List of cognitive biases

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For common errors in logic, see List of fallacies.

Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment. They are often studied in psychology, sociology and behavioral economics.<ref>Haselton MG, Nettle D, Andrews PW (2005). "The evolution of cognitive bias" (PDF). In Buss DM (ed.). The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc. pp. 724–746.</ref>

Although the reality of most of these biases is confirmed by reproducible research,<ref>"Cognitive Bias – Association for Psychological Science". www.psychologicalscience.org. Retrieved 2018-10-10.</ref><ref>Thomas O (2018-01-19). "Two decades of cognitive bias research in entrepreneurship: What do we know and where do we go from here?". Management Review Quarterly. 68 (2): 107–143. doi:10.1007/s11301-018-0135-9. ISSN 2198-1620. S2CID 148611312.</ref> there are often controversies about how to classify these biases or how to explain them.<ref>Dougherty MR, Gettys CF, Ogden EE (1999). "MINERVA-DM: A memory processes model for judgments of likelihood" (PDF). Psychological Review. 106 (1): 180–209. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.106.1.180.</ref> 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<ref name="HilbertPsychBul">Hilbert M (March 2012). "Toward a synthesis of cognitive biases: how noisy information processing can bias human decision making". Psychological Bulletin. 138 (2): 211–37. doi:10.1037/a0025940. PMID 22122235.</ref>). 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.<ref>Gigerenzer G (2006). "Bounded and Rational". In Stainton RJ (ed.). Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science. Blackwell. p. 129. ISBN 978-1405113045.</ref>

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,<ref name="HilbertPsychBul"/> or motivational ("hot") bias, such as when beliefs are distorted by wishful thinking. Both effects can be present at the same time.<ref>MacCoun RJ (1998). "Biases in the interpretation and use of research results" (PDF). Annual Review of Psychology. 49 (1): 259–287. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.259. PMID 15012470.</ref><ref>Nickerson RS (1998). "Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises" (PDF). Review of General Psychology. 2 (2): 175–220 [198]. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175. S2CID 8508954.</ref>

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.<ref name="dardenne">Dardenne B, Leyens JP (1995). "Confirmation Bias as a Social Skill". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 21 (11): 1229–1239. doi:10.1177/01461672952111011. S2CID 146709087.</ref>

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.<ref>Alexander WH, Brown JW (June 2010). "Hyperbolically discounted temporal difference learning". Neural Computation. 22 (6): 1511–1527. doi:10.1162/neco.2010.08-09-1080. PMC 3005720. PMID 20100071.</ref>

Belief, decision-making and behavioral

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

Anchoring bias

Main article: Anchoring (cognitive 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).<ref>Zhang Y, Lewis M, Pellon M, Coleman P (2007). A Preliminary Research on Modeling Cognitive Agents for Social Environments in Multi-Agent Systems (PDF). 2007 AAAI Fall Symposium: Emergent agents and socialities: Social and organizational aspects of intelligence. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. pp. 116–123.</ref><ref name="iverson2008" /> Anchoring bias includes or involves the following:

Apophenia

Main article: Apophenia

The tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.<ref name=skepdic>Carroll RT. "apophenia". The Skeptic's Dictionary. Retrieved 17 July 2017.</ref> The following are types of apophenia:

  • Clustering illusion, the tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).<ref name="iverson2008">Iverson GL, Brooks BL, Holdnack JA (2008). "Misdiagnosis of Cognitive Impairment in Forensic Neuropsychology". In Heilbronner RL (ed.). Neuropsychology in the Courtroom: Expert Analysis of Reports and Testimony. New York: Guilford Press. p. 248. ISBN 978-1593856342.</ref>
  • Illusory correlation, a tendency to inaccurately perceive a relationship between two unrelated events.<ref name="h_and_b">Tversky A, Kahneman D (September 1974). "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases". Science. 185 (4157): 1124–1131. Bibcode:1974Sci...185.1124T. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124. PMID 17835457. S2CID 143452957.</ref><ref name="ReferenceB">Fiedler K (1991). "The tricky nature of skewed frequency tables: An information loss account of distinctiveness-based illusory correlations". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 60 (1): 24–36. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.60.1.24.</ref>
  • Pareidolia, a tendency to perceive a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the Moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse.

Availability heuristic

Main article: 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.<ref>Schwarz N, Bless H, Strack F, Klumpp G, Rittenauer-Schatka H, Simons A (1991). "Ease of Retrieval as Information: Another Look at the Availability Heuristic" (PDF). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 61 (2): 195–202. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.195. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 February 2014. Retrieved 19 Oct 2014.</ref> The availability heuristic includes or involves the following:

Cognitive dissonance

Main article: Cognitive dissonance

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

  • Normalcy bias, a form of cognitive dissonance, is the refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.
  • Effort justification is a person's tendency to attribute greater value to an outcome if they had to put effort into achieving it. This can result in more value being applied to an outcome than it actually has. An example of this is the IKEA effect, the tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects that they partially assembled themselves, such as furniture from IKEA, regardless of the quality of the end product.<ref>Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, Dan Ariely (2011). The "IKEA Effect": When Labor Leads to Love. Harvard Business School</ref>
  • Ben Franklin effect, where a person who has performed a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than they would be if they had received a favor from that person.<ref>Lebowitz S (2 December 2016). "Harness the power of the 'Ben Franklin Effect' to get someone to like you". Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-10-10.</ref>

Confirmation bias

Main article: Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.<ref>Oswald ME, Grosjean S (2004). "Confirmation Bias". In Pohl RF (ed.). Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgement and Memory. Hove, UK: Psychology Press. pp. 79–96. ISBN 978-1841693514. OCLC 55124398 – via Internet Archive.</ref> There are multiple other cognitive biases which involve or are types of confirmation bias:

Egocentric bias

Main article: 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.<ref>Schacter DL, Gilbert DT, Wegner DM (2011). Psychology (2nd ed.). Macmillan. p. 254. ISBN 978-1429237192.</ref> The following are forms of egocentric bias:

  • Bias blind spot, the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.<ref name="blindspot">Pronin E, Kugler MB (July 2007). "Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blind spot". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 43 (4): 565–578. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.05.011. ISSN 0022-1031.</ref>
  • False consensus effect, the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.<ref>Marks G, Miller N (1987). "Ten years of research on the false-consensus effect: An empirical and theoretical review". Psychological Bulletin. 102 (1): 72–90. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.102.1.72.</ref>
  • False uniqueness bias, the tendency of people to see their projects and themselves as more singular than they actually are.<ref>"False Uniqueness Bias (Social PsychologyY) – IResearchNet". 2016-01-13.</ref>
  • Forer effect or Barnum effect, the tendency for individuals to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests.<ref>"The Barnum Demonstration". psych.fullerton.edu. Retrieved 2018-10-10.</ref>
  • Illusion of asymmetric insight, where people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them.<ref>Pronin E, Kruger J, Savitsky K, Ross L (October 2001). "You don't know me, but I know you: the illusion of asymmetric insight". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 81 (4): 639–656. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.81.4.639. PMID 11642351.</ref>
  • Illusion of control, the tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.<ref>Thompson SC (1999). "Illusions of Control: How We Overestimate Our Personal Influence". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 8 (6): 187–190. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.00044. ISSN 0963-7214. JSTOR 20182602. S2CID 145714398.</ref>
  • Illusion of transparency, the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which their personal mental state is known by others, and to overestimate how well they understand others' personal mental states.
  • Illusion of validity, the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one's judgments, especially when available information is consistent or inter-correlated.<ref>Dierkes M, Antal AB, Child J, Nonaka I (2003). Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge. Oxford University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0198295822. Retrieved 9 September 2013.</ref>
  • Illusory superiority, the tendency to overestimate one's desirable qualities, and underestimate undesirable qualities, relative to other people. (Also known as "Lake Wobegon effect", "better-than-average effect", or "superiority bias".)<ref name="hoorens">Hoorens V (1993). "Self-enhancement and Superiority Biases in Social Comparison". European Review of Social Psychology. 4 (1): 113–139. doi:10.1080/14792779343000040.</ref>
  • Naïve cynicism, expecting more egocentric bias in others than in oneself.
  • Naïve realism, the belief that we see reality as it really is—objectively and without bias; that the facts are plain for all to see; that rational people will agree with us; and that those who do not are either uninformed, lazy, irrational, or biased.
  • Overconfidence effect, a tendency to have excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.<ref name="HilbertPsychBul" /><ref>Adams PA, Adams JK (December 1960). "Confidence in the recognition and reproduction of words difficult to spell". The American Journal of Psychology. 73 (4): 544–552. doi:10.2307/1419942. JSTOR 1419942. PMID 13681411.</ref><ref>Hoffrage U (2004). "Overconfidence". In Pohl R (ed.). Cognitive Illusions: a handbook on fallacies and biases in thinking, judgement and memory. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-1841693514.</ref><ref>Sutherland 2007, pp. 172–178</ref>
  • Planning fallacy, the tendency for people to underestimate the time it will take them to complete a given task.<ref name="temporal" />
  • Restraint bias, the tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.
  • Trait ascription bias, the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior, and mood while viewing others as much more predictable.
  • Third-person effect, a tendency to believe that mass-communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves.

Extension neglect

Main article: 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

Main article: Framing effect (psychology)

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

Main article: Fallacy
  • Berkson's paradox, the tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities.<ref>"Berkson's Paradox | Brilliant Math & Science Wiki". brilliant.org. Retrieved 2018-10-10.</ref>
  • Escalation of commitment, irrational escalation, or sunk cost fallacy, where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong.
  • G. I. Joe fallacy, the tendency to think that knowing about cognitive bias is enough to overcome it.<ref>Kristal AS, Santos LR, G.I. Joe Phenomena: Understanding the Limits of Metacognitive Awareness on Debiasing (PDF), Harvard Business School</ref>
  • Gambler's fallacy, the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads."<ref>Investopedia Staff (2006-10-29). "Gambler's Fallacy/Monte Carlo Fallacy". Investopedia. Retrieved 2018-10-10.</ref>
  • Hot-hand fallacy (also known as "hot hand phenomenon" or "hot hand"), the belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts.
  • Plan continuation bias, failure to recognize that the original plan of action is no longer appropriate for a changing situation or for a situation that is different from anticipated.<ref>Tuccio W (2011-01-01). "Heuristics to Improve Human Factors Performance in Aviation". Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research. 20 (3). doi:10.15394/jaaer.2011.1640. ISSN 2329-258X.</ref>
  • Subadditivity effect, the tendency to judge the probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.<ref>Baron, J. (in preparation). Thinking and Deciding, 4th edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.</ref>
  • Time-saving bias, a tendency to underestimate the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively low speed, and to overestimate the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively high speed.
  • Zero-sum bias, where a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another).

Prospect theory

Main article: Prospect theory

The following relate to prospect theory:

  • Ambiguity effect, the tendency to avoid options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.<ref>Baron 1994, p. 372</ref>
  • Disposition effect, the tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.
  • Dread aversion, just as losses yield double the emotional impact of gains, dread yields double the emotional impact of savouring.<ref>Template:Cite SSRN</ref><ref>Template:Cite SSRN</ref>
  • Endowment effect, the tendency for people to demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.<ref>(Kahneman, Knetsch & Thaler 1991, p. 193) Richard Thaler coined the term "endowment effect."</ref>
  • Loss aversion, where the perceived disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it.<ref>(Kahneman, Knetsch & Thaler 1991, p. 193) Daniel Kahneman, together with Amos Tversky, coined the term "loss aversion."</ref> (see also Sunk cost fallacy)
  • Pseudocertainty effect, the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.<ref>Hardman 2009, p. 137</ref>
  • Status quo bias, the tendency to prefer things to stay relatively the same.<ref>Kahneman, Knetsch & Thaler 1991, p. 193</ref><ref>Baron 1994, p. 382</ref>
  • System justification, the tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest.

Self-assessment

Truth judgment

Other

Name Description
Action bias The tendency for someone to act when faced with a problem even when inaction would be more effective, or to act when no evident problem exists.<ref>"Why do we prefer doing something to doing nothing". The Decision Lab. 30 September 2021. Retrieved 30 November 2021.</ref><ref>Patt A, Zeckhauser R (July 2000). "Action Bias and Environmental Decisions". Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 21: 45–72. doi:10.1023/A:1026517309871. S2CID 154662174. Retrieved 30 November 2021.</ref>
Additive bias The tendency to solve problems through addition, even when subtraction is a better approach.<ref>Gupta S (7 April 2021). "People add by default even when subtraction makes more sense". Science News. Retrieved 10 May 2021.</ref><ref>Adams GS, Converse BA, Hales AH, Klotz LE (April 2021). "People systematically overlook subtractive changes". Nature. 592 (7853): 258–261. Bibcode:2021Natur.592..258A. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03380-y. PMID 33828317. S2CID 233185662.</ref>
Attribute substitution Occurs when a judgment has to be made (of a target attribute) that is computationally complex, and instead a more easily calculated heuristic attribute is substituted. This substitution is thought of as taking place in the automatic intuitive judgment system, rather than the more self-aware reflective system.
Curse of knowledge When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.<ref>Ackerman MS, ed. (2003). Sharing expertise beyond knowledge management (online ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0262011952.</ref>
Declinism The predisposition to view the past favorably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.<ref>Quartz SR, The State Of The World Isn't Nearly As Bad As You Think, Edge Foundation, Inc., retrieved 2016-02-17</ref>
End-of-history illusion The age-independent belief that one will change less in the future than one has in the past.<ref>Quoidbach J, Gilbert DT, Wilson TD (January 2013). "The end of history illusion" (PDF). Science. 339 (6115): 96–98. Bibcode:2013Sci...339...96Q. doi:10.1126/science.1229294. PMID 23288539. S2CID 39240210. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-01-13. Young people, middle-aged people, and older people all believed they had changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future.</ref>
Exaggerated expectation The tendency to expect or predict more extreme outcomes than those outcomes that actually happen.<ref name="HilbertPsychBul" />
Form function attribution bias In human–robot interaction, the tendency of people to make systematic errors when interacting with a robot. People may base their expectations and perceptions of a robot on its appearance (form) and attribute functions which do not necessarily mirror the true functions of the robot.<ref>Haring KS, Watanabe K, Velonaki M, Tossell CC, Finomore V (2018). "FFAB-The Form Function Attribution Bias in Human Robot Interaction". IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems. 10 (4): 843–851. doi:10.1109/TCDS.2018.2851569. S2CID 54459747.</ref>
Fundamental pain bias The tendency for people to believe they accurately report their own pain levels while holding the paradoxical belief that others exaggerate it.<ref>Kara-Yakoubian M (2022-07-29). "Psychologists uncover evidence of a fundamental pain bias". PsyPost. Retrieved 2022-11-27.</ref>
Hedonic recall bias The tendency for people who are satisfied with their wage to overestimate how much they earn, and vice versa, for people who are unsatisfied with their wage to underestimate it.<ref>Prati A (2017). "Hedonic recall bias. Why you should not ask people how much they earn". Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. 143: 78–97. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2017.09.002.</ref>
Hindsight bias Sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, or the "Hindsight is 20/20" effect, is the tendency to see past events as having been predictable<ref name="hindsight">Pohl RF (2004). "Hindsight Bias". In Pohl RF (ed.). Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgement and Memory. Hove, UK: Psychology Press. pp. 363–378. ISBN 978-1841693514. OCLC 55124398.</ref> before they happened.
Impact bias The tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.<ref name="temporal">Sanna LJ, Schwarz N (July 2004). "Integrating temporal biases: the interplay of focal thoughts and accessibility experiences". Psychological Science. 15 (7): 474–481. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00704.x. PMID 15200632. S2CID 10998751.</ref>
Information bias The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.<ref>Baron 1994, pp. 258–259</ref>
Interoceptive bias or Hungry judge effect The tendency for sensory input about the body itself to affect one's judgement about external, unrelated circumstances. (As for example, in parole judges who are more lenient when fed and rested.)<ref>Danziger S, Levav J, Avnaim-Pesso L (April 2011). "Extraneous factors in judicial decisions". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 108 (17): 6889–6892. Bibcode:2011PNAS..108.6889D. doi:10.1073/pnas.1018033108. PMC 3084045. PMID 21482790.</ref><ref>Zaman J, De Peuter S, Van Diest I, Van den Bergh O, Vlaeyen JW (November 2016). "Interoceptive cues predicting exteroceptive events". International Journal of Psychophysiology. 109: 100–106. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.09.003. PMID 27616473.</ref><ref>Barrett LF, Simmons WK (July 2015). "Interoceptive predictions in the brain". Nature Reviews. Neuroscience. 16 (7): 419–429. doi:10.1038/nrn3950. PMC 4731102. PMID 26016744.</ref><ref>Damasio AR (October 1996). "The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. 351 (1346): 1413–1420. doi:10.1098/rstb.1996.0125. PMID 8941953. S2CID 1841280.</ref>
Money illusion The tendency to concentrate on the nominal value (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power.<ref>Shafir E, Diamond P, Tversky A (2000). "Money Illusion". In Kahneman D, Tversky A (eds.). Choices, values, and frames. Cambridge University Press. pp. 335–355. ISBN 978-0521627498.</ref>
Moral credential effect Occurs when someone who does something good gives themselves permission to be less good in the future.
Non-adaptive choice switching After experiencing a bad outcome with a decision problem, the tendency to avoid the choice previously made when faced with the same decision problem again, even though the choice was optimal. Also known as "once bitten, twice shy" or "hot stove effect".<ref>Marcatto F, Cosulich A, Ferrante D (2015). "Once bitten, twice shy: Experienced regret and non-adaptive choice switching". PeerJ. 3: e1035. doi:10.7717/peerj.1035. PMC 4476096. PMID 26157618.</ref>
Mere exposure effect or
familiarity principle (in social psychology) 		The tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.<ref>Bornstein RF, Crave-Lemley C (2004). "Mere exposure effect". In Pohl RF (ed.). Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgement and Memory. Hove, UK: Psychology Press. pp. 215–234. ISBN 978-1841693514. OCLC 55124398.</ref>
Omission bias The tendency to judge harmful actions (commissions) as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful inactions (omissions).<ref>Baron 1994, p. 386</ref>
Optimism bias The tendency to be over-optimistic, underestimating greatly the probability of undesirable outcomes and overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes (see also wishful thinking, valence effect, positive outcome bias, and compare pessimism bias).<ref>Baron 1994, p. 44</ref><ref>Hardman 2009, p. 104</ref>
Ostrich effect Ignoring an obvious negative situation.
Outcome bias The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
Pessimism bias The tendency for some people, especially those with depression, to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening to them. (compare optimism bias)
Present bias The tendency of people to give stronger weight to payoffs that are closer to the present time when considering trade-offs between two future moments.<ref>O'Donoghue T, Rabin M (1999). "Doing it now or later". American Economic Review. 89 (1): 103–124. doi:10.1257/aer.89.1.103. S2CID 5115877.</ref>
Plant blindness The tendency to ignore plants in their environment and a failure to recognize and appreciate the utility of plants to life on earth.<ref>Balas B, Momsen JL (September 2014). Holt EA (ed.). "Attention "blinks" differently for plants and animals". CBE: Life Sciences Education. 13 (3): 437–443. doi:10.1187/cbe.14-05-0080. PMC 4152205. PMID 25185227.</ref>
Prevention bias When investing money to protect against risks, decision makers perceive that a dollar spent on prevention buys more security than a dollar spent on timely detection and response, even when investing in either option is equally effective.<ref>Safi R, Browne GJ, Naini AJ (2021). "Mis-spending on information security measures: Theory and experimental evidence". International Journal of Information Management. 57 (102291): 102291. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102291. S2CID 232041220.</ref>
Probability matching Sub-optimal matching of the probability of choices with the probability of reward in a stochastic context.
Pro-innovation bias The tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation's usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses.
Projection bias The tendency to overestimate how much one's future selves will share one's current preferences, thoughts and values, thus leading to sub-optimal choices.<ref>Hsee CK, Hastie R (January 2006). "Decision and experience: why don't we choose what makes us happy?" (PDF). Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 10 (1): 31–37. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.178.7054. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.11.007. PMID 16318925. S2CID 12262319. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-04-20.</ref><ref>Trofimova I (October 1999). "An investigation of how people of different age, sex, and temperament estimate the world". Psychological Reports. 85 (2): 533–552. doi:10.2466/pr0.1999.85.2.533. PMID 10611787. S2CID 8335544.</ref><ref name="TroPLoS">Trofimova I (2014). "Observer bias: an interaction of temperament traits with biases in the semantic perception of lexical material". PLOS ONE. 9 (1): e85677. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...985677T. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0085677. PMC 3903487. PMID 24475048.</ref>
Proportionality bias Our innate tendency to assume that big events have big causes, may also explain our tendency to accept conspiracy theories.<ref name="leman2007">Leman PJ, Cinnirella M (2007). "A major event has a major cause: Evidence for the role of heuristics in reasoning about conspiracy theories". Social Psychological Review. 9 (2): 18–28. doi:10.53841/bpsspr.2007.9.2.18. S2CID 245126866.</ref><ref name="buckley2015">Buckley T (2015). "Why Do Some People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?". Scientific American Mind. 26 (4): 72. doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0715-72a. Retrieved 26 July 2020.</ref>
Recency illusion The illusion that a phenomenon one has noticed only recently is itself recent. Often used to refer to linguistic phenomena; the illusion that a word or language usage that one has noticed only recently is an innovation when it is, in fact, long-established (see also frequency illusion). Also recency bias is a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones. A memory bias, recency bias gives "greater importance to the most recent event",<ref>"Use Cognitive Biases to Your Advantage, Institute for Management Consultants, #721, December 19, 2011". Archived from the original on October 24, 2020. Retrieved April 15, 2021.</ref> such as the final lawyer's closing argument a jury hears before being dismissed to deliberate.
Systematic bias Judgement that arises when targets of differentiating judgement become subject to effects of regression that are not equivalent.<ref>Fiedler K, Unkelbach C (2014-10-01). "Regressive Judgment: Implications of a Universal Property of the Empirical World". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 23 (5): 361–367. doi:10.1177/0963721414546330. ISSN 0963-7214. S2CID 146376950.</ref>
Risk compensation or Peltzman effect The tendency to take greater risks when perceived safety increases.
Surrogation Losing sight of the strategic construct that a measure is intended to represent, and subsequently acting as though the measure is the construct of interest.
Teleological Bias The tendency to engage in overgeneralized ascriptions of purpose to entities and events that did not arise from goal-directed action, design, or selection based on functional effects.<ref>Kelemen D, Rottman J, Seston R (2013). "Professional Physical Scientists Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies: Purpose-Based Reasoning as a Cognitive Default". Journal of Experimental Psychology:General. 142 (4): 1074–1083. doi:10.1037/a0030399. PMID 23067062..</ref><ref>Kelemen D, Rosset E (2009). "The Human Function Compunction: teleological explanation in adults". Cognition. 111 (1): 138–143. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.01.001. PMID 19200537. S2CID 2569743.</ref>
Turkey illusion Absence of expectation of sudden trend breaks in continuous developments
Unconscious bias or implicit bias The underlying attitudes and stereotypes that people unconsciously attribute to another person or group of people that affect how they understand and engage with them. Many researchers suggest that unconscious bias occurs automatically as the brain makes quick judgments based on past experiences and background.<ref>"Unconscious Bias". Vanderbilt University. Retrieved 2020-11-09.</ref>
Unit bias The standard suggested amount of consumption (e.g., food serving size) is perceived to be appropriate, and a person would consume it all even if it is too much for this particular person.<ref>"Penn Psychologists Believe 'Unit Bias' Determines The Acceptable Amount To Eat". ScienceDaily (November 21, 2005)</ref>
Value selection bias The tendency to rely on existing numerical data when reasoning in an unfamiliar context, even if calculation or numerical manipulation is required.<ref>Talboy A, Schneider S (2022-03-17). "Reference Dependence in Bayesian Reasoning: Value Selection Bias, Congruence Effects, and Response Prompt Sensitivity". Frontiers in Psychology. 13: 729285. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.729285. PMC 8970303. PMID 35369253.</ref><ref>Talboy AN, Schneider SL (December 2018). "Focusing on what matters: Restructuring the presentation of Bayesian reasoning problems". Journal of Experimental Psychology. Applied. 24 (4): 440–458. doi:10.1037/xap0000187. PMID 30299128. S2CID 52943395.</ref>
Weber–Fechner law Difficulty in comparing small differences in large quantities.
Women are wonderful effect A tendency to associate more positive attributes with women than with men.

Social

Association fallacy

Main article: Association fallacy

Association fallacies include:

Attribution bias

Main article: Attribution bias

Attribution bias includes:

  • Actor-observer bias, the tendency for explanations of other individuals' behaviors to overemphasize the influence of their personality and underemphasize the influence of their situation (see also Fundamental attribution error), and for explanations of one's own behaviors to do the opposite (that is, to overemphasize the influence of our situation and underemphasize the influence of our own personality).
  • Defensive attribution hypothesis, a tendency to attribute more blame to a harm-doer as the outcome becomes more severe or as personal or situational similarity to the victim increases.
  • Extrinsic incentives bias, an exception to the fundamental attribution error, where people view others as having (situational) extrinsic motivations and (dispositional) intrinsic motivations for oneself
  • Fundamental attribution error, the tendency for people to overemphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior<ref name="TroPLoS" /> (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).<ref name="Sutherland 2007 138–139">Sutherland 2007, pp. 138–139</ref>
  • Group attribution error, the biased belief that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole or the tendency to assume that group decision outcomes reflect the preferences of group members, even when information is available that clearly suggests otherwise.
  • Hostile attribution bias, the tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign.<ref>Anderson KB, Graham LM (2007). "Hostile Attribution Bias". Encyclopedia of Social Psychology. Sage Publications, Inc. pp. 446–447. doi:10.4135/9781412956253. ISBN 978-1412916707.</ref>
  • Intentionality bias, the tendency to judge human action to be intentional rather than accidental.<ref>Rosset E (2008-09-01). "It's no accident: Our bias for intentional explanations". Cognition. 108 (3): 771–780. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.07.001. ISSN 0010-0277. PMID 18692779. S2CID 16559459.</ref>
  • Just-world hypothesis, the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just, causing them to rationalize an otherwise inexplicable injustice as deserved by the victim(s).
  • Moral luck, the tendency for people to ascribe greater or lesser moral standing based on the outcome of an event.
  • Puritanical bias, the tendency to attribute cause of an undesirable outcome or wrongdoing by an individual to a moral deficiency or lack of self-control rather than taking into account the impact of broader societal determinants .<ref>Kokkoris M (2020-01-16). "The Dark Side of Self-Control". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 17 January 2020.</ref>
  • Self-serving bias, the tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests (see also group-serving bias).<ref>Plous 1993, p. 185</ref>
  • Ultimate attribution error, similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.

Conformity

Main article: Conformity

Conformity is involved in the following:

Ingroup bias

Main article: 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:

  • Not invented here, an aversion to contact with or use of products, research, standards, or knowledge developed outside a group.
  • Outgroup homogeneity bias, where individuals see members of other groups as being relatively less varied than members of their own group.<ref>Plous 1993, p. 206</ref>

Other social biases

Name Description
Assumed similarity bias Where an individual assumes that others have more traits in common with them than those others actually do.<ref>Template:Cite APA Dictionary of Psychology</ref>
Outgroup favoritism When some socially disadvantaged groups will express favorable attitudes (and even preferences) toward social, cultural, or ethnic groups other than their own.<ref>"Intellectual Precursors, Major Postulates, and Practical Relevance of System Justification Theory", A Theory of System Justification, Harvard University Press, pp. 49–69, 2020-07-14, doi:10.2307/j.ctv13qfw6w.6, S2CID 243130432, retrieved 2023-12-05</ref>
Pygmalion effect The phenomenon whereby others' expectations of a target person affect the target person's performance.
Reactance The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants one to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain one's freedom of choice (see also Reverse psychology).
Reactive devaluation Devaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary.
Social comparison bias The tendency, when making decisions, to favour potential candidates who do not compete with one's own particular strengths.<ref>Garcia SM, Song H, Tesser A (November 2010). "Tainted recommendations: The social comparison bias". Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 113 (2): 97–101. doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2010.06.002. ISSN 0749-5978.
Shared information bias The tendency for group members to spend more time and energy discussing information that all members are already familiar with (i.e., shared information), and less time and energy discussing information that only some members are aware of (i.e., unshared information).<ref name="F">Forsyth DR (2009). Group Dynamics (5th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.</ref>
Worse-than-average effect A tendency to believe ourselves to be worse than others at tasks which are difficult.<ref name="Kruger, J. 1999">Kruger J (August 1999). "Lake Wobegon be gone! The "below-average effect" and the egocentric nature of comparative ability judgments". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 77 (2): 221–232. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.2.221. PMID 10474208.</ref>

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

Main article: Misattribution of memory
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The misattributions include:

  • Cryptomnesia, where a memory is mistaken for novel thought or imagination, because there is no subjective experience of it being a memory.<ref name="schacter">Schacter DL (March 1999). "The seven sins of memory. Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience". The American Psychologist. 54 (3): 182–203. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.54.3.182. PMID 10199218. S2CID 14882268.</ref>
  • False memory, where imagination is mistaken for a memory.
  • Social cryptomnesia, a failure by people and society in general to remember the origin of a change, in which people know that a change has occurred in society, but forget how this change occurred; that is, the steps that were taken to bring this change about, and who took these steps. This has led to reduced social credit towards the minorities who made major sacrifices that led to a change in societal values.<ref name="Butera 2018">Butera F, Levine JM, Vernet J (August 2009). "Influence without credit: How successful minorities respond to social cryptomnesia". Coping with Minority Status. Cambridge University Press. pp. 311–332. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511804465.015. ISBN 978-0511804465.</ref>
  • Source confusion, episodic memories are confused with other information, creating distorted memories.<ref name="Lieberman2011">Lieberman DA (2011). Human Learning and Memory. Cambridge University Press. p. 432. ISBN 978-1139502535.</ref>
  • Suggestibility, where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.
  • The Perky effect, where real images can influence imagined images, or be misremembered as imagined rather than real

Other memory biases

Name Description
Availability bias Greater likelihood of recalling recent, nearby, or otherwise immediately available examples, and the imputation of importance to those examples over others.
Bizarreness effect Bizarre material is better remembered than common material.
Boundary extension Remembering the background of an image as being larger or more expansive than the foreground<ref>McDunn BA, Siddiqui AP, Brown JM (April 2014). "Seeking the boundary of boundary extension". Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 21 (2): 370–375. doi:10.3758/s13423-013-0494-0. PMID 23921509. S2CID 2876131.</ref>
Childhood amnesia The retention of few memories from before the age of four.
Choice-supportive bias The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.<ref>Mather M, Shafir E, Johnson MK (March 2000). "Misremembrance of options past: source monitoring and choice" (PDF). Psychological Science. 11 (2): 132–138. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00228. PMID 11273420. S2CID 2468289. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2009-01-17.</ref>
Confirmation bias The tendency to search for, interpret, or recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses. See also under § Confirmation bias.
Conservatism or Regressive bias Tendency to remember high values and high likelihoods/probabilities/frequencies as lower than they actually were and low ones as higher than they actually were. Based on the evidence, memories are not extreme enough.<ref name="ReferenceA">Attneave F (August 1953). "Psychological probability as a function of experienced frequency". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 46 (2): 81–86. doi:10.1037/h0057955. PMID 13084849.</ref><ref name="Experimental Psychology 1523">Fischhoff B, Slovic P, Lichtenstein S (1977). "Knowing with certainty: The appropriateness of extreme confidence". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 3 (4): 552–564. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.3.4.552. S2CID 54888532.</ref>
Consistency bias Incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour.<ref>Cacioppo J (2002). Foundations in social neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 130–132. ISBN 978-0262531955.</ref>
Continued influence effect Misinformation continues to influence memory and reasoning about an event, despite the misinformation having been corrected.<ref>Cacciatore MA (April 2021). "Misinformation and public opinion of science and health: Approaches, findings, and future directions". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 118 (15): e1912437117. Bibcode:2021PNAS..11812437C. doi:10.1073/pnas.1912437117. PMC 8053916. PMID 33837143. p. 4: The CIE refers to the tendency for information that is initially presented as true, but later revealed to be false, to continue to affect memory and reasoning</ref> cf. misinformation effect, where the original memory is affected by incorrect information received later.
Context effect That cognition and memory are dependent on context, such that out-of-context memories are more difficult to retrieve than in-context memories (e.g., recall time and accuracy for a work-related memory will be lower at home, and vice versa).
Cross-race effect The tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying members of a race other than their own.
Egocentric bias Recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g., remembering one's exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as bigger than it really was.
Euphoric recall The tendency of people to remember past experiences in a positive light, while overlooking negative experiences associated with that event.
Fading affect bias A bias in which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly than the emotion associated with positive events.<ref>Schmidt SR (July 1994). "Effects of humor on sentence memory" (PDF). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 20 (4): 953–967. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.20.4.953. PMID 8064254. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-15. Retrieved 2015-04-19.</ref>
Generation effect (Self-generation effect) That self-generated information is remembered best. For instance, people are better able to recall memories of statements that they have generated than similar statements generated by others.
Gender differences in eyewitness memory The tendency for a witness to remember more details about someone of the same gender.
Google effect The tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines.
Hindsight bias ("I-knew-it-all-along" effect) The inclination to see past events as having been predictable.
Humor effect That humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones, which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor, the increased cognitive processing time to understand the humor, or the emotional arousal caused by the humor.<ref>Schmidt SR (2003). "Life Is Pleasant – and Memory Helps to Keep It That Way!" (PDF). Review of General Psychology. 7 (2): 203–210. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.7.2.203. S2CID 43179740.</ref>
Illusory correlation Inaccurately seeing a relationship between two events related by coincidence.<ref>Fiedler K (1991). "The tricky nature of skewed frequency tables: An information loss account of distinctiveness-based illusory correlations". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 60 (1): 24–36. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.60.1.24.</ref> See also under Apophenia § Notes
Illusory truth effect (Illusion-of-truth effect) People are more likely to identify as true statements those they have previously heard (even if they cannot consciously remember having heard them), regardless of the actual validity of the statement. In other words, a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one. See also under Truthiness § Notes
Lag effect The phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of time in a single session. See also spacing effect.
Leveling and sharpening Memory distortions introduced by the loss of details in a recollection over time, often concurrent with sharpening or selective recollection of certain details that take on exaggerated significance in relation to the details or aspects of the experience lost through leveling. Both biases may be reinforced over time, and by repeated recollection or re-telling of a memory.<ref>Koriat A, Goldsmith M, Pansky A (2000). "Toward a psychology of memory accuracy". Annual Review of Psychology. 51 (1): 481–537. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.51.1.481. PMID 10751979.</ref>
Levels-of-processing effect That different methods of encoding information into memory have different levels of effectiveness.<ref>Craik & Lockhart, 1972</ref>
List-length effect A smaller percentage of items are remembered in a longer list, but as the length of the list increases, the absolute number of items remembered increases as well.<ref name=memcog>Kinnell A, Dennis S (February 2011). "The list length effect in recognition memory: an analysis of potential confounds". Memory & Cognition. 39 (2): 348–63. doi:10.3758/s13421-010-0007-6. PMID 21264573.</ref>
Memory inhibition Being shown some items from a list makes it harder to retrieve the other items (e.g., Slamecka, 1968).
Misinformation effect Memory becoming less accurate because of interference from post-event information.<ref>Weiten W (2010). Psychology: Themes and Variations. Cengage Learning. p. 338. ISBN 978-0495601975.</ref> cf. continued influence effect, where misinformation about an event, despite later being corrected, continues to influence memory about the event.
Modality effect That memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the list items were received via speech than when they were received through writing.
Mood-congruent memory bias (state-dependent memory) The improved recall of information congruent with one's current mood.
Negativity bias or Negativity effect Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories.<ref name="Haizlip">Haizlip J, May N, Schorling J, Williams A, Plews-Ogan M (September 2012). "Perspective: the negativity bias, medical education, and the culture of academic medicine: why culture change is hard". Academic Medicine. 87 (9): 1205–1209. doi:10.1097/ACM.0b013e3182628f03. PMID 22836850.</ref><ref name="TroPLoS" /> (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).<ref name="Sutherland 2007 138–139" />
Next-in-line effect When taking turns speaking in a group using a predetermined order (e.g. going clockwise around a room, taking numbers, etc.) people tend to have diminished recall for the words of the person who spoke immediately before them.<ref name="Weiten2007">Weiten W (2007). Psychology: Themes and Variations. Cengage Learning. p. 260. ISBN 978-0495093039.</ref>
Part-list cueing effect That being shown some items from a list and later retrieving one item causes it to become harder to retrieve the other items.<ref>Slamecka NJ (April 1968). "An examination of trace storage in free recall". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 76 (4): 504–513. doi:10.1037/h0025695. PMID 5650563.</ref>
Peak–end rule That people seem to perceive not the sum of an experience but the average of how it was at its peak (e.g., pleasant or unpleasant) and how it ended.
Persistence The unwanted recurrence of memories of a traumatic event.
Picture superiority effect The notion that concepts that are learned by viewing pictures are more easily and frequently recalled than are concepts that are learned by viewing their written word form counterparts.<ref name="shepard">Shepard RN (1967). "Recognition memory for words, sentences, and pictures". Journal of Learning and Verbal Behavior. 6: 156–163. doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(67)80067-7.</ref><ref name="McBride">McBride DM, Dosher BA (2002). "A comparison of conscious and automatic memory processes for picture and word stimuli: a process dissociation analysis". Consciousness and Cognition. 11 (3): 423–460. doi:10.1016/s1053-8100(02)00007-7. PMID 12435377. S2CID 2813053.</ref><ref name="defeyter">Defetyer MA, Russo R, McPartlin PL (2009). "The picture superiority effect in recognition memory: a developmental study using the response signal procedure". Cognitive Development. 24 (3): 265–273. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2009.05.002.</ref><ref name="whitehouse">Whitehouse AJ, Maybery MT, Durkin K (2006). "The development of the picture-superiority effect". British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 24 (4): 767–773. doi:10.1348/026151005X74153.</ref><ref name="ally gold">Ally BA, Gold CA, Budson AE (January 2009). "The picture superiority effect in patients with Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment". Neuropsychologia. 47 (2): 595–598. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.10.010. PMC 2763351. PMID 18992266.</ref><ref name="curran">Curran T, Doyle J (May 2011). "Picture superiority doubly dissociates the ERP correlates of recollection and familiarity". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 23 (5): 1247–1262. doi:10.1162/jocn.2010.21464. PMID 20350169. S2CID 6568038.</ref>
Placement bias Tendency to remember ourselves to be better than others at tasks at which we rate ourselves above average (also Illusory superiority or Better-than-average effect)<ref name="Unskilled and unaware of it: how di"/> and tendency to remember ourselves to be worse than others at tasks at which we rate ourselves below average (also Worse-than-average effect).<ref>Kruger, J. (1999). Lake Wobegon be gone! The "below-average effect" and the egocentric nature of comparative ability judgments" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77(2),</ref>
Positivity effect (Socioemotional selectivity theory) That older adults favor positive over negative information in their memories. See also euphoric recall
Primacy effect Where an item at the beginning of a list is more easily recalled. A form of serial position effect. See also recency effect and suffix effect.
Processing difficulty effect That information that takes longer to read and is thought about more (processed with more difficulty) is more easily remembered.<ref>O'Brien EJ, Myers JL (1985). "When comprehension difficulty improves memory for text". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 11 (1): 12–21. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.11.1.12. S2CID 199928680.</ref> See also levels-of-processing effect.
Recency effect A form of serial position effect where an item at the end of a list is easier to recall. This can be disrupted by the suffix effect. See also primacy effect.
Reminiscence bump The recalling of more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than personal events from other lifetime periods.<ref>Rubin, Wetzler & Nebes, 1986; Rubin, Rahhal & Poon, 1998</ref>
Repetition blindness Unexpected difficulty in remembering more than one instance of a visual sequence
Rosy retrospection The remembering of the past as having been better than it really was.
Saying is believing effect Communicating a socially tuned message to an audience can lead to a bias of identifying the tuned message as one's own thoughts.<ref>Liang, Tingchang; Lin, Zhao; Souma, Toshihiko (2021). "How Group Perception Affects What People Share and How People Feel: The Role of Entitativity and Epistemic Trust in the "Saying-Is-Believing" Effect". Frontiers in Psychology. 12: 728864. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.728864. PMC 8494462. PMID 34630240.</ref>
Self-relevance effect That memories relating to the self are better recalled than similar information relating to others.
Serial position effect That items near the end of a sequence are the easiest to recall, followed by the items at the beginning of a sequence; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered.<ref name="serial_position">Martin GN, Carlson NR, Buskist W (2007). Psychology (3rd ed.). Pearson Education. pp. 309–310. ISBN 978-0273710868.</ref> See also recency effect, primacy effect and suffix effect.
Spacing effect That information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a long span of time rather than a short one.
Spotlight effect The tendency to overestimate the amount that other people notice one's appearance or behavior.
Stereotype bias or stereotypical bias Memory distorted towards stereotypes (e.g., racial or gender).
Suffix effect Diminishment of the recency effect because a sound item is appended to the list that the subject is not required to recall.<ref>Morton, Crowder & Prussin, 1971</ref><ref name="PittEdwards2003">Pitt I, Edwards AD (2003). Design of Speech-Based Devices: A Practical Guide. Springer. p. 26. ISBN 978-1852334369.</ref> A form of serial position effect. Cf. recency effect and primacy effect.
Subadditivity effect The tendency to estimate that the likelihood of a remembered event is less than the sum of its (more than two) mutually exclusive components.<ref>Tversky A, Koehler DJ (1994). "Support theory: A nonextensional representation of subjective probability" (PDF). Psychological Review. 101 (4): 547–567. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.101.4.547. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-01-09. Retrieved 2021-12-10.</ref>
Tachypsychia When time perceived by the individual either lengthens, making events appear to slow down, or contracts.<ref>Stetson C, Fiesta MP, Eagleman DM (December 2007). "Does time really slow down during a frightening event?". PLOS ONE. 2 (12): e1295. Bibcode:2007PLoSO...2.1295S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001295. PMC 2110887. PMID 18074019.</ref>
Telescoping effect The tendency to displace recent events backwards in time and remote events forward in time, so that recent events appear more remote, and remote events, more recent.
Testing effect The fact that one more easily recall information one has read by rewriting it instead of rereading it.<ref>Goldstein ED (2010-06-21). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. Cengage Learning. p. 231. ISBN 978-1133009122.</ref> Frequent testing of material that has been committed to memory improves memory recall.
Tip of the tongue phenomenon When a subject is able to recall parts of an item, or related information, but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item. This is thought to be an instance of "blocking" where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other.<ref name="schacter" />
Travis syndrome Overestimating the significance of the present.<ref name=travis>"Not everyone is in such awe of the internet". Evening Standard. 2011-03-23. Retrieved 28 October 2015.</ref> It is related to chronological snobbery with possibly an appeal to novelty logical fallacy being part of the bias.
Verbatim effect That the "gist" of what someone has said is better remembered than the verbatim wording.<ref>Poppenk, Walia, Joanisse, Danckert, & Köhler, 2006</ref> This is because memories are representations, not exact copies.
von Restorff effect That an item that sticks out is more likely to be remembered than other items.<ref>Von Restorff H (1933). "Über die Wirkung von Bereichsbildungen im Spurenfeld (The effects of field formation in the trace field)"". Psychological Research. 18 (1): 299–342. doi:10.1007/bf02409636. S2CID 145479042.</ref>
Zeigarnik effect That uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones.

See also

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Footnotes

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References

Further reading

External links

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