COGNITIVE BIASES

WHAT ARE COGNITIVE BIASES?

Cognitive biases are human being’s thoughts, ideologies, perceptions completely different from general insights. This difference is an error in their mind which is developed due to memory problems, ego problems, tendency of brain to simplify everything or can be misinterpretations, etc.

SOME OF THE FAMOUS COGNITIVE BIASES ARE-

1. Fundamental attribution error- It is a cognitive bias in which people judge someone on dispositional(personality)traits and not on situational basis.

Example- You 1st time interact with someone gaily but in response that person talks to you in strident voice. At first instance, you will conclude that the person is a brute, without thinking that the situation can be, he is little lugubrious because of any personal issue. You because of a judge mental nature or to satisfy your ego that a strange person talked very rudely to you, lack of patience to tolerate such situations, lack of humbleness forced you to give such a result.

2. Sunk cost fallacy- Sunk cost is the cost which you have incurred but cannot be recovered. So, sunk cost fallacy is a cognitive bias in which you made an investment in past but presently its benefits are less, but you still go for the investment because you invested your time, money, efforts there.

Example- You booked tickets for your movie show, but when the time came to go to the theatre you are not feeling well and you are having flu. In this situation, benefit<cost. If you chose to go out you can get more infected due to which your other important work can get delayed. But just because you spent money on the tickets you chose to go out irrespective of all the consequences.

3. Declinism- It is a cognitive bias in which people see past as good time, good memories, present as disturbing, negative and expect future to get worst. It happens mainly due to depression, you are feeling dejected because of a certain event, news, something amiss happens with you, etc.

Example- In these covid times, we are so stuck in despondence that we have started remembering our best old days, because of our current situation and hearing, seeing everything negative around us we feel future would be worst. Complete cycle of negativity.

4. Framing effect- It is a cognitive bias in which your decision to choose something of same nature, type, quality, etc. depends on how information is presented to you. It is because of our tendency to buy only good for us, brain gets influenced more easily by positive statements.

Example-You go to a grocery store to buy some biscuits – digestive biscuits. There were 2 companies who sell digestives, so you have to choose any 1. On one packet it is written that it has 95%less sugar than other biscuits, on another packet it is written that it contains 5%sugar. So, which company’s packet will you buy? In most of the cases packet 1 because it presented information in a more positive manner than 2nd packet.

5. Just world hypothesis- It is a bias in which people perceive that if they will do good with someone, good will happen to them and if they will do something bad with someone, same they will get in return. Its Hindi version can be called ‘karma’. It is because of general ideologies we hear from our childhood, more inclined towards religious aspects, positive in life, etc.

Example- You would have heard people saying that this person is suffering a lot in his life because of his wrong deeds or if someone is completely goofing then this because of his good deeds.

6. Dunning Kruger effect- It is a cognitive bias in which low performers overestimate their ability and good performers underestimate their ability. It is because low performers don’t know much about the topic, overconfidence, etc. In case of good performers, they always want more every time. So, they feel they have done less in comparison to their ability and feel less confident.

Example- You are solving some maths sums. A person who is weak at maths if somehow solves a single step of the problem, then also he will feel that he is super intelligent and can do a lot of it, because his ability is less and also, he doesn’t know that further the problem will become more and more difficult. But, a good performer after solving good number of sums, will still feel that she can do more because of her abilities which will make her feel that she did less .

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