to depth123
  • Open
  • Locked
  • Comes back deeper
Better-than-average effectBias blind spotCognitive biasCognitive dissonanceConsider the oppositeDefault effectFalse consensusFast and slow thinkingFraming effectFundamental attribution errorGambler's fallacyHalo effectIllusion of controlIllusion of understandingIn-group biasLoss aversionMental shortcutsNegativity biasPlanning fallacyRegression to the meanSeeing patterns in chanceSelective attentionSpotlight effectSunk costIntrospectionIn EpistemologyConfirmation biasIn Epistemology

Learning path

In the order the concepts build on each other.

  1. Consider the oppositeLockedAsking what you would think if the evidence had pointed the other way. It helps far more than trying to be fair (Lord, Lepper and Preston, 1984), weakens anchors, and gives the pre-mortem for plans.Opens after: Confirmation bias
  2. Fast and slow thinkingReadyThe mind thinks in two ways: fast thinking is quick and automatic, slow thinking is careful and takes effort (Kahneman, 2011). Fast thinking is usually right, but slow thinking is lazy and often accepts its answers without checking.
  3. Selective attentionReadyThe mind attends to what matters for the task and filters out the rest, so we can miss something big in plain sight (inattentional blindness): about half of people counting basketball passes missed a person in a gorilla suit (Simons and Chabris, 1999). Attention is a spotlight, not a floodlight.
  4. Mental shortcutsLockedQuick rules of thumb (heuristics) that give a good-enough answer without slow thinking, like picking the city you've heard of as the bigger one (Goldstein and Gigerenzer, 2002). They usually work well, which is why we have them.Opens after: Fast and slow thinking
  5. Cognitive biasLockedA mistake the mind makes in a predictable direction, again and again, in most people - not a random slip and not stupidity. Like the Müller-Lyer lines (1889), it usually comes from a shortcut that misfires, and knowing about it doesn't switch it off.Opens after: Mental shortcuts
  6. Better-than-average effectLockedMost people rate themselves above the middle of their group at everyday skills and good qualities, which can't be true for everyone. In Ola Svenson's 1981 study about 9 in 10 American students put themselves in the safer half of drivers.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  7. Bias blind spotLockedSeeing biases in other people more easily than in yourself. Most people rate themselves less biased than the average person, even right after reading about biases (Pronin, Lin and Ross, 2002).Opens after: Cognitive bias, Introspection
  8. Cognitive dissonanceLockedThe uncomfortable feeling of holding two thoughts that clash, which pushes us to quietly change one of them - like the fox who decides the grapes he can't reach were sour (Leon Festinger, 1957). How strong the effect is remains debated.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  9. Default effectLockedPeople keep the option that happens if they do nothing (the default) much more often than they would choose it on their own. When a company in the United States put new workers into its savings plan automatically, the share who saved jumped from under half to almost 9 in 10 (Madrian and Shea, 2001).Opens after: Cognitive bias
  10. False consensusLockedThinking our own choices, tastes and opinions are more common than they really are (Ross, Greene and House, 1977). People on both sides of a choice each think most others are with them. Ask and count, don't assume.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  11. Fundamental attribution errorLockedExplaining what other people do by their character, and forgetting the situation that pushed them (Jones and Harris, 1967; named by Lee Ross, 1977). Before judging someone by one moment, ask what situation would make you do the same.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  12. Halo effectLockedOne good quality we notice in a person or a thing makes us see other good qualities in it too, even ones we know nothing about (Thorndike, 1920; Nisbett and Wilson, 1977). It works the other way for a bad quality. Judge one quality at a time.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  13. Illusion of understandingLockedThings we use every day feel understood until we try to explain how they work (the illusion of explanatory depth). In Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil's 2002 study, people's scores for how well they understood a zip or a toilet dropped after they tried to explain it.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  14. In-group biasLockedFavouring your own group over others, even when the groups were made for almost no reason (Tajfel, 1970-71). We also tend to see the other group's members as all alike. Ask whether you would judge the same if the person were in your group.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  15. Loss aversionLockedLosing something feels worse than gaining the same thing feels good - about twice as strong, on average (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). It makes us turn down fair chances and value what we own more than what we could get (the endowment effect).Opens after: Cognitive bias
  16. Negativity biasLockedA bad event, word or feeling weighs more with us than a good one of the same size: "bad is stronger than good" (Roy Baumeister and colleagues, 2001). It kept our ancestors careful; counting the good on purpose helps.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  17. Planning fallacyLockedWe expect our own jobs to take less time and money than they do, even when similar jobs ran late. Students in Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin and Michael Ross's 1994 study guessed about 34 days for a project that took about 56. The outside view helps: how long did similar jobs really take?Opens after: Cognitive bias
  18. Seeing patterns in chanceLockedReal chance is clumpier than we expect, so the mind takes clumps and gaps made by chance for a sign of something real - like the flying-bomb hits on London that R. D. Clarke (1946) showed fitted pure chance. Finding patterns is useful, so the mind would rather see too many.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  19. Spotlight effectLockedWe feel that other people notice our looks and mistakes much more than they do. In Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec and Kenneth Savitsky's 2000 study, students in an embarrassing T-shirt guessed about half a room noticed; about a quarter did.Opens after: Cognitive bias
  20. Framing effectLockedPutting the same fact in different words (a different frame) changes what people think and choose. People rated minced beef labelled "75% lean" as tastier and less greasy than the same beef labelled "25% fat" (Levin and Gaeth, 1988).Opens after: Loss aversion
  21. Gambler's fallacyLockedThe mistaken belief that after a run of one result, the other is "due". At Monte Carlo in 1913, black came up 26 times in a row at roulette while people kept betting on red. A coin, a dice or a wheel has no memory: every try has the same chances.Opens after: Seeing patterns in chance
  22. Illusion of controlLockedThe feeling that we can steer what is really chance: office workers who chose their own lottery ticket wanted over four times as much to give it up (Langer, 1975), and dice players threw softly for low numbers (Henslin, 1967). Ask which part you actually control.Opens after: Seeing patterns in chance
  23. Regression to the meanLockedWhere luck plays a part, an unusually high or low result is usually followed by one closer to the average, just by chance (Galton, 1886). It makes us credit or blame whatever happened in between, like praise or telling off.Opens after: Seeing patterns in chance
  24. Sunk costLockedMoney, time or effort already spent that can't be got back. It often pulls us to carry on with something we no longer want, like going to a concert in the rain because we paid (Arkes and Blumer, 1985), though only what comes next can still change.Opens after: Loss aversion

Connections to other domains