61 cognitive biases that screw up everything we do

Shana Lebowitz,Allana Akhtar,Marguerite WardMay 5, 2020, 23:11 IST

Biases and logical fallacies can cloud our judgement and make us prone to acting in ways that don't serve our best interest.Syda Productions/Shutterstock.com

Hundreds of biases cause humans to behave irrationally.
For instance, the denomination effect is when people are less likely to spend large bills than their equivalent value in small bills or coins.
Overconfidence is when some of us are too confident about our abilities, and this causes us to take greater risks in our daily lives.
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We like to think we're rational human beings — but in reality, we are prone to hundreds of proven biases that cause us to think and act irrationally.

Even thinking we're rational despite evidence of irrationality in others is known as blind-spot bias.

The study of how often human beings do irrational things was enough for psychologist Daniel Kahneman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, and it opened the rapidly expanding field of behavioral economics. Similar insights are also reshaping everything from marketing to criminology.

Hoping to clue you — and ourselves — into the biases that frame our decisions, we've collected a long list of the most notable ones.

This is an update of an article that was previously published with additional contributions by Drake Baer and Gus Lubin.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The rhyme-as-reason effect occurs when your brain finds rhyming statements more accurate.

Defendant OJ Simpson wearing the blood stained gloves found by Los Angeles Police and entered into evidence in Simpson's murder trial displays his hand in front of the jury at the request of prosecutor Christopher Darden June 15. Prosecutors sought to prove the gloves fit Simpson's hands Reuters

The "well-traveled road" is why we underestimate the time it takes to get to work on your daily commute, but arrive at the airport hours ahead for a trip you've never taken before.

Hryshchyshen Serhii / Getty Images

The "well-traveled road" is why we underestimate the time it takes to get to work on your daily commute, but arrive at the airport hours ahead for a trip you've never taken before.

The fallacy of sunk costs describes the mistake thinking that just because we've worked on something for a long time, we should keep working on it, even if the costs of continuing to work on it outweigh the benefits.

Getty Images

The fallacy of sunk costs describes the mistake thinking that just because we've worked on something for a long time, we should keep working on it, even if the costs of continuing to work on it outweigh the benefits.

Zero-risk bias occurs when we choose to eliminate risk absolutely in one area, rather than eliminate more risk spread out across different areas.

A snowboarder gets air on a jump at the Woodward at Cooper terrain park on the opening day at Copper Mountain ski area Friday, November 4th, 2011. This is the first year that the terrain park has ever opened for opening day. Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Unit bias occurs when people think a particular size is the optimal amount.

Jeffreyw via Flickr

Tragedy of the commons occurs when individuals use public resources in their own self interest rather than for the common good.

Wolfgang Kaehler / Contributor

Survivorship bias occurs when individuals focus on successful outcomes, yet overlook failure.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg

Stereotyping occurs when people generalize characteristics about others based on the groups they belong to.

Yepoka Yeebo / Business Insider

Status quo bias is the tendency to prefer things to stay the same.

Áine Cain/Business Insider

Self-enhancing transmission bias occurs when everyone shares their successes more than their failures.

Boonsri Dickinson, Business Insider

Selective attention occurs when we allow our expectations to influence how we perceive the world.

Wikimedia Commons

Seersucker illusion is the over-reliance on expert advice.

FILE - In this Oct. 9, 2018 file photo, a researcher installs a fine glass pipette into a microscope in preparation for injecting embryos with Cas9 protein and PCSK9 sgRNA at a lab in Shenzhen in southern China's Guandong province. On Tuesday, March 19, 2019, an expert committee convened by the World Health Organization is calling for the U.N. health agency to create a global registry of scientists working on gene editing. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File) Associated Press

Scope insensitivity is where your willingness to pay for something doesn't correlate with the scale of the outcome.

Hector Guerrero/VICE News

Salience is our tendency to focus on the most easily recognizable features of a person or concept.

Luis Alvarez/Getty Images

Restraint bias occurs when we overestimate our capacity for impulse control.

Yelp

Regression bias occurs when people take action in response to extreme situations. When the situations become less extreme, they take credit for causing the change, when a more likely explanation is that the situation was reverting to the mean.

Israeli air force F-16 wait in line to take off from Ovda airbase near Eilat, southern Israel, November 25, 2013. Associated Press

Regression bias occurs when people take action in response to extreme situations. When the situations become less extreme, they take credit for causing the change, when a more likely explanation is that the situation was reverting to the mean.

Reciprocity is the belief that fairness should trump other values, even when it's not in our economic or other interests.

Getty Images

Recency is the tendency to weigh the latest information more heavily than older data.

Investech Research via The Big Picture

Reactance refers to the desire to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do, in order to prove your freedom of choice.

People walk along the commercial Ermou street next to graffiti reading "Troika" in central Athens Thomson Reuters

Procrastination occurs when you decide to act in favor of the present moment over investing in the future.

Wikimedia Commons

Pro-innovation bias occurs when a proponent of an innovation tends to overvalue its usefulness and undervalue its limitations.

Daniel Goodman / Business Insider

Priming is when you more readily identify ideas related to a previously introduced idea.

A man drinks water near a fountain on a hot summer day in Brussels, Belgium, July 19, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Post-purchase rationalization is when we overlook an expensive item's flaws to justify the purchase.

Alex Davies / Business Insider

Planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate how much time it will take to complete a task.

Unsplash/STIL

Placebo effect is when simply believing that something will have a certain impact on you causes it to have that effect.

AP Images

Pessimism bias occurs when individuals overestimate how often negative things will happen to them.

Library of Congress

Overoptimism occurs when individuals believe they are less likely to encounter negative events.

Half full

Overconfidence is when some of us are too confident about our abilities, and this causes us to take greater risks in our daily lives.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Outcome bias refers to judging a decision based on the outcome, rather than how exactly the decision was made in the moment.

Wikimedia Commons

The ostrich effect is the decision to ignore dangerous or negative information by "burying" one's head in the sand, like an ostrich.

Mark Kolbe / Getty Images

Omission bias is the tendency to prefer inaction to action, in ourselves and even in politics.

President Obama signs a presidential memorandum for overtime protections for workers at the White House, on March 13, 2014. Mark Wilson/Getty

The observer-expectancy effect is when a researcher's expectations impact the outcome of an experiment.

U.S. Army Research Lab

Negativity bias is the tendency to put more emphasis on negative experiences rather than positive ones.

A grizzly bear roams through the Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, May 18, 2014. The nearly 3,500 square mile park straddling the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho was founded in 1872 as America's first national park. Picture taken May 18, 2014. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart

Irrational escalation is when people make irrational decisions based on past rational decisions.

Shutterstock

Inter-group bias is when we view people in our group differently from how see we someone in another group.

Information bias is the tendency to seek information when it does not affect action.

Wikimedia Commons

Illusion of control is when people overestimate how much control they have over certain situations.

Getty Images

Ideomotor effect occurs when the body reacts to ideas alone.

Universal/Ouija trailer

Hyperbolic discounting happens when people make decisions for a smaller reward sooner, rather than a greater reward later.

Tony Manfred/Business Insider

Hindsight bias is when people claim to have predicted an outcome that was impossible to predict at the time.

A model poses with the new Nokia "E90 Communicator" phone during its launch in New Delhi June 28, 2007. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

Herding occurs when individuals mirror the sometimes irrational actions of a group.

Wikipedia

Hard-easy bias occurs when individuals underestimate their ability to perform easy tasks, yet overestimate their ability to perform more difficult ones.

YouTube / Pi

Halo effect is when we take one positive attribute of someone and associate it with everything else about that person or thing.

Frazer Harrison/Getty

Galatea effect occurs when people succeed — or underperform — because they think they should.

Galatea by Raphael http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Galatea_Raphael.jpg

Fundamental attribution error is where you attribute a person's behavior to an intrinsic quality of her identity rather than the situation she's in.

Photographer is my life./Getty Images

Frequency illusion occurs when a word, name or thing you just learned about suddenly appears everywhere.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Empathy gap occurs when people in one state of mind fail to understand people in another state of mind.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the Economic Club of Washington DC's "Milestone Celebration Dinner." REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Duration neglect occurs when the duration of an event doesn't factor enough into the way we consider it.

University of Hong Kong

Denomination effect is when people are less likely to spend large bills than their equivalent value in small bills or coins.

US dollars at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing REUTERS/Gary Cameron

Decoy effect is a phenomenon in marketing where consumers have a specific change in preference between two choices after being presented with a third choice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Decoys.jpg

Curse of knowledge means that when people know something, it's hard to imagine not knowing it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sheldon_Cooper.jpg

Conservatism bias occurs when people believe prior evidence more than new evidence.

AP Images

Conformity describes how people tend to behave similarly to other people.

Getty Images

Confirmation bias describes the tendency to only listen to information that confirms our preconceptions.

AP Photo/Stephen J. Boitano

The clustering illusion happens when we see trends in random events that happen close together.

Croupier turns the roulette Thomson Reuters

Choice-supportive bias describes the tendency to have positive attitudes about the things or ideas we choose, even when they are flawed.

Flickr/Eve

Bias blind spots describes how individuals can see bias in others, but struggle to see their own biases.

Flickr / Tristan Bowersox

The bandwagon effect describes when people do something simply because others are also doing it.

Michael Dodge/Getty Images

Availability heuristic describes a shortcut where people make decisions based on information that's easier to remember.

Francisco Osorio/Flickr

Anchoring bias means people rely too heavily on the first piece of information they hear when making decisions.

Getty Images

The affect heuristic describes how humans sometimes make decisions based on emotion.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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61 cognitive biases that screw up everything we do

The rhyme-as-reason effect occurs when your brain finds rhyming statements more accurate.

The "well-traveled road" is why we underestimate the time it takes to get to work on your daily commute, but arrive at the airport hours ahead for a trip you've never taken before.

The fallacy of sunk costs describes the mistake thinking that just because we've worked on something for a long time, we should keep working on it, even if the costs of continuing to work on it outweigh the benefits.

Zero-risk bias occurs when we choose to eliminate risk absolutely in one area, rather than eliminate more risk spread out across different areas.

Unit bias occurs when people think a particular size is the optimal amount.

Tragedy of the commons occurs when individuals use public resources in their own self interest rather than for the common good.

Survivorship bias occurs when individuals focus on successful outcomes, yet overlook failure.

Stereotyping occurs when people generalize characteristics about others based on the groups they belong to.

Status quo bias is the tendency to prefer things to stay the same.

Self-enhancing transmission bias occurs when everyone shares their successes more than their failures.

Selective attention occurs when we allow our expectations to influence how we perceive the world.

Seersucker illusion is the over-reliance on expert advice.

Scope insensitivity is where your willingness to pay for something doesn't correlate with the scale of the outcome.

Salience is our tendency to focus on the most easily recognizable features of a person or concept.

Restraint bias occurs when we overestimate our capacity for impulse control.

Regression bias occurs when people take action in response to extreme situations. When the situations become less extreme, they take credit for causing the change, when a more likely explanation is that the situation was reverting to the mean.

Reciprocity is the belief that fairness should trump other values, even when it's not in our economic or other interests.

Recency is the tendency to weigh the latest information more heavily than older data.

Reactance refers to the desire to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do, in order to prove your freedom of choice.

Procrastination occurs when you decide to act in favor of the present moment over investing in the future.

Pro-innovation bias occurs when a proponent of an innovation tends to overvalue its usefulness and undervalue its limitations.

Priming is when you more readily identify ideas related to a previously introduced idea.

Post-purchase rationalization is when we overlook an expensive item's flaws to justify the purchase.

Planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate how much time it will take to complete a task.

Placebo effect is when simply believing that something will have a certain impact on you causes it to have that effect.

Pessimism bias occurs when individuals overestimate how often negative things will happen to them.

Overoptimism occurs when individuals believe they are less likely to encounter negative events.

Overconfidence is when some of us are too confident about our abilities, and this causes us to take greater risks in our daily lives.

Outcome bias refers to judging a decision based on the outcome, rather than how exactly the decision was made in the moment.

The ostrich effect is the decision to ignore dangerous or negative information by "burying" one's head in the sand, like an ostrich.

Omission bias is the tendency to prefer inaction to action, in ourselves and even in politics.

The observer-expectancy effect is when a researcher's expectations impact the outcome of an experiment.

Negativity bias is the tendency to put more emphasis on negative experiences rather than positive ones.

Irrational escalation is when people make irrational decisions based on past rational decisions.

Inter-group bias is when we view people in our group differently from how see we someone in another group.

Information bias is the tendency to seek information when it does not affect action.

Illusion of control is when people overestimate how much control they have over certain situations.

Ideomotor effect occurs when the body reacts to ideas alone.

Hyperbolic discounting happens when people make decisions for a smaller reward sooner, rather than a greater reward later.

Hindsight bias is when people claim to have predicted an outcome that was impossible to predict at the time.

Herding occurs when individuals mirror the sometimes irrational actions of a group.

Hard-easy bias occurs when individuals underestimate their ability to perform easy tasks, yet overestimate their ability to perform more difficult ones.

Halo effect is when we take one positive attribute of someone and associate it with everything else about that person or thing.

Galatea effect occurs when people succeed — or underperform — because they think they should.

Fundamental attribution error is where you attribute a person's behavior to an intrinsic quality of her identity rather than the situation she's in.

Frequency illusion occurs when a word, name or thing you just learned about suddenly appears everywhere.

Empathy gap occurs when people in one state of mind fail to understand people in another state of mind.

Duration neglect occurs when the duration of an event doesn't factor enough into the way we consider it.

Denomination effect is when people are less likely to spend large bills than their equivalent value in small bills or coins.

Decoy effect is a phenomenon in marketing where consumers have a specific change in preference between two choices after being presented with a third choice.

Curse of knowledge means that when people know something, it's hard to imagine not knowing it.

Conservatism bias occurs when people believe prior evidence more than new evidence.

Conformity describes how people tend to behave similarly to other people.

Confirmation bias describes the tendency to only listen to information that confirms our preconceptions.

The clustering illusion happens when we see trends in random events that happen close together.

Choice-supportive bias describes the tendency to have positive attitudes about the things or ideas we choose, even when they are flawed.

Bias blind spots describes how individuals can see bias in others, but struggle to see their own biases.

The bandwagon effect describes when people do something simply because others are also doing it.

Availability heuristic describes a shortcut where people make decisions based on information that's easier to remember.

Anchoring bias means people rely too heavily on the first piece of information they hear when making decisions.

The affect heuristic describes how humans sometimes make decisions based on emotion.