Psychology Courses/Social Psychology: Help and ReviewCourse
- AuthorTravis Hartin
Travis has taught college-level statistics, research methods, and psychology courses for eight years. Travis has a Master’s degree and PhD in experimental psychology from Kent State University with a focus on student learning and cognitive research.
View bio - InstructorYolanda Williams
Yolanda has taught college Psychology and Ethics, and has a doctorate of philosophy in counselor education and supervision.
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Understand cognitive bias and how it arises. Identify common biases through a list of cognitive bias examples that affect thoughts, perceptions, and behaviors.Updated: 11/21/2023
Frequently Asked Questions
What is cognitive bias?
A cognitive bias is a prejudice based on a person's worldview. That worldview is constructed from one's culture and beliefs, including religious views, political views, and possibly economic status.
What are examples of cognitive bias?
Examples of cognitive biases are stereotyping, the bandwagon effect, pessimism, optimism, hindsight, and anchoring. Biases, though they differ in levels and types of behaviors, are prejudices that are harmful to other people and is often unhealthy for the person exhibiting them. .
Table of Contents
- What is Cognitive Bias?
- Types of Cognitive Bias
- Cognitive Bias Examples
- Lesson Summary
The definition of cognitive bias is a type of thinking or information processing that is erroneous, leading people to have misconceptions and faulty ways of viewing the world. This type of mental processing is subjective and often irrational. Cognitive bias can be caused by social pressure, an individual's motivations, emotional states, and aspects of human memory. The idea of cognitive biases was introduced in 1972 by cognitive psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in their research on the effects of probability on human judgment.
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There are several different types of cognitive biases, and identifying them can help people become more aware of the factors that can influence decision-making. Furthermore, the more people know about cognitive biases, the less likely they are to commit them.
Bandwagon Effect
The bandwagon effect is when people adopt a position or an opinion based on the perceived majority position. People reason that something must be correct if the idea or opinion has enough support, even if an individual does actually endorse the opinion or belief. The bandwagon effect can often be observed when it comes to social attitudes and political beliefs and has also been called a herd mentality. For example, people often vote for a particular political candidate if they think that the candidate has popular support, even if they don't like the candidate or agree with that particular political perspective.
Choice-Supportive Bias
Choice-supportive bias is when people think that the choices they made were better than they actually were. This is the tendency to view the choices people make as positive and the alternative options that were not chosen as negative. This bias is also referred to as choice-supportive misremembering because it involves an aspect of erroneous memory. For example, an individual may have two job offers at similar institutions. After choosing to accept job offer A, the person may later attribute that decision to the fact that job offer B was from an ill-reputed institution and that the people that interviewed them for the position were rude (even though neither of these assertions was true).
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency for people to process information or seek evidence in a way that supports their preconceived expectations or desires. This bias also involves ignoring or rejecting contradictory evidence. When someone discovers contradictory evidence, the person will come up with a justification as to why the information can be disregarded. Confirmation bias is often prevalent when people adopt social or political narratives. For example, someone who adopts a particular political policy will often seek information that justifies that position. They may seek literature or statistics that support the case for passing that legislation. When others point out contradictory data or literature, the person may disregard the information on the basis that it is propaganda or misinformation stemming from an opposing political party or organization.
Endowment Effect
The endowment effect is when people view something as more valuable after owning it or associating it with themselves in some way. The perceived value of the object is often higher than its actual market or retail value, and the person's perception of its value is often irrational. This effect is in part driven by the individual's emotional attachment to the object or to the idea of possessing the object. For example, people often view collector's items as more valuable than they actually are. Someone may collect coins and develop an emotional attachment to them. Later, the person may offer to sell them at a much higher price than what they are valued by other merchants that sell them.
Focusing Effect
The focusing effect is when an individual devotes too much attention to or places too much value on a particular detail or event. This often involves ignoring other details that might have influenced a particular outcome. For example, a student that gave a presentation at a conference may subsequently focus on the fact that they forgot to mention a specific detail that was originally planned to be included in the presentation. Even though the presentation was well-received by the audience, the student may have a negative impression of their performance because of overly focusing on a single mistake that was made. Later when asked how the presentation went, the student comments that it went poorly.
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Consider the following list of cognitive bias examples to further illustrate the concept:
- A researcher thinks that memory can be influenced by the types of movies that students watch on weekends. To try to prove this hypothesis, the researcher conducts and literature search and only looks for papers that confirm his ideas. He also ignores any paper he finds that contradicts his theory. This is an example of confirmation bias and is caused by the researcher's motivation to prove his theory to be correct.
- Samantha just got a new job at a psychiatric clinic and recently interviewed her first patient. Afterward, she thought that she did a bad job during the interview because she forgot to give the patient a list of research references so that the patient can learn more about psychiatric practices and theory. Her supervisor told her that the patient gave her very positive feedback regarding how the therapy session went on an evaluation form. However, Samantha continued to focus on the one mistake that she made and ignored the other details of the therapy session. This is an example of the focusing effect and it occurred because Samantha paid too much attention to one detail of her therapy session.
- Ralph is on a road trip and wants to stop for food before continuing the journey. He decides to stop and get fast food rather than stopping at a traditional sit-down restaurant. Later when thinking about this decision, Ralph misremembers that he chose fast food because the other restaurant looked rundown and untrustworthy. In reality, there was nothing wrong with that particular restaurant and Ralph is demonstrating the choice-supportive bias. He attributes positive qualities to his decision while attributing negative qualities to the option he did not choose.
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A cognitive bias is a type of thinking error that people make when processing information. They can be caused by social pressure, motivations, emotions, and memory errors. It is important to understand cognitive biases because doing so can make people less likely to commit them.
There are various types of cognitive biases. The bandwagon effect is when people adopt a position based on what the majority thinks. Choice-supportive bias is when people think that the choices they made were better than they actually were. Confirmation bias is when people only seek information that supports their views. The endowment effect is when people view something that they own as more valuable than it actually is. The focusing effect is when an individual devotes too much attention to a particular detail of an event.
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Video Transcript
What Is Cognitive Bias?
At any given second, the brain is carrying out trillions of mental processes. It's no wonder that our brain is constantly looking for strategies and rules of thumb that can be applied across various situations to ease the burden of executing all those mental processes. These rules are especially helpful when it comes to making decisions and judgments that are complex. In our attempt to simplify information processes, we may take mental shortcuts that lead us down the wrong path. These thinking errors that we make when we are processing information are known as cognitive bias.
Cognitive biases develop for several reasons. For example, errors in memory can affect how you think about a particular event. This, in turn, influences how you think about similar events, which can lead to cognitive bias. It's also thought that cognitive bias helps us process information more quickly. Cognitive biases can cause us to make inaccurate judgments, decisions, and interpretations.
Because we're constantly making judgments and processing information, we are constantly at risk for cognitive bias. At one point or another, we've all been guilty of some type of cognitive bias. Although it's impossible to completely avoid cognitive biases, it is possible to understand what they are so that we can look for them when they arise and adjust our judgments as needed.
Examples of Cognitive Bias
There are several types of cognitive bias. Some examples include the following:
Bandwagon effect: This is the tendency for people to do or think things because other people do or think them. An example is choosing to skip school because all of your friends were also skipping school.
Choice-supportive bias: This is the tendency for people to remember one thing as being better than it actually was. Suppose you had to choose between two houses. You may remember the house that you chose was bigger, had more bathrooms, was cheaper, and had more space. In reality, the two houses may have been the same price and had the same amount of space.
Confirmation bias: This is the tendency for people to seek out or interpret information so that it confirms their beliefs. For example, a news reporter that is covering an upcoming election may only interview political experts that also share the reporter's political views.
Endowment effect: This is the tendency for people to think an item is more valuable once their ownership of an item has been established. Suppose you bought a sandwich for $1. Your friend comes along and asks you if they could have the sandwich and pay you $1 for it. You turn them down because you believe your sandwich is more valuable than $1. This is endowment effect.
Focusing effect: This is the bias that occurs when we put too much emphasis on one aspect of an event at the expense of the others. This bias results in inaccurate predictions about future outcomes. Suppose you were asked whether people who choose their careers based on salary or people who choose their careers because they enjoyed them were happier. Since you overvalued money, you believed that people who chose their careers based on salary are happier with their careers, when this is not necessarily true.
Lesson Summary
Cognitive biases are thinking errors that we make when processing information. Cognitive biases are caused by several factors, including memory errors, attributions, and the need to process information quickly. There are several different types of cognitive biases including focusing effect and confirmation bias. So, the next time you wonder why you are making decisions that seem to be inaccurate, the answer may be that you have a cognitive bias.
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