Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment. They are often studied in psychology, sociology and behavioral economics. Although the reality of most of these biases is confirmed by reproducible research, there are often controversies about how to classify these biases or how to explain them. Several theoretical causes are known for some cognitive biases, which provides a classification of biases by their common generative mechanism (such as noisy information-processing ). Gerd Gigerenzer has criticized the framing of cognitive biases as errors in judgment, and favors interpreting them as arising from rational deviations from logical thought. Explanations include information-processing rules (i.e., mental shortcuts), called heuristics, that the brain uses to produce decisions or judgments. Biases have a variety of forms and appear as cognitive ("cold") bias, such as mental noise, or motivational ("hot") bias, such as when beliefs are distorted by wishful thinking. Both effects can be present at the same time. There are also controversies over some of these biases as to whether they count as useless or irrational, or whether they result in useful attitudes or behavior. For example, when getting to know others, people tend to ask leading questions which seem biased towards confirming their assumptions about the person. However, this kind of confirmation bias has also been argued to be an example of social skill; a way to establish a connection with the other person. Although this research overwhelmingly involves human subjects, some findings that demonstrate bias have been found in non-human animals as well. For example, loss aversion has been shown in monkeys and hyperbolic discounting has been observed in rats, pigeons, and monkeys.

Belief, decision-making and behavioral

These biases affect belief formation, reasoning processes, business and economic decisions, and human behavior in general.

Anchoring bias

The anchoring bias, or focalism, is the tendency to rely too heavily—to "anchor"—on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject). Anchoring bias includes or involves the following:

Apophenia

The tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. The following are types of apophenia:

Availability heuristic

The availability heuristic (also known as the availability bias) is the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be. The availability heuristic includes or involves the following:

Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it.

Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. There are multiple other cognitive biases which involve or are types of confirmation bias:

Egocentric bias

Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a different perception of oneself relative to others. The following are forms of egocentric bias:

Extension neglect

Extension neglect occurs where the quantity of the sample size is not sufficiently taken into consideration when assessing the outcome, relevance or judgement. The following are forms of extension neglect:

False priors

False priors are initial beliefs and knowledge which interfere with the unbiased evaluation of factual evidence and lead to incorrect conclusions. Biases based on false priors include:

Framing effect

The framing effect is the tendency to draw different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented. Forms of the framing effect include:

Logical fallacy

Prospect theory

The following relate to prospect theory:

Self-assessment

Truth judgment

Other

Social

Association fallacy

Association fallacies include:

Attribution bias

Attribution bias includes:

Conformity

Conformity is involved in the following:

Ingroup bias

Ingroup bias is the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups. It is related to the following:

Other social biases

Memory

In psychology and cognitive science, a memory bias is a cognitive bias that either enhances or impairs the recall of a memory (either the chances that the memory will be recalled at all, or the amount of time it takes for it to be recalled, or both), or that alters the content of a reported memory. There are many types of memory bias, including:

Misattribution of memory

The misattributions include:

Other memory biases

Footnotes