Anchoring or focalism

The tendency to rely too heavily on one piece of information (usually the first offeredthe “anchor”) when making decisions.

Attentional bias

The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts. For example, people who frequently think about the clothes they wear pay more attention to the clothes of others. One example occurs when a person does not examine all possible outcomes when making a judgment about a correlation or association.

Automation bias

The tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions.

Availability cascade

A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or “repeat something long enough and it will become true”).

Backfire effect

The reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one’s previous beliefs.

Bias blind spot

The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.

Choice-supportive bias

The tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.

Confirmation bias

The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.

Essentialism

Categorizing people and things according to their essential nature or an assumed essential nature, in spite of variations

Experimenter’s or expectation bias

The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.

Focusing effect

The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.

Forer effect
or
Barnum effect

The observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests.

Framing effect

Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented

Frequency illusion

The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias). Colloquially, this illusion is known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

Hindsight bias

Sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened.

Illusion of control

The tendency to overestimate one’s degree of influence over other external events.

Mere exposure effect

The tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.

Ingroup bias

The tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups.

Omission bias

The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).

Optimism bias

The tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes (see also wishful thinking, valence effect, positive outcome bias).

Information bias

The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

Negativity bias
or
Negativity effect

Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories.

Outcome bias

The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Selective perception

The tendency for expectations to affect perception.

Semmelweis reflex

The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm.

Social comparison bias

The tendency, when making hiring decisions, to favour potential candidates who don’t compete with one’s own particular strengths.

Consistency bias

Incorrectly remembering one’s past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour.