Cognitive biases are an example of an evolutionary pattern of mental behavior. Some of them serve an adaptive function as they promote more efficient actions or faster decisions. Others appear to stem from a lack of appropriate thinking skills, or from the inappropriate application of skills that were adaptive in other settings.
Development and application of methods for correcting cognitive distortions that cause problems of emotional, personal, social character, is the subject of various areas of psychotherapy, in particular cognitive psychotherapy.
Encyclopedic YouTube
-
1 / 5
Many of these cognitive biases are often investigated in relation to how they affect business and how they affect experimental research.
- The illusion of clustering is the tendency to see patterns where there are none.
- Illusory correlation is an erroneous belief in the relationship of certain actions and results.
- Selection bias A bias in experimental data that is related to the way the data was collected.
- The cascade of accessible information is a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief in something becomes more and more convincing through increasing repetition in public discourse ("repeat something long enough and it becomes true").
- Underestimation of magnitude reversion to the mean is the tendency to expect extraordinary system behavior to continue.
- Deviation towards a positive outcome - the tendency to overestimate the probability of good things when predicting.
- Optimism bias is the tendency to systematically overestimate and be over-optimistic about the chances of success of planned activities.
- Attention bias is the neglect of relevant information when judging a correlation or association.
- Gambler's error is the tendency to believe that individual random events are influenced by previous random events.
- Fallacy, in the vein of Texas sharpshooter, is choosing or tweaking a hypothesis after the data is collected, making it impossible to test the hypothesis honestly.
- Base percentage error - ignoring or insufficient use of basic a priori information under the influence of the specifics of the case under consideration.
- The completeness error is the tendency to believe that the closer the mean is to a given value, the narrower the distribution of the data set.
- Coincidence fallacy is the tendency to believe that more special cases are more likely the more often they occur.
- Game-related fallacy – analysis of odds-drawing problems with a narrow set of games.
- Embellishment of the past - the tendency to evaluate past events more positively than they were perceived at the moment when they actually happened.
- Survivor's error - the tendency to underestimate data on the group of "dead" that are inaccessible to direct observation.
- Stereotyping is the expectation of certain characteristics from a member of a group without knowing any additional information about his personality.
- Subjective salience is the perception of something as true if the subject's beliefs require it to be true. This also includes perceiving coincidences as relationships.
- Functional fixation - the use of an object in one capacity prevents its subsequent use in a different capacity in the same current situation.
- The Hawthorne effect is a phenomenon in which people observed in a study temporarily change their behavior or performance. Example: an increase in labor productivity at a plant, when a commission arrives to study labor productivity at this plant.
- The availability heuristic is the assessment of what is more likely to be available in memory, that is, the bias towards the more vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged.
- The memory effect is the effect that people remember more events from their youth than from other life periods.
- "Yo-yo effect" - a rapid weight gain after a short-term "hungry" diet, which allowed to lose significant weight.
- The hindsight knowledge effect - sometimes called "I knew it would be so" (as an option - "But I said ...") - the tendency to perceive past events as predictable.
- The recent effect (proximity aberration) is the tendency to value recent events more than earlier events.
- The ambiguity effect is the avoidance of options for actions in which missing information makes the probability "unknown".
- Observer Expectation Effect - This effect occurs when a researcher expects a certain outcome and unconsciously manipulates the course of an experiment or misinterprets the data to discover that outcome (see also Subject Expectation Effect).
- The primacy effect is the tendency to overestimate initial events more than subsequent events.
- Anchor effect - feature of acceptance numerical solutions by a person, causing irrational shifts of answers towards the number that entered the consciousness before making a decision.
- The overconfidence effect is the tendency to overestimate one's own abilities.
- The subadditivity effect is the tendency to evaluate the probability of the whole as less than the probabilities of its constituent parts.
- Telescope effect - this effect consists in the fact that recent events appear more distant, and more distant events appear closer in time.
Socially conditioned distortions
Most of these misrepresentations are due to attribution errors.
- Illusion of asymmetric insight - it seems to a person that his knowledge of his loved ones exceeds their knowledge of him.
- Illusion transparency - people overestimate the ability of others to understand them, and they also overestimate their ability to understand others.
- Bias in assessing the homogeneity of members of another group - people perceive members of their own group as relatively more diverse than members of other groups.
- Distortion in assessing the role of the subject of action - the tendency, when explaining the behavior of other people, to overemphasize the influence of their professional qualities and underestimate the influence of the situation (see also the fundamental attribution error). However, paired with this distortion is the opposite tendency in evaluating their own actions, in which people overestimate the influence of the situation on them and underestimate the influence of their own qualities.
- Ingroup bias – The tendency for people to give preference to those they consider to be members of their own group.
- Projection bias is the tendency to unconsciously believe that other people share the same thoughts, beliefs, values, and attitudes as the subject.
- Distortion in connection with the formulation of the law - this form of cultural distortion is associated with the fact that the recording of a certain law in the form of a mathematical formula creates the illusion of its real existence.
- Benefit bias, self-aggrandizement bias - the tendency to take greater responsibility for success than for failure. It can also manifest itself as a tendency for people to present ambiguous information in a way that is favorable to themselves (See also Self-Barring.)
- Trait description bias – the tendency for people to perceive themselves as relatively changeable in terms of personality traits, behavior, and mood, while simultaneously perceiving others as much more predictable.
- The justification of the system is the tendency to defend and maintain the status quo, that is, the tendency to prefer the existing social, political and economic order and to reject change even at the cost of sacrificing individual and collective interests.
- Self-fulfilling prophecy - the tendency, consciously or not, to engage in activities that lead to results that confirm the predictions made.
- The herd instinct is a common tendency to accept the opinions and follow the behavior of the majority in order to feel safe and avoid conflict (see also The Majority Joining Effect).
- The “door to the face” phenomenon - people tend to make concessions and agree to an unattractive offer if it is offered to them immediately after they refuse another more burdensome request.
- The “foot in the door” phenomenon - after fulfilling an initially insignificant request, people tend to agree to fulfill other more burdensome requirements.
- The "fair" world phenomenon is the tendency of people to believe that the world is "fair" and therefore people get "what they deserve".
- The fundamental attribution error is the tendency of people to explain the behavior of other people by their personal qualities, underestimating situational factors, and at the same time overestimating the role and strength of situational influences on their own behavior, underestimating the personal aspect (see also Distortion in assessing the role of the subject of action, group attribution error , the positive effect and the negative effect.)
- The Dunning-Kruger Effect - When people are incompetent at their chosen strategies for achieving success, they experience a double whammy: not only do they come to the wrong conclusions and make bad choices, but their incompetence also makes it impossible for them to realize it. Instead, they are left with the erroneous impression that everything is in order. (See also the Lake Wobegon effect and the overconfidence effect.)
- The Lady Macbeth Effect (also called the "Pontius Pilate Effect") is an imaginary connection between moral and physical cleanliness that encourages people who feel shame to wash themselves, "washing" the imaginary dirt off themselves.
- The Forer effect (and also the Barnum effect) is the tendency to give high marks to the accuracy of descriptions of one's personality, as if they were deliberately forged especially for them, but which in reality are general enough to be applicable to a very large number of people. For example, horoscopes.
- The Lake Wobegon effect is the human tendency to spread flattering beliefs about oneself and consider oneself above average. (see also worse-than-average effect and overconfidence effect).
- The halo effect - takes place when one person is perceived by another and consists in the fact that the positive and negative features of a person “flow”, from the point of view of the perceiver, from one area of the personality of the perceived person to another. (See also stereotype physical attractiveness.)
- The effect of the first impression is the influence of the opinion about the person, which was formed by the subject in the first minutes at the first meeting, on the further assessment of the activities and personality of this person. They are also included in a number of mistakes often made by researchers when using the observation method, along with the halo effect and others.
- The winning side effect is the tendency of voters to change their minds in favor of the winning side.
- The False Consensus Effect is the tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which other people agree with them.
- The effect of egocentricity - it takes place when people consider themselves more responsible for the result of some collective actions than an external observer finds.
Memory distortions
- Benefactor - the perception of oneself as responsible for desirable outcomes, but not responsible for undesirable ones. (Term proposed by Greenwald (1980), see also self-aggrandizement distortion.)
- Apparent persistence is the misremembering of one's past attitudes and behaviors as being reminiscent of present attitudes and behaviours.
- Cryptomnesia is a form of irregular authorship when a memory is mistaken for the result of imagination. For example, it may seem to a person that he himself composed a joke, while in reality he has already heard it and just remembered it.
- Egocentric distortion - remembering the past in a self-aggrandizing manner, such as remembering test scores better than they were, or a fish caught bigger than it was.
- False memory - memory impairment, expressed in false memories.
- Retrospective distortion - filtering the memory of past events through present knowledge. At the same time, events look more predictable than they were in reality. Also known as the "I-knew-it-it-all" effect.
- Introjection is a form of mis-attribution, where ideas hinted at by the questioner are misunderstood as being recalled.
- Childhood amnesia - a very weak ability of adults to reproduce memories of a period of life up to 2-4 years old, can be explained by the immaturity of brain structures - such as the hippocampus and amygdala - responsible for encoding and storing memories and usually developing enough by the age of 2 years.
- Distortion of an already-defined-place (placement bias) - the tendency to remember oneself as having shown better results than other individuals in those tasks in which we evaluate our abilities as "above average"; also the tendency to remember oneself as having performed worse than other individuals on those tasks in which we assess our abilities as "below average".
- Semantic cognitive distortion - the essence of which lies in the tendency to believe that you know the meaning of the word, although in fact, you know only the scope of its application and use.
- Generation effect - information is remembered better if it is generated by the individual himself, and not read or received in any other way from the outside.
- Processing Level Effect - describes the retrieval and recall of memories of a stimulus as a function of the depth of mental processing: deeper analysis generates a more reliable and detailed and longer-lasting memory trace than shallow analysis.
- Disinformation effect - occurs when the reproduction of episodic memories becomes less accurate due to the received information. post factum information . It is a classic example of retroactive interference, occurring when information received later interferes with the ability to retain previously encoded information.
- Illusion of the end of history - according to a large-scale study in 2013, people of all ages believe that their personality has changed a lot in the past, but will change little in the future. The effect is manifested at any age.
- The self-reference effect is a phenomenon in which memories encoded with an attitude towards oneself are better remembered than similar information without regard to oneself.
see also
Notes
- Alexandrov A. A. Integrative psychotherapy
- Explanations from changingminds.org (English) articles on specific theories and hypotheses are provided with links to academic sources
- Doll A. Mental traps: Stupid things they do reasonable people to ruin your life / Andre Doll; Per. from English. - 2nd ed. - M.: Alpina Business Books, 2008. - 146 p.
- Thompson, Suzanne C. (1999), "Illusions of Control: How We Overestimate Our Personal Influence", Current Directions in Psychological Science(Association for Psychological Science). - V. 8 (6): 187–190, ISSN 0963–7214
- Kahneman, Daniel. : [translated from English] / Daniel Kahneman. M.: AST, 2015. P. 328-329. 653 p.
- Gerd Gigerenzer. Understand the risks. How to choose the right course. M.: Hummingbird, Azbuka-Atticus, 2015
- Kahneman, Daniel. Think slow... decide quickly: [translated from English] / Daniel Kahneman. M.: AST, 2015. P. 475-489. 653 p.
- , pp. 153-158.
- “The illusion of transparency and the alleviation of speech anxiety” (PDF) . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 39 . March 25, 2003 . Retrieved October 8, 2012. Uses deprecated |coauthors= parameter (help)
- Robert K Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, Free Press, 1968, p. 477, ISBN 0-02-921130-1.
- Sergei Stepanov. To each - according to merits? // School psychologist. - 2004. - No. 25/26 (313/314) / July 1-15, 2004.
- Myers D. Social Psychology. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2011. - ISBN 978-5-4237-0138-3.
- Kruger, Justin; David Dunning (1999).
The only thing that prevents us from reaching our limits is our own thoughts. We are our own worst enemies.
Usually the process is figuratively represented as a leisurely climb up the stairs, step by step. In fact, it consists of jumps and is more like jumping between floors on a trampoline. In my life, such jumps occur due to changes in the very way of thinking: I look back and evaluate the whole picture as a whole, I change my attitude towards something. By the way, such moments happen infrequently, they are scattered over time.
To cope with the flow of information and external stimuli falling on our brain, we unconsciously begin to think in a pattern and use heuristic, intuitive methods of solving problems.
Writer Ash Read likened heuristics to a bike path for the mind, allowing it to work without having to maneuver between cars and without the risk of getting hit. Unfortunately, most of the things that we think we take completely deliberately are actually taken unconsciously.
The big problem is that we think according to heuristic patterns when faced with important choices. Although in this situation, on the contrary, deep reflection is necessary.
The most harmful heuristics are those that prevent us from seeing the path to change. They change our perception of reality and push us up the long stairs when we need a springboard. We offer you a list of five cognitive biases that are killing your resolve. Overcoming them is the first step towards change.
1. Confirmation bias
pressmaster/depositphotos.comOnly in an ideal world are all our thoughts rational, logical, and unbiased. In fact, most of us believe what we want to believe.
You can call it stubbornness, but psychologists have another term for this phenomenon - "confirmation bias". This is the tendency to seek and interpret information in a way that supports an idea that is close to you.
Let's take an example. In the 60s, Dr. Peter Wason conducted an experiment in which subjects were shown three numbers and asked to guess a rule known to the experimenter that explained this sequence. These were the numbers 2, 4, 6, so the subjects often suggested the rule "every next number increases by two." To confirm the rule, they offered their sequences of numbers, for example, 6, 8, 10 or 31, 33, 35. Is everything right?
Not really. Only one in five subjects guessed the real rule: three numbers in ascending order. Usually Wason's students said false idea(add two each time) and then search only in that direction to get evidence to support their guess.
Despite its apparent simplicity, Wason's experiment says a lot about human nature: we tend to look only for information that confirms our beliefs, and not for information that refutes them.
Confirmation bias is inherent in everyone, including doctors, politicians, creative people and entrepreneurs, even when the cost of error is especially high. Instead of asking ourselves what we are doing and why (this is the most important question), we often fall into bias and rely too much on the initial judgment.
2. Anchor effect
The first decision is not always the best, but our mind clings to the initial information that literally takes over.
The anchoring effect, or anchoring effect, is the tendency to greatly overestimate the first impression (anchor information) at the time of making a decision. This is clearly manifested when evaluating numerical values: the estimate tends towards the initial approximation. Simply put, we always think in relation to something, and not objectively.
Research shows that anything can be explained by the anchor effect, from why you don't get what you want (if you initially ask for more, the final figure will be high, and vice versa) to why you believe in stereotypes about people. whom you see for the first time in your life.
Revealing is a study by psychologists Mussweiler and Strack, who have shown that the anchoring effect works even with initially implausible numbers. The participants of their experiment, divided into two groups, were asked to answer the question of how old Mahatma Gandhi was when he died. And at the beginning, as anchors, each group was asked an additional question. The first: “Did he die before the age of nine or after?”, And the second: “Did this happen before he reached 140 years of age or after?”. As a result, the first group assumed that Gandhi died at 50, and the second - at 67 (in fact, he died at the age of 87).
The anchor question with the number 9 led the first group to give a significantly lower number than the second group, which started from an intentionally high number.
It is extremely important to understand the significance of the initial information (whether it is plausible or not) before making a final decision. After all, the first information we learn about something will affect how we will relate to it in the future.
3. Effect of joining the majority
chaoss/depositphotos.com The choice of the majority directly affects our thinking, even if it is contrary to our personal beliefs. This effect is known as herd instinct. You have probably heard sayings like “You don’t go to a foreign monastery with your charter” or “In Rome, act like a Roman” - this is precisely the effect of joining.
This distortion can lead us to make bad decisions (like going to a bad but popular movie or eating at a questionable place). At worst, it leads to groupthink.
Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs in a group of people within which conformity or the desire for social harmony leads to the fact that all alternative opinions are suppressed.
As a result, the group isolates itself from external influences. It becomes dangerous to suddenly disagree, and we begin to be our own censors. And as a result, we lose our own and independent thinking.
4 Survivor's Mistake
We often go to the other extreme: we focus exclusively on the stories of people who have achieved success. We are inspired by the success of Michael Jordan, not Kwame Brown or Jonathan Bender. We glorify Steve Jobs and forget Gary Kildall.
The problem with this effect is that we focus on 0.0001% successful people, but not on the majority. This leads to a one-sided assessment of the situation.
For example, we may think that being an entrepreneur is easy because only successful people publish books about their business. But we don't know anything about those who failed. This is probably why all sorts of online gurus and experts who promise to open “the only way to success” have become so popular. You just need to remember that the path that worked once will not necessarily lead you to the same result.
5. Loss aversion
Once we have made a choice and are on our way, other cognitive distortions come into play. Probably the worst of these is loss aversion, or the possession effect.
The loss aversion effect was popularized by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who found that we prefer to avoid even a small loss rather than focusing on the benefits we can reap.
The fear of a small loss can keep a person from participating in the game, even if a fabulous win is possible. Kahneman and Tversky conducted an experiment with the most ordinary mug. People who didn't have it were willing to pay about $3.30 for it, and those who did have it were willing to part with it for only $7.
Think about how this effect can affect you if you. Are you afraid to think outside the box for fear of losing something? Does the fear outweigh what you can gain?
So, there is a problem. Where is the solution?
All cognitive distortions have one thing in common: they arise from an unwillingness to take a step back and look at the whole picture.
We prefer to work with something familiar and do not want to look for miscalculations in our plans. Positive thinking has its benefits. But if important decisions are made blindly, you are unlikely to make the best choice possible.
Before making a big decision, make sure you don't fall prey to cognitive biases. To do this, take a step back and ask yourself:
- Why do you think it is necessary to do so?
- Are there any counterarguments to your opinion? Are they wealthy?
- Who influences your beliefs?
- Do you follow other people's opinions because you really believe in them?
- What do you have to lose if you make this decision? What will you get?
There are literally hundreds of different cognitive distortions, and without them, our brain simply could not function. But, if you do not analyze why you think this way and not otherwise, it is easy to fall into stereotyped thinking and forget how to think on your own.
Personal growth is never easy. It is a difficult job to which one must dedicate oneself. Don't let your future suffer just because not thinking is easier.
Cognitive biases are systematic errors in thinking or patterns of deviations in judgment that occur in certain situations. The existence of most of these cognitive distortions has been proven experimentally.
Cognitive distortions are an example of an evolutionarily established mental behavior. Some of them are adaptive in that they encourage more efficient actions or faster decisions. Others appear to stem from a lack of appropriate thinking skills, or from the inappropriate application of skills that were adaptive in other settings.
Decision Making and Behavioral Distortions
- The craze effect- the tendency to do (or believe in) things because so many other people do (or believe in) them. Refers to groupthink, herd behavior and manias.
- Error related to particular examples- ignoring the available statistical data, in favor of special cases.
- Blind spot in relation to cognitive biases- the tendency to not compensate for their own cognitive distortions.
- Distortion in the perception of the choice made- the tendency to remember one's choices as more correct than they actually were.
- Confirmation bias The tendency to seek or interpret information in a way that confirms pre-existing concepts.
- Consistency bias The tendency to test hypotheses solely by direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.
- contrast effect– amplification or underestimation of the value of one measurement when it is compared with a recently observed contrast object. For example, the death of one person may seem insignificant in comparison with the death of millions of people in the camps.
- professional deformation- the tendency to look at things according to the rules generally accepted for one's profession, discarding a more general point of view.
- Discrimination bias- the tendency to perceive two options as more different when they are implemented simultaneously than when they are implemented separately.
- Contribution effect- the fact that people often want to sell a certain object for much more than they are willing to pay to acquire it.
- Aversion to extreme solutions- the tendency to avoid extreme solutions, choosing intermediate ones.
- focus effect- an error in predictions that occurs when people pay too much attention to any one aspect of the phenomenon; causes errors in correctly predicting the utility of a future outcome. For example, focusing on who is to blame for a possible nuclear war, diverts attention from the fact that everyone in it will suffer.
- Narrow border effect- using too narrow an approach or description of a situation or problem.
- Frame effect– different conclusions depending on how the data is presented.
- Hyperbolic discount level- the tendency of people to prefer payments that are closer in time over payments in the more distant future, the closer both payments are to the present time.
- Illusion of control- the tendency of people to believe that they can control or at least influence the outcome of events that they actually cannot influence.
- Impact Reassessment- the tendency of people to overestimate the duration or intensity of the impact of an event on their future experiences.
- Bias towards information retrieval- the tendency to seek information even when it does not affect actions.
- Irrational amplification- the tendency to make irrational decisions based on past rational decisions, or to justify actions already taken. It appears, for example, at auctions, when an item is bought above its value.
- Aversion to loss- the negative utility associated with the loss of an object turns out to be greater than the utility associated with acquiring it.
- The effect of familiarity with the object- the tendency of people to express unreasonable sympathy for some object just because they are familiar with it.
- Moral trust effect- a person who is known to have no prejudice has a great chance of showing prejudice in the future. In other words, if everyone (including himself) considers a person to be sinless, then he has the illusion that his every action will also be sinless.
- The need for completion- the need to reach completion in important issue, get an answer and avoid feelings of doubt and insecurity. Current circumstances (time or social pressure) may amplify this source of error.
- The need for contradiction- more rapid dissemination of more sensational, poignant or controversial messages in the open press. A. Gor claims that only a few percent scientific publications reject global warming, but more than 50% of publications in the press, designed for the general public, reject it.
- Probability negation- the tendency to completely reject probabilistic issues when making decisions under conditions of uncertainty.
- Underestimation of inaction The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse and less moral than equally criminal inaction.
- Deviation towards the result- the tendency to judge decisions by their final results, instead of judging the quality of decisions by the circumstances of the point in time at which they were made. (“Winners are not judged.”)
- Planning error Tendency to underestimate task completion time.
- after the purchase The tendency to convince oneself with rational arguments that the purchase was worth the money.
- Pseudo-confidence effect The tendency to make risk-averse decisions if the expected outcome is positive, but to make risky decisions in order to avoid a negative outcome.
- - need to do something the opposite what someone encourages you to do out of a need to resist seeming attempts to limit your freedom of choice.
- selective perception- the tendency that expectations influence perception.
- Deviation towards the status quo- the tendency of people to wish things to remain roughly the same.
- Preference for holistic objects- the need to complete this part of the task. It is clearly shown that people tend to eat more when large portions of food are offered than to take many small portions.
- Von Restorff effect- the tendency of people to better remember stand-alone outstanding objects. The effect of isolation, otherwise called, is the effect of human memory, when an object that stands out from a number of similar homogeneous objects is remembered better than others.
- Zero risk preference- a preference to reduce one small risk to zero rather than significantly reduce another, larger risk. For example, people would rather reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks to zero than dramatically reduce the number of accidents on the roads, even if the second effect would be more lives saved.
Distortions related to probabilities and beliefs
Many of these conative biases are often investigated in relation to how they affect business and how they affect experimental research.
- Cognitive bias under ambiguity– avoidance of action options in which the missing information makes the probability “unknown”.
- Anchor effect(or anchor effect) - a feature of making numerical decisions by a person, causing irrational shifts of answers towards the number that fell into consciousness before making a decision. The anchor effect is known to many store managers: they know that putting a high-value item (like a $10,000 handbag) next to a cheaper but more expensive item for their category (like a $200 key ring) will increase sales of the latter. $10,000 in this example is the anchor relative to which the key fob seems cheap.
- Attention bias- neglect of relevant information when judging a correlation or association.
- Availability Heuristic- an assessment as more likely of what is more accessible in memory, that is, a deviation towards the brighter, unusual or emotionally charged.
- Cascade of available information is a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief in something becomes more and more convincing through increasing repetition in public discourse (“repeat something long enough and it becomes true”).
- Illusion of clustering The tendency to see patterns where there really aren't any.
- Distribution completeness error- the tendency to believe that the closer the mean value is to the given value, the narrower the distribution of the data set.
- Match error- the tendency to believe that more special cases are more likely than more particular ones.
- Player error- the tendency to believe that individual random events are influenced by previous random events. For example, in the case of tossing a coin many times in a row, it may well happen that 10 “tails” will fall out in a row. If the coin is "normal", then it seems obvious to many people that the next toss is more likely to come up heads. However, this conclusion is erroneous. The probability of the next heads or tails is still 1/2.
- hawthorne effect- the phenomenon that people observed in the course of the study temporarily change their behavior or performance. Example: Increasing productivity in a factory when a commission arrives.
- The effect of knowledge in hindsight- sometimes called "I knew it would be like this" - the tendency to perceive past events as predictable.
- Illusion of correlation- an erroneous belief in the relationship of certain actions and results.
- Game related error– analysis of the problems associated with the loss of chances, using a narrow set of games.
- Observer anticipation effect- this effect occurs when the researcher expects a certain result and unconsciously manipulates the course of the experiment or misinterprets the data in order to discover this result (see also the effect of subject expectations).
- Deviation associated with optimism The tendency to systematically overestimate and be over-optimistic about the chances of success of planned activities.
- Overconfidence effect The tendency to overestimate one's own abilities.
- Deviation towards a positive outcome- the tendency to overestimate the probability of good things when predicting.
- Dominance effect The tendency to overestimate initial events more than subsequent events.
- effect of recent The tendency to value recent events more than earlier events.
- Underestimating the return of magnitude to the mean– the tendency to expect extraordinary system behavior to continue.
- flashback effect- the effect that people remember more events from their youth than from other life periods.
- embellishment of the past- the tendency to evaluate past events more positively than they were perceived at the moment when they actually happened.
- Selection bias is a distortion in the experimental data that is related to the way the data were collected.
- Stereotyping- expecting certain characteristics from a member of the group, without knowing any additional information about his personality.
- Subadditivity effect- the tendency to evaluate the probability of the whole as less than the probabilities of its constituent parts.
- Subjective Importance the perception of something as true if the subject's beliefs require it to be true. This also includes perceiving coincidences as relationships.
- telescope effect- this effect consists in the fact that recent events appear more distant, and more distant events appear closer in time.
- Texas Marksman Fallacy– selecting or adjusting a hypothesis after the data has been collected, making it impossible to test the hypothesis honestly.
Social distortions
Most of these distortions are due to errors.
- Distortion in assessing the role of the subject of action- the tendency, when explaining the behavior of other people, to overemphasize the influence of their professional qualities and underestimate the influence of the situation (see also fundamental attribution error). However, paired with this distortion is the opposite tendency in evaluating one's own actions, in which people overestimate the influence of the situation on them and underestimate the influence of their own qualities.
- Dunning-Kruger effect- cognitive distortion, which lies in the fact that "people with a low level of qualification make erroneous conclusions and make bad decisions, but are not able to realize their mistakes due to their low level qualifications". This leads them to overestimate their own abilities, while really highly qualified people, on the contrary, tend to underestimate their abilities and suffer from insufficient self-confidence, considering others to be more competent. Thus, less competent people generally have a higher opinion of their own abilities than do competent people, who also tend to assume that others evaluate their abilities as low as they do themselves.
- The effect of self-centeredness- it takes place when people consider themselves more responsible for the result of some collective actions than an external observer finds.
- The Barnum Effect (or Forer Effect) is the tendency to give high marks to the accuracy of descriptions of one's personality, as if they were deliberately forged especially for them, but which in reality are general enough to be applicable to a very large number of people. For example, horoscopes.
- The False Consensus Effect is the tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which other people agree with them.
- The fundamental attribution error is the tendency for people to overestimate explanations of other people's behavior based on their personality traits, while at the same time underestimating the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior.
- The halo effect - takes place when one person is perceived by another and consists in the fact that the positive and negative features of a person “flow”, from the point of view of the perceiver, from one area of \u200b\u200bhis personality to another.
- herd instinct- a common tendency to accept the opinions and follow the behavior of the majority in order to feel safe and avoid conflicts.
- Illusion of asymmetric insight- it seems to a person that his knowledge of his loved ones exceeds their knowledge of him.
- Illusion of transparency People overestimate the ability of others to understand them, and they also overestimate their ability to understand others.
- Distortion in favor of your group The tendency of people to give preference to those whom they consider to be members of their own group.
- The phenomenon of a "just world"- the tendency of people to believe that the world is "fair" and therefore people get "what they deserve", in accordance with their personal qualities and actions: good people are rewarded and bad ones are punished.
- Lake Wobegon effect The human tendency to spread flattering beliefs about oneself and to consider oneself above average.
- Misrepresentation in connection with the wording of the law- this form of cultural distortion is associated with the fact that the recording of a certain law in the form of a mathematical formula creates the illusion of its real existence.
- Distortion in the assessment of the homogeneity of members of another group People perceive members of their own group as relatively more diverse than members of other groups.
- Projection Distortion- the tendency to unconsciously believe that other people share the same thoughts, beliefs, values and positions as the subject.
- Distortion in one's own favor The tendency to take greater responsibility for successes than for failures. It can also manifest itself as a tendency for people to present ambiguous information in a way that is favorable to them.
- Self-fulfilling prophecies- the tendency to engage in activities that will lead to results that (consciously or not) will confirm our beliefs.
- Justification of the system- the tendency to defend and maintain the status quo, that is, the tendency to prefer the existing social, political and economic order, and to deny change, even at the cost of sacrificing individual and collective interests.
- Distortion when attributing character traits The tendency for people to perceive themselves as relatively changeable in terms of personality, behavior, and mood, while also perceiving others as much more predictable.
- The effect of the first impression is the influence of the opinion about the person, which was formed by the subject in the first minutes at the first meeting, on the further assessment of the activities and personality of this person. They are also included in a number of mistakes often made by researchers when using the observation method along with the halo effect and others.
Typically, our mind uses cognitive distortions to reinforce some kind of negative emotion or negative line of reasoning. The voice in our head sounds rational and authentic, but in reality only reinforces our poor opinion of ourselves.
For example, we say to ourselves, “I always fail when I try to do something new.” This is an example of "black and white" thinking - with this cognitive distortion, we perceive the situation only in absolute categories: if we fail in one thing, then we are doomed to endure it in the future, in everything and always. If we add “I must be a complete loser” to these thoughts, this will be an example of overgeneralization - such a cognitive distortion generalizes ordinary failure to the scale of our entire personality, we make it our essence.
Here are the main examples of cognitive distortions that are worth remembering and practicing, monitoring them and responding to each in a more calm and measured way.
1. Filtering
We focus on the negative while filtering out all the positive aspects of the situation. Obsessed with an unpleasant detail, we lose objectivity, and reality is blurred and distorted.
2. Black and white thinking
With black and white thinking, we see everything either in black or in white, there can be no other shades. We must do everything perfectly or we will fail - there is no middle ground. We rush from one extreme to another, not allowing the idea that most situations and characters are complex, composite, with many shades.
3. Overgeneralization
With this cognitive distortion, we come to a conclusion based on a single aspect, a “piece” of what happened. If something bad happens once, we convince ourselves that it will happen again and again. We begin to see a single unpleasant event as part of an endless chain of defeats.
4. Jumping to conclusions
The other person has not yet said a word, and we already know exactly what he feels and why he behaves the way he does. In particular, we are confident that we can determine how people feel about us.
For example, we may conclude that someone does not love us, but we will not lift a finger to find out if this is true. Another example: we convince ourselves that things will go wrong, as if it were a fait accompli.
5. Pumping
We live in anticipation of a catastrophe that is about to break out, ignoring the objective reality. The same can be said about the habit of minimizing and exaggerating. When we hear about a problem, we immediately turn on “what if? ..”: “If this happens to me? What if tragedy happens? We exaggerate the importance of minor events (say, our mistake or someone else's achievement) or, conversely, mentally reduce an important event until it seems tiny (for example, one's own desired qualities or the shortcomings of others).
6. Personification
With this cognitive distortion, we believe that the actions and words of others are a personal reaction to us, our words and actions. We also constantly compare ourselves to others, trying to figure out who is smarter, better looking, and so on. In addition, we can consider ourselves the cause of some unpleasant event, for which we objectively do not bear any responsibility. For example, a skewed chain of reasoning might be: “We were late for dinner, so the hostess dried the meat. If only I had hurried my husband, this would not have happened.
7. False conclusion about control
If we feel that we are controlled from the outside, then we feel like a helpless victim of fate. The fallacy of control makes us responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around us. "Why are not you happy? Is it because I did something wrong?
8. False conclusion about justice
We are offended, believing that we were treated unfairly, but others may have a different point of view on this matter. Remember, as children, when things didn't go the way we wanted them to, adults would say, "Life isn't always fair." Those of us who judge every situation “fairly” often end up feeling bad. Because life is sometimes “unfair” - not everything and not always develops in our favor, no matter how much we would like it.
9. Accusation
We believe that other people are responsible for our pain, or, conversely, we blame ourselves for every problem. An example of such a cognitive distortion is expressed in the phrase: “You keep making me feel bad about myself, stop it!” No one can "make you think" or make you feel - we ourselves control our emotions and emotional reactions.
10. "I (shouldn't)"
We have a list of ironclad rules about how we and the people around us should behave. Anyone who breaks one of the rules causes our anger, and we get angry at ourselves when we break them ourselves. We often try to motivate ourselves with what we should or should not, as if we are doomed to receive punishment before we do anything.
For example: “I need to play sports. I shouldn't be so lazy." “Must”, “must”, “should” - from the same series. The emotional consequence of this cognitive distortion is guilt. And when we take a "should" approach to other people, we often feel anger, impotent rage, frustration, and resentment.
11. Emotional arguments
We believe that what we feel must automatically be true. If we feel stupid or boring, then we really are. We take for granted how our unhealthy emotions reflect reality. "That's how I feel, so it must be true."
12. False conclusion about change
We tend to expect others to change to suit our desires and demands. You just need to press or cajole properly. The drive to change others is so persistent because we feel like our hopes and happiness depend entirely on those around us.
13. Labeling
We generalize one or two qualities to a global judgment, we take the generalization to the extreme. This cognitive bias is also called labeling. Instead of analyzing the error in the context of a particular situation, we attach an unhealthy label to ourselves. For example, we say “I am a loser” after failing in some business.
Faced with backfire someone's behavior, we can label the person who behaved that way. “He (she) constantly throws his children at strangers” - about a parent whose children spend every day in kindergarten. Such a label is usually charged with negative emotions.
14. Desire to always be right
All our lives we are trying to prove that our opinions and actions are the most correct. Being wrong is unthinkable, so we go to great lengths to demonstrate that we are right. “I don’t care if my words hurt you, I will still prove to you that I am right and win this argument.” The consciousness of being right for many is more important than the feelings of people around, including even those closest to them.
16. False conclusion about the reward in heaven
We are confident that our sacrifices and concern for others at the expense of our own interests will surely pay off - as if someone invisible is keeping score. And we feel bitter disappointment when we do not receive the long-awaited reward.
In psychology, there is often such a thing as "cognitivism".
What is it? What does this term imply?
Definition of the term
Cognitivism is direction in psychology, according to which individuals do not just mechanically react to events from the outside or internal factors, but use the power of the mind for this.
His theoretical approach is to understand how thinking works, how incoming information is decoded and how it is organized for decision making or everyday tasks.
Research is related to human cognitive activity, and cognitivism is based on mental activity, not behavioral responses.
Cognitiveness - what is it in simple words? Cognitiveness- a term denoting a person's ability to mentally perceive and process external information.
The concept of cognition
The main concept in cognitivism is cognition, which is the cognitive process itself or a set of mental processes, which includes perception, thinking, attention, memory, speech, awareness, etc.
That is, processes that are associated with information processing in brain structures and its subsequent processing.
What does cognitive mean?
When something is described as "cognitive"- what do they mean? Which one?
Cognitive means pertaining in one way or another to cognition, thinking, consciousness and brain functions that provide introductory knowledge and information, the formation of concepts and their operation.
For a better understanding, consider a few more definitions directly related to cognitivism.
Some example definitions
What does the word "cognitive" mean?
Under cognitive style understand the relatively stable individual characteristics of how different people go through the process of thinking and understanding, how they perceive, process information and remember it, as well as the way an individual chooses to solve problems or problems.
This video covers cognitive styles:
What is cognitive behavior?
The cognitive behavior of a person is represented by thoughts and representations that are inherent to a greater extent to this particular individual.
These are behavioral responses that arise to a certain situation after processing and organizing information.
cognitive component It is a set of different attitudes towards oneself. It includes the following elements:
- self-image;
- self-assessment, that is, an assessment of this idea, which can have a different emotional coloring;
- potential behavioral response, that is, possible behavior based on self-image and self-esteem.
Under cognitive model understand a theoretical model that describes the structure of knowledge, the relationship between concepts, indicators, factors, observations, and also reflects how information is received, stored and used.
In other words, it is an abstract psychological process, reproducing the key points in the opinion of this researcher, for his research.
The video clearly demonstrates the classical cognitive model:
cognitive perception- it is an intermediary between the event and your perception of it.
This perception is called one of the most effective ways dealing with psychological stress. That is, this is your assessment of the event, the reaction of the brain to it and the formation of a meaningful behavioral response.
The phenomenon in which the ability of an individual to assimilate and comprehend what is happening from the external environment is limited is called cognitive deprivation. It includes the lack of information, its variability or randomness, lack of order.
Because of it, there are obstacles to productive behavioral reactions in the outside world.
Yes, in professional activity cognitive deprivation can lead to errors and interfere with effective decision making. And in Everyday life may be the result of false conclusions about surrounding individuals or events.
empathy- this is the ability to empathize with a person, to understand the feelings, thoughts, goals and aspirations of another individual.
It is divided into emotional and cognitive.
And if the first is based on emotions, then the second is based on intellectual processes, reason.
TO the hardest kind of learning referred to as cognitive.
Thanks to it, the functional structure of the environment is formed, that is, the relationships between its components are extracted, after which the results obtained are transferred to reality.
Cognitive learning includes observation, rational and psycho-nervous activity.
Under cognitive apparatus understand the internal resources of cognition, thanks to which intellectual structures, a system of thinking are formed.
Cognitive flexibility is the ability of the brain to move smoothly from one thought to another, as well as to think about several things at the same time.
It also includes the ability to adapt behavioral responses to new or unexpected situations. Cognitive Flexibility It has great importance in learning and solving complex problems.
It allows you to get information from environment, monitor its variability and adjust behavior in accordance with the new requirements of the situation.
Cognitive component usually closely related to the "I"-concept.
This is an individual's idea of himself and a set of certain characteristics that, in his opinion, he possesses.
These beliefs can have different meanings and change over time. The cognitive component can be based both on objective knowledge and on some subjective opinion.
Under cognitive properties understand such properties that characterize the abilities that an individual has, as well as the activity of cognitive processes.
Cognitive Factors plays an important role in our mental state.
These include the ability to analyze one's own state and environmental factors, evaluate past experience and make forecasts for the future, determine the ratio of existing needs and their level of satisfaction, control the current state and situation.
Cognitive impairment - what is it? Learn about it from ours.
What is the "I-Concept"? The clinical psychologist explains in this video:
Cognitive assessment is an element of the emotional process, which includes the interpretation of an ongoing event, as well as one's own and others' behavior based on the attitude to values, interests, needs.
In the cognitive theory of emotion, it is noted that cognitive evaluation determines the quality of experienced emotions and their strength.
cognitive features are specific characteristics of cognitive style associated with the age of the individual, his gender, place of residence, social status and environment.
Under cognitive experience understand the mental structures that ensure the perception of information, its storage and ordering. They allow the psyche to further reproduce the stable aspects of the environment and, in accordance with this, quickly respond to them.
cognitive rigidity called the inability of an individual to change his own perception of the environment and ideas about it when receiving additional, sometimes contradictory, information and the emergence of new situational requirements.
cognitive cognition is engaged in the search for methods and ways to increase efficiency, improve human mental activity.
With its help, it becomes possible to form a multifaceted, successful, thinking personality. Thus, cognitive cognition is a tool for the formation of the cognitive abilities of an individual.
One of the traits of common sense is cognitive biases. Individuals often reason or make decisions that are good in some cases but misleading in others.
They represent the predilections of the individual, biased assessment, a tendency to unjustified conclusions as a result of insufficient information or unwillingness to take it into account.
Thus, cognitivism takes a comprehensive look at mental activity human, explores thinking in various volatile situations. This term is closely related to cognitive activity and its effectiveness.
You can learn how to deal with cognitive biases in this video:
