Strategies for Decision Making – Week 6 Lecture

Introduction to Cognitive Biases

There are many different psychological and emotional impediments to good reasoning. In addition to the cognitive biases mentioned in this week’s video lectures, the following are some major psychological tendencies mentioned in your textbook that interfere with proper reasoning:

Loyalty bias: the tendency to see our own society and culture in ways more favorable than the evidence may suggest. This is due largely to provincialism, which narrows our understanding of the world; and herd instinct, which is a tendency to believe what other members of our society or culture belief.

Prejudice: unjustified hostility against members of other groups; thinking in terms of unverified stereotypes. This is sometimes reinforced by finding scapegoats for which we can blame our own troubles. Thinking in these terms is evidence of a partisan mind-set.

Superstitions are beliefs supported by an insufficient evidence – typically, biased samples from which negative evidence has been eliminated.

Wishful thinking refers to the tendency to form strong beliefs on the basis of insufficient evidence and against strong evidence to the contrary. It is a type of self-deception, in which we believe what we know to be dubious. Three forms of wishful thinking are rationalizing, suppression, and denial.

Pseudoscientific beliefs are false or irrational beliefs that we adopt about the world because of the psychological comfort they provide to us. They play a role in reinforcing both wishful thinking and self-deception.