Ever wondered why you make decisions that may seem illogical later on? This often happens because of something called cognitive bias. You might have asked yourself this question. Why do I sometimes misinterpret information? One of the top reasons for this is something known as cognitive bias. Now, what is cognitive bias? It is an unconscious thinking error, which often leads to a distorted view of reality. This blog will help you learn about this concept, its impacts and various forms.
What is Cognitive Bias?
Our brain is a quite powerful organ. However, even our brains have limitations. Brain sometimes uses tricks to quickly process information. This trick is known as a heuristic..
While these shortcuts allow you to process information quickly, they can cause errors too. Some factors that impact decision-making are:
- Social influences
- Emotions
- Personal experiences
These aspects shape the biases. Your brain processes the information speedily to know what’s going around you. It may help in making decisions. But those are mostly generalized which means it may not always be right. This highlights the need for learning what is cognitive bias?
Self Assessment Quiz - Cognitive Bias
Quiz Results
The Role of Memory in Cognitive Bias
Memory and past experiences also play a role in causing these thinking errors. The way your brain stores a memory can be biassed for several reasons. This may, in turn, impact your future decision-making and judgments.
Getting older can have a huge impact on your cognitive flexibility. This means as humans age, they become more prone to biases. As your beliefs become firmer, it becomes more difficult for you to open up to new information.
Read more on our blog about Mental health assessments in UK.
What are Some Signs of Cognitive Bias?
After knowing about what is cognitive bias? You can now easily get the signs.There are various types of cognitive bias, some of which are very hard to avoid because they are one of the core experiences of being human. According to Leif Azzopardi,
“People are susceptible to an array of cognitive biases, which can result in systematic errors and deviations from rational decision making.”
Leif Azzopardi
Cognitive bias assessment is easy if someone else is being biassed. It becomes hard when the person is you. Some common signs are:
Selective Exposure to Information
You might get in the habit of reinforcing your beliefs if you only indulge in information that aligns with your pre-existing notions. It means swaying towards information that reaffirms what you already believe to be true.
Trying to Put Blame on Others
If something goes wrong and you start blaming it on other people or factors. Often finding yourself pointing out others for your own actions might be a sign. It is a type of bias where you try to escape from being responsible for your actions.
Attributing Your Success to Yourself and Others’ Success to Luck
We have all been around such people, who attribute their success to their efforts while others’ to luck. While this might help protect your self-esteem in the short run, it destroys your view of reality. It also discourages you to improve yourself, learn from your mistakes, and become a better version of yourself.
Assuming Shared Beliefs
Thinking that a vast majority thinks the same way about certain situations like you do is another kind of bias. This kind of bias can lead to bad choices.
Overestimating Your Knowledge
Sometimes, a little know-how can create an illusion of greater competence. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, where you wrongly estimate how much you know about a topic after getting a little bit about it?
Explore our Medico-Legal Blog for insights and updates.
Common Types of Cognitive Biases
There are many cognitive bias examples. These types will help you better understand what is cognitive bias? Here are some common ones.
1. Confirmation bias
This bias is based on looking for such information that confirms our beliefs. Sometimes you overvalue it so that it can meet your expectations.
2. Gambler’s fallacy
This false belief describes our tendency to believe that something will happen because it hasn’t happened yet.
3. Gender bias
Gender bias is about linking specific behaviour and traits to a gender without supporting proof.
4. Group attribution error
This error describes our tendency to generalise how a group of people will behave based on the contact with only one person from that group.
5 Herd mentality
Another bias you should know about is the herd mentality. It occurs when you decide to copy what others are doing or the way they handle things.
6. Hindsight bias
It involves seeing random events in your life as being more predictable. Although they may not be.
7. Halo effect
It is about taking the initial impression of someone as a perception of who they really are. This could influence your judgement about them and the way you think about them.
The Impact of Cognitive Bias
Every individual should learn about what is cognitive bias? And how it can impact their lives.It can definitely affect your decision-making. You often tend to make poor choices without even knowing it. Here’s how they can affect us:
1. Biased Decisions
Some biases cause us to ignore facts that we don’t agree with. It leads you to make one-sided decisions.
2. Emotional Impact
Your feelings can cloud judgment. Hence the choices you make are based on feelings instead of logic. The result is irrational decisions.
3. Building Stereotypes
Biases like gender bias or group attribution error can boost stereotypes and lead to prejudice, which affects social interactions.
4. Short-Term Focus
Biases like present bias make you prefer immediate rewards over long-term benefits, leading to poor choices that harm you later.
5. Hindered Problem-Solving
Biases can limit creative thinking and make you stick to familiar, outdated solutions, reducing our ability to solve problems.
6. Strained Relationships
Biases can cause misunderstandings by making us attribute others’ actions to their personality rather than considering external factors.
7. Mental Health Impact
Constantly showing biased thinking patterns can lead to stress, anxiety, and other mental health issues over time.
Learn more about getting Psychotherapy for mental health issues.
Tips to Overcome a Cognitive Bias
Following are the ways in which you can overcome them:
- Accept that we all have cognitive biases.
- Interact with a variety of people.
- Allow yourself cognitive flexibility.
Way Forward
What is cognitive bias? Here we have tried to explain the common biases. But there are a lot more types of cognitive bias. These biases influence your thoughts and guide the choices you make in life.
They help you process info quickly, but also increase the chances of errors. But once you know them, you can make rational decisions. In this way, you can reduce their overall impact in your life.
If you want to learn more about how cognitive biases shape our thinking, learn more at Concise Medico’s website for more info.
FAQs
Ever wondered why you make decisions that may seem illogical later on? This often happens because of something called cognitive bias. You might have asked yourself this question. Why do I sometimes misinterpret information? One of the top reasons for this is something known as cognitive bias. Now, what is cognitive bias? It is an unconscious thinking error, which often leads to a distorted view of reality. This blog will help you learn about this concept, its impacts and various forms.
What is Cognitive Bias?
Our brain is a quite powerful organ. However, even our brains have limitations. Brain sometimes uses tricks to quickly process information. This trick is known as a heuristic..
While these shortcuts allow you to process information quickly, they can cause errors too. Some factors that impact decision-making are:
- Social influences
- Emotions
- Personal experiences
These aspects shape the biases. Your brain processes the information speedily to know what’s going around you. It may help in making decisions. But those are mostly generalized which means it may not always be right. This highlights the need for learning what is cognitive bias?
Self Assessment Quiz - Cognitive Bias
Quiz Results
The Role of Memory in Cognitive Bias
Memory and past experiences also play a role in causing these thinking errors. The way your brain stores a memory can be biassed for several reasons. This may, in turn, impact your future decision-making and judgments.
Getting older can have a huge impact on your cognitive flexibility. This means as humans age, they become more prone to biases. As your beliefs become firmer, it becomes more difficult for you to open up to new information.
Read more on our blog about Mental health assessments in UK.
What are Some Signs of Cognitive Bias?
After knowing about what is cognitive bias? You can now easily get the signs.There are various types of cognitive bias, some of which are very hard to avoid because they are one of the core experiences of being human. According to Leif Azzopardi,
“People are susceptible to an array of cognitive biases, which can result in systematic errors and deviations from rational decision making.”
Leif Azzopardi
Cognitive bias assessment is easy if someone else is being biassed. It becomes hard when the person is you. Some common signs are:
Selective Exposure to Information
You might get in the habit of reinforcing your beliefs if you only indulge in information that aligns with your pre-existing notions. It means swaying towards information that reaffirms what you already believe to be true.
Trying to Put Blame on Others
If something goes wrong and you start blaming it on other people or factors. Often finding yourself pointing out others for your own actions might be a sign. It is a type of bias where you try to escape from being responsible for your actions.
Attributing Your Success to Yourself and Others’ Success to Luck
We have all been around such people, who attribute their success to their efforts while others’ to luck. While this might help protect your self-esteem in the short run, it destroys your view of reality. It also discourages you to improve yourself, learn from your mistakes, and become a better version of yourself.
Assuming Shared Beliefs
Thinking that a vast majority thinks the same way about certain situations like you do is another kind of bias. This kind of bias can lead to bad choices.
Overestimating Your Knowledge
Sometimes, a little know-how can create an illusion of greater competence. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, where you wrongly estimate how much you know about a topic after getting a little bit about it?
Explore our Medico-Legal Blog for insights and updates.
Common Types of Cognitive Biases
There are many cognitive bias examples. These types will help you better understand what is cognitive bias? Here are some common ones.
1. Confirmation bias
This bias is based on looking for such information that confirms our beliefs. Sometimes you overvalue it so that it can meet your expectations.
2. Gambler’s fallacy
This false belief describes our tendency to believe that something will happen because it hasn’t happened yet.
3. Gender bias
Gender bias is about linking specific behaviour and traits to a gender without supporting proof.
4. Group attribution error
This error describes our tendency to generalise how a group of people will behave based on the contact with only one person from that group.
5 Herd mentality
Another bias you should know about is the herd mentality. It occurs when you decide to copy what others are doing or the way they handle things.
6. Hindsight bias
It involves seeing random events in your life as being more predictable. Although they may not be.
7. Halo effect
It is about taking the initial impression of someone as a perception of who they really are. This could influence your judgement about them and the way you think about them.
The Impact of Cognitive Bias
Every individual should learn about what is cognitive bias? And how it can impact their lives.It can definitely affect your decision-making. You often tend to make poor choices without even knowing it. Here’s how they can affect us:
1. Biased Decisions
Some biases cause us to ignore facts that we don’t agree with. It leads you to make one-sided decisions.
2. Emotional Impact
Your feelings can cloud judgment. Hence the choices you make are based on feelings instead of logic. The result is irrational decisions.
3. Building Stereotypes
Biases like gender bias or group attribution error can boost stereotypes and lead to prejudice, which affects social interactions.
4. Short-Term Focus
Biases like present bias make you prefer immediate rewards over long-term benefits, leading to poor choices that harm you later.
5. Hindered Problem-Solving
Biases can limit creative thinking and make you stick to familiar, outdated solutions, reducing our ability to solve problems.
6. Strained Relationships
Biases can cause misunderstandings by making us attribute others’ actions to their personality rather than considering external factors.
7. Mental Health Impact
Constantly showing biased thinking patterns can lead to stress, anxiety, and other mental health issues over time.
Learn more about getting Psychotherapy for mental health issues.
Tips to Overcome a Cognitive Bias
Following are the ways in which you can overcome them:
- Accept that we all have cognitive biases.
- Interact with a variety of people.
- Allow yourself cognitive flexibility.
Way Forward
What is cognitive bias? Here we have tried to explain the common biases. But there are a lot more types of cognitive bias. These biases influence your thoughts and guide the choices you make in life.
They help you process info quickly, but also increase the chances of errors. But once you know them, you can make rational decisions. In this way, you can reduce their overall impact in your life.
If you want to learn more about how cognitive biases shape our thinking, learn more at Concise Medico’s website for more info.
