Padd Solutions

We don't think about it too often, nor do we enjoy doing so. Deep down, we all believe we're perfect; we have superior opinions, religious beliefs, political ideologies, personal philosophies, fast food preferences, and brands of underwear. We also constantly make mistakes, bad judgments, and somehow we can never seem to live up to this divine vision we've created of ourselves. Some people are more intellectually honest about their mortal imperfections than others, of course, and some rely on cognitive bias more than others. But what exactly is the logical reasoning behind this universally innate stubbornness?

So, we must acknowledge that we're imperfect and incapable of becoming perfect, the idea of which can't even be clearly defined. But then, why can't we at least think logically all the time? Most researchers hold that many cognitive biases are vestigial modern elements of human evolution, similar to vestigial organs and body parts like wisdom teeth, the coccyx (tailbone), hair, and nails. Most of our prejudices have little or no use today (besides maybe getting you beaten up), but some are employed usefully in everyday life. Natural selection has emblazoned these biases and prejudices into our genetic code as defense mechanisms, coping habits, and other skills which have since been reduced in necessity and/or relevance. Often, they help maintain homeostasis (the inner system that regulates our bodies) by attempting to keep our emotions in check.


Bias doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, but that your way of thinking is flawed. For your intellectual convenience, here's a condensed list of some of the most common misleading ways of thinking. Wikipedia's full version can be found here, complete with embedded links to additional information concerning all documented cognitive biases.

Common cognitive biases

• Bandwagon effect — the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. 
• Base rate fallacy — ignoring available statistical data in favor of particulars. 
• Choice-supportive bias — the tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were. 
• Illusion of control — the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly cannot 
• Mere exposure effect — the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them. 
• Omission bias — the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions). 
• Pseudocertainty effect — the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
• Selective perception — the tendency for expectations to affect perception. 
• Von Restorff effect — the tendency for an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" to be more likely to be remembered than other items.

Common probability/belief biases

• Ambiguity effect — the avoidance of options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown". 
• Anchoring effect — the tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on a past reference or on one trait or piece of information when making decisions 
• Authority bias — the tendency to value an ambiguous stimulus (e.g., an art performance) according to the opinion of someone who is seen as an authority on the topic. 
• 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").
• Belief bias — an effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion. 
• Clustering illusion — the tendency to see patterns where actually none exist. 
• Illusory correlation — beliefs that inaccurately suppose a relationship between a certain type of action and an effect. 
• Ludic fallacy — the analysis of chance-related problems according to the belief that the unstructured randomness found in life resembles the structured randomness found in games, ignoring the non-gaussian distribution of many real-world results. 
• Ostrich effect — ignoring an obvious (negative) situation. 
• Overconfidence effect — excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of question, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.
• Pareidolia — vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) are perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.
• Stereotyping — expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.

Common social biases 

• Forer effect (aka Barnum Effect) — the tendency to 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. For example, horoscopes. 
• False consensus effect — the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them. 
• Herd instinct — Common tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict. 
• Illusion of asymmetric insight — people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them.
• Illusion of transparency — people overestimate others' ability to know them, and they also overestimate their ability to know others.
• Illusory superiority — overestimating one's desirable qualities, and underestimating undesirable qualities, relative to other people. 
• Ingroup bias — the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups. 
• Just-world phenomenon — the tendency for people to believe that the world is just and therefore people "get what they deserve." 
• Projection bias — the tendency to unconsciously assume that others share the same or similar thoughts, beliefs, values, or positions. 
• Self-fulfilling prophecy — the tendency to engage in behaviors that elicit results which will (consciously or not) confirm existing attitudes. 
• Ultimate attribution error — Similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.