Cognitive Bias Reference Toolkit

Weber’s law, also called Weber-Fechner law, historically important psychological law quantifying the perception of change in a given stimulus. The law states that the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant ratio of the original stimulus.

Acquiescence bias, also known as agreement bias, is a category of response bias common to survey research in which respondents have a tendency to select a positive response option or indicate a positive connotation disproportionately more frequently. Respondents do so without considering the content of the question or their 'true' preference. Acquiescence is sometimes referred to as "yea-saying" and is the tendency of a respondent to agree with a statement when in doubt. Questions affected by acquiescence bias take the following format: a stimulus in the form of a statement is presented, followed by 'agree/disagree,' 'yes/no' or 'true/false' response options. For example, a respondent might be presented with the statement "gardening makes me feel happy," and would then be expected to select either 'agree' or 'disagree.' Such question formats are favoured by both survey designers and respondents because they are straightforward to produce and respond to. The bias is particularly prevalent in the case of surveys or questionnaires that employ truisms as the stimuli, such as: "It is better to give than to receive" or "Never a lender nor a borrower be". Acquiescence bias can introduce systematic errors that affect the validity of research by confounding attitudes and behaviours with the general tendency to agree, which can result in misguided inference.

Action bias is the psychological phenomenon where people tend to favor action over inaction, even when there is no indication that doing so would point towards a better result. It is an automatic response, similar to a reflex or an impulse and is not based on rational thinking.

This bias is the difference in attributions when judging behavior in a situation, depending on if the person is the actor or the observer. When we judge others in a situation (as an observer), we tend to think of their actions as being related to their personality. But when we judge ourselves (as an actor), even in the same situations, we tend to believe the actions are related to the situation itself, rather than our own personality. Essentially, when we watch others, we attribute their actions to their personality, but for ourselves, we blame the situation.

The additive bias is our tendency to add solutions to a problem, rather than subtract from them. If you think of writing, many authors find it hard to edit their work down, instead preferring to add even more writing when the opposite is needed. In technology, how often do we see even more features added to products, when all we wanted was a simple function in the first place. In business, many companies have a tendency to add more and more products, rather than improving and focusing on their existing ones. The solution even applies to legos, where studies found a strong preference to add blocks to fix a wobbly bridge when the better solution was to remove a few instead.

The tendency of respondents to focus on and be influenced by the aesthetic appeal of an object or feature, leading them to prioritize visual attractiveness over practical functionality or quality.

The tendency of respondents to rely on their immediate emotional reactions or personal feelings when making decisions or providing answers, rather than critically evaluating the information or considering more objective factors.

Agent detection is the inclination for animals, including humans, to presume the purposeful intervention of a sentient or intelligent agent in situations that may or may not involve one.It is believed that humans evolved agent detection as a survival strategy. In situations where one is unsure of the presence of an intelligent agent (such as an enemy or a predator), there is survival value in assuming its presence so that precautions can be taken. For example, if a human came across an indentation in the ground that might be a lion's footprint, it is advantageous to err on the side of caution and assume that the lion is present.

The ambiguity effect is a cognitive bias that describes how people tend to avoid options that are ambiguous or lack information. When faced with uncertainty, people may not have the information to accurately estimate the probabilities of different outcomes, so they may choose options with known favorable outcomes instead. This can lead to people making higher risk choices simply because the risk is known.

The anchoring bias is a cognitive bias that causes us to rely heavily on the first piece of information we are given about a topic. When we are setting plans or making estimates about something, we interpret newer information from the reference point of our anchor instead of seeing it objectively. This can skew our judgment and prevent us from updating our plans or predictions as much as we should.

Anthropocentric thinking is the idea that humans are the most important being in existence. Some refer to the same idea as humanocentrism, human supremacy, or human exceptionalism. The idea is a prominent figure in arguments surrounding environmental ethics and solutions, with some believing anthropocentrism is at the root of our environmental problems today.

Anthropomorphism is the tendency to attribute human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities or objects. It's considered an innate part of human psychology, especially when people see animals. For example, someone might assume that a tiger is lonely, or sense malice in a computer.

Apophenia is when we see patterns or connections between unrelated or random things. Think of constellations, elaborate unlikely conspiracy theories, or shapes in the clouds above. All of these are random, yet we incorrectly (most of the time) ascribe them as being connected.

The association fallacy, also known as guilt by association, is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone assumes that a quality of one thing must apply to another because they share a similar quality or belief. This can lead to unwarranted assumptions and stereotypes.

the tendency for perceivers to assume that other people possess the same qualities and characteristics that they have. This bias is thought to inflate the accuracy that perceivers attribute to their judgments about others

Attentional bias is the tendency to pay attention to some things while simultaneously ignoring others. Attentional bias affects not only the things that we perceive in the environment but the decisions that we make based upon our perceptions.

Attribute substitution, also known as substitution bias, is a psychological process that occurs when someone unconsciously substitutes a simpler attribute for a more complex one when making a judgment. This can happen when the desired attribute is too difficult to measure or obtain. For example, a shopper might choose a car based on its color instead of technical details like emissions or MPG.

Attribution bias is the tendency to explain a person’s behaviour by referring to their character rather than any situational factor. In essence, it leads us to overestimate the weight of someone’s personality traits, and underestimate the influence of their individual circumstances.

The authority bias is our tendency to be more influenced by the opinion of an authority figure, unrelated to its actual content. Like all cognitive biases, the authority bias is a shortcut our brains use to save time and energy making decisions.

Automation bias is the propensity for humans to favor suggestions from automated decision-making systems and to ignore contradictory information made without automation, even if it is correct.

An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing cycle that describes how collective beliefs develop. It's a process where a belief becomes more plausible through repetition, even if it's not based on evidence. The cycle begins when a small group of people hold a belief, and as they repeat it, more people come to believe it as well. This can happen because people learn from the apparent beliefs of others and distort their public responses to maintain social acceptance.

The availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that people use to make quick assessments about the likelihood of an event by relying on information that's most readily available in their memory. It's based on the assumption that information that's easier to recall is more likely or frequent, while information that's harder to recall is less likely or frequent

The backfire effect, also known as belief perseverance or conceptual conservatism, is a psychological phenomenon where a person's beliefs become stronger when confronted with evidence that challenges their worldview. This can happen when people prioritize their initial conclusions and resist changing their minds, even when it might be in their best interest to do so.

The bandwagon effect is a psychological phenomenon where people adopt certain behaviors, styles, or attitudes simply because others are doing so. More specifically, it is a cognitive bias by which public opinion or behaviours can alter due to particular actions and beliefs rallying amongst the public. It is a psychological phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases with respect to the proportion of others who have already done so.

Base rate fallacy refers to the tendency to ignore relevant statistical information in favor of case-specific information. Instead of taking into account the base rate or prior probability of an event, people are often distracted by less relevant information

Belief bias is the tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the plausibility of their conclusion rather than how strongly they justify that conclusion. A person is more likely to accept an argument that supports a conclusion that aligns with their values, beliefs and prior knowledge, while rejecting counter arguments to the conclusion.

The Ben Franklin effect is a psychological phenomenon in which people like someone more after doing a favor for them. An explanation for this is cognitive dissonance. People reason that they help others because they like them, even if they do not, because their minds struggle to maintain logical consistency between their actions and perceptions.

Blind Spot Bias is 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

The bizarreness effect is the tendency to remember unusual, implausible, or bizarre information better than common information. For example, someone might better remember a person wearing an unusual outfit at a party than others at the event.

Boundary extension is an error of commission in which people confidently remember seeing a surrounding region of a scene that was not visible in the studied view.

a cognitive distortion that prompts people to jump to the worst possible conclusion, usually with very limited information or objective reason to despair. When a situation is upsetting, but not necessarily catastrophic, they still feel like they are in the midst of a crisis.

The central tendency bias, or contraction bias, is a phenomenon where the judgment of the magnitude of items held in working memory appears to be biased towards the average of past observations.

The cheerleader effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to perceive people as more attractive when they are in a group than when they are alone.

Choice-supportive bias is the tendency to remember our choices as better than they actually were, because we tend to over attribute positive features to options we chose and negative features to options not chosen. Individuals tend to think that ‘they chose this option so it must have been the better option.

The tendency for questions to assume the validity of a proposition and proceed to ask about its implications or relevance, bypassing the need to establish its initial validity.

Clustering illusion refers to a cognitive bias in behavioral finance in which an investor observes patterns in what are actually random events. In other words, clustering illusion bias is the bias that arises from seeing a trend in random events that occur in clusters that are actually random events.

The term cognitive dissonance is used to describe the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. People tend to seek consistency in their attitudes and perceptions, so this conflict causes feelings of unease or discomfort.

The tendency towards action, even in a situation where not performing one leads to an identical, or even better outcome

the tendency of people to experience a decrease in empathy as the number of people in need of aid increase. It is a type of cognitive bias that explains the tendency to ignore unwanted information when making a decision, so it is easier to justify.

the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs.

Conformity is the tendency for an individual to align their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those of the people around them.

the tendency of people to over-rely on testing their initial hypothesis (the most congruent one) while neglecting to test alternative hypotheses. That is, people rarely try experiments that could disprove their initial belief, but rather try to repeat their initial results. It is a special case of the confirmation bias.

The conjunction fallacy (also known as the Linda problem) is an inference from an array of particulars, in violation of the laws of probability, that a conjoint set of two or more conclusions is likelier than a single member of that same set.

In cognitive psychology and decision science, conservatism or conservatism bias is a bias which refers to the tendency to revise one’s belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence. This bias describes human belief revision in which people over-weigh the prior distribution (base rate) and under-weigh new sample evidence when compared to Bayesian belief-revision

The term ‘consistency bias refers’ to people’s tendency to judge their own interpersonal behavior in a given situation in accordance with their general self-images, even if their actual behavior in the situation is partialled out.

Context effect is a cognitive psychology concept that describes how environmental factors influence a person's response to stimuli. It can impact many aspects of daily life, including: Decision making How preferences change when non-preferred options are added to a choice set. For example, in fundraising, removing a less desirable option can increase the appeal of a better offer.

The continued influence effect (CIE) is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when people continue to believe false or outdated information, even after it has been corrected or debunked. This can happen even when the information is fictional. The CIE can shape a person's understanding and interpretation of related topics, and can impact their beliefs and judgments.

Contrast effect is an unconscious bias that happens when two things are judged in comparison to one another, instead of being assessed individually.

The Courtesy Bias is the reluctance of an individual to give negative feedback for fear of offending. The person tends to adopt a more socially correct opinion than their own, looking to avoid displeasing those asking the question.

The cross-race effect, also known as the own-race bias or other-race effect, is a facial recognition phenomenon where people tend to more easily recognize faces of their own race or ethnicity than those of other races. This can also include facial expressions.

the phenomenon of not recognizing the return of an old memory as a product of memory, but instead regarding it as a new or original thought or idea: Cryptomnesia has misled some writers to embark on new works which are actually unconscious plagiarism or even self-plagiarism.

The “curse of knowledge,” or “the curse of expertise,” is a cognitive bias where we incorrectly assume that everyone knows as much as we do on a given topic. When we know something, it can be hard to imagine what it would be like not knowing that piece of information.

Declinism is our tendency to view the future negatively in contrast to a favorable view. Simply put, it is the belief that that the worst is yet to come.

The decoy effect is defined as the phenomenon whereby consumers change their preference between two options when presented with a third option?—?the ‘decoy’?—?that is ‘asymmetrically dominated’. It is also referred to as the ‘attraction effect’ or ‘asymmetric dominance effect’.

The default effect is a cognitive bias that describes a person's tendency to choose the default option when presented with a choice. The default option is the course of action that a person will receive if they don't specify a particular choice. People are more likely to choose the default option because it requires less effort or thought.

The defensive attribution hypothesis (DAH) is a social psychological concept that describes a cognitive bias where people attribute causes of events to avoid threats to their self-esteem or fear. This bias can act as an ego-defensive mechanism, where people make attributions to protect their self-image and reduce feelings of vulnerability or fear.

The denomination effect is a form of cognitive bias relating to currency, suggesting people may be less likely to spend larger currency denominations than their equivalent value in smaller denominations.

The disposition effect is a behavioral finance concept that describes a psychological bias in investment decisions. It's when investors sell assets that have increased in value, while holding onto assets that have decreased in value. This can include selling winning investments too early to ensure a profit, and holding onto losing investments too long in hopes of turning them into gains.

Distinction bias, a concept of decision theory, is the tendency to view two options as more distinctive when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.

Dread aversion is the tendency to feel displeasure (dread) from anticipating future losses outweighs the pleasure (savoring) from anticipating equal gains.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.

Duration neglect is a psychological phenomenon that describes how people's judgments of an unpleasant experience's unpleasantness are not significantly affected by its duration. Instead, people tend to be more influenced by the experience's peak and how quickly the pain fades. This can lead to people making similar mistakes repeatedly because they don't accurately estimate how much suffering an event could cause.

Effort justification is a social psychology phenomenon that occurs when people value a task or goal more after putting in a lot of effort to achieve it. It's a way for people to reduce cognitive dissonance, or restore consistency, by shifting their evaluation of something in a positive direction.

Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality. It appears to be the result of the psychological need to satisfy one's ego and to be advantageous for memory consolidation.

The end-of-history illusion (EOHI) is a psychological phenomenon that causes people to underestimate how much they will change in the future. People with EOHI believe they have experienced significant personal growth and changes in their tastes in the past, but that they won't change much in the future.

The endowment effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to value something they own more than something they don't own. It's also known as divestiture aversion or the ownership effect.

Escalated commitment, also known as commitment bias, is a human behavior pattern where people continue to invest in a decision, action, or investment despite negative outcomes. This can include dedicating time, money, or other resources to a failing course of action. People may continue to escalate their commitment in the hopes of a positive outcome or return on their investment, even if new evidence suggests the costs outweigh the benefits. This behavior can be exacerbated when people are feeling highly emotional.

Euphoric recall is a cognitive bias that causes people to remember past experiences in a positive way, while ignoring negative aspects. It can also be called memory bias and is common in addicts, but can also occur in people who aren't addicted

Exaggerated expectation is a phenomenon in which people have unrealistic expectations of themselves or others. It can lead to disappointment and frustration when those expectations are not met

when an individual's expectations about an outcome influence perceptions of one's own or others’ behavior. In clinical trials, both raters and subjects may enter trials with expectations. Rater EB occurs when raters expect that subjects will improve over the course of the trial. Subject EB occurs when subjects themselves expect to get better. Rater and subject expectations can interact to create a therapeutic alliance.

Extension neglect is a type of cognitive bias which occurs when the sample size is ignored when its determination is relevant.

The extrinsic incentive bias relates to the tendency to attribute other people’s motives to extrinsic incentives, such as job security or high wages, rather than intrinsic ones, such as learning new things or building a new skill.

The fading affect bias (FAB) is a psychological phenomenon that describes how memories associated with negative emotions fade more quickly than those associated with positive emotions. This bias only refers to the feelings associated with memories, not the memories themselves

The fallacy of composition is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone assumes that the parts of a whole have the same properties as the whole. This can lead to incorrect conclusions because the collective and distributive properties of a group may not share the same properties

The fallacy of division is an informal logical fallacy that occurs when an argument assumes that a whole has the same qualities as its individual parts without providing a clear rationale.

The false consensus effect describes the tendency for people to believe that their own opinions, beliefs, and attributes are more common and normative in others than they actually are, and that opinions, beliefs and attributes that others have but they do not share are more indicative of someone’s personality in general.

A false dichotomy, also known as a false dilemma or false binary, is a logical fallacy that misrepresents a range of options as a choice between two mutually exclusive things. It's often characterized by the omission of choices or the use of "either this or that" language

False memory refers to cases in which people remember events differently from the way they happened or, in the most dramatic case, remember events that never happened at all.

The false-uniqueness effect is an attributional type of cognitive bias in social psychology that describes how people tend to view their qualities, traits, and personal attributes as unique when in reality they are not. This bias is often measured by looking at the difference between estimates that people make about how many of their peers share a certain trait or behavior and the actual number of peers who report these traits and behaviors.

The focusing effect, also known as the focusing illusion, is a cognitive bias that occurs when people place too much emphasis on one aspect of a situation while ignoring other factors. This bias can lead people to make flawed decisions or judgments based on incomplete information.

The Barnum effect, also called the Forer effect or, less commonly, the Barnum–Forer effect, is a common psychological phenomenon whereby individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically to them, yet which 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 paranormal beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, aura reading, and some types of personality tests.

The term form function attribution bias (FFAB) refers to the cognitive bias which occurs when people are prone to perceptual errors, leading to a biased interpretation of a robot’s functionality.

The framing effect is a cognitive bias that occurs when people react differently to the same information depending on how it's presented. This can lead to different choices, even when the options are the same. For example, people might be more likely to choose an option that's presented as a gain over one that's presented as a loss.

The frequency illusion, framing effect, or Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, this cognitive bias states that an individual feels he/she encounters new information very frequently after coming across it for the first time. It is explained by the mind noticing the new information more and the confirmation bias reinforcing it.

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits someone's ability to use an object in a way other than its traditional use. It can occur when someone's familiarity with an object's traditional use prevents them from solving problems that require a new use. For example, someone might not think to use a box as a platform to mount a candle because they're more used to thinking of it as a container.

The fundamental attribution error (FAE) is a cognitive bias in social psychology that causes people to overemphasize personality traits and underemphasize environmental factors when judging others' behavior. This can lead to people making quick, often incorrect assumptions about others without considering other reasons for their behavior.

The gambler's fallacy is a cognitive bias that occurs when someone believes that the frequency of past events can affect the likelihood of future random events.

A gender bias is the differential treatment and/or representation of males and females, based on stereotypes and not on real differences.

The self-generation effect describes how information is better remembered when it is self-generated as opposed to passively consuming or interacting it.

The Google effect, also known as digital amnesia, is the tendency to forget information that can be found online through search engines like Google. This happens because our brains don't prioritize remembering information that can be accessed later. People with the Google effect may be more likely to remember where they found information rather than the information itself.

Group attribution error (GAE) is a cognitive bias that occurs when people assume that the characteristics or beliefs of individuals are representative of the group they belong to, even when there's information to the contrary. This can include believing that a group's decision reflects the preferences of its members, or that each member shares the group's way of thinking. GAE can lead to generalizations or stereotyping based on group membership, and can have potentially serious consequences

Group shift refers to a condition where the position of an individual in the group changes to adopt a more extreme position due to the influence of the group.

Groupthink refers to a psychological phenomenon in which members of a group make decisions based on the pressure that they get from the group.

The halo effect is a psychological term that describes a cognitive bias that occurs when a positive impression of someone, company, brand, or product in one area influences one's opinion or feelings in another area.

The hard-easy effect, also known as the discriminability effect or the difficulty effect, is a cognitive bias that causes people to misjudge their ability to complete tasks based on their perceived difficulty. People tend to overestimate their chances of success at difficult tasks and underestimate their chances of success at easy tasks. For example, someone might feel overconfident when answering a difficult question and underconfident when answering an easy question.

Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they were. After an event has occurred, people often believe that they could have predicted or perhaps even known with a high degree of certainty what the outcome of the event would be before it occurred. Hindsight bias may cause distortions of memories of what was known or believed before an event occurred and is a significant source of overconfidence in one’s ability to predict the outcomes of future events

Hostile attribution bias is a kind of interpretation bias in which individuals are more likely to interpret ambiguous situations as hostile than benign

A hot-cold empathy gap occurs when people underestimate the influence of visceral states (e.g. being angry, in pain, or hungry) on their behavior or preferences.

The hot-hand fallacy is the tendency to believe that someone who has been successful in a task or activity is more likely to be successful again in further attempts.

The humor effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to remember information better when they perceive it as humorous.

Hyperbolic discounting, also called “present bias,” is a cognitive bias, where people choose smaller, immediate rewards rather than larger, later rewards. The discounted present value of the future reward follows a mathematical curve called a hyperbola.

The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created. The name refers to Swedish manufacturer and furniture retailer IKEA, which sells many items of furniture that require assembly.

The fallacy of illicit transference is an informal fallacy that is committed when an argument assumes there is no difference between a term in the distributive (referring to every member of a class) and collective (referring to the class itself as a whole) sense.

The illusion of asymmetric insight is a cognitive bias whereby people perceive their knowledge of others to surpass other people's knowledge of them. This bias "has been traced to people's tendency to view their own spontaneous or off-the-cuff responses to others' questions as relatively unrevealing even though they view others' similar responses as meaningful

The illusion of control is a tendency to overestimate how much control you have over the outcome of uncontrollable events.

The illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their understanding of complex topics. It's often not until someone is asked to explain a concept that they realize their limited understanding. IOED is strongest for explanatory knowledge and is most likely to occur when the environment supports real-time explanations with visible mechanisms.

The illusion of transparency occurs when we overestimate the degree to which other people can perceive our personal thoughts, emotions, and mental states. Individuals experiencing this cognitive bias tend to believe that their internal experiences are more visible to others than they actually are.

lusion of validity is a cognitive bias in which a person overestimates their ability to interpret and predict accurately the outcome when analyzing a set of data, in particular when the data analyzed show a very consistent pattern—that is, when the data "tell" a coherent story.

Illusory correlation is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when people perceive a connection between two or more variables, even when there is no evidence that one exists. This can happen when rare or distinctive events occur simultaneously, drawing attention and leading to false associations.

Illusory superiority, also known as the "Better-Than-Average Effect", is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their own abilities and positive qualities compared to others, while underestimating their negative ones. It's a type of positive illusion, along with optimism bias and illusion of control.

The illusory truth effect, also known as the illusion of truth, is the tendency to believe something is true after hearing or reading it repeatedly, even if it contradicts prior knowledge. This phenomenon can occur when people are exposed to false information, such as fake news headlines or conspiracy beliefs.

Impact bias is the tendency to overestimate the intensity or the duration of future emotions and states of feeling.

Bias that arises from systematic differences in the collection, recall, recording or handling of information used in a study.

Ingroup bias is the tendency for humans to favor their own group over those of other groups. Think of football teams, patriotism, or even self-identifying attributes.

Insensitivity to sample size is a cognitive bias that causes people to disregard sample size when judging the probability of gaining an accurate sampling without comparing the size of the sample to the population being sampled.

The intentionality bias refers to our automatic tendency to judge other people’s actions to be intentional.

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.)

The just-world hypothesis or just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias that assumes that ‘people get what they deserve’?—?that actions will have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor.

The lag effect suggests that we retain information better when there are longer breaks between repeated presentations of that information.

The questions are phrased such that the respondents are forced to give their answers in favor of or against a subject. Such surveys do not give valuable insights as the results will be biased. It can frustrate the respondents and lead to lower response rates.

The less-is-better effect is a cognitive bias that can lead people to make suboptimal decisions when presented with information in isolation. This effect occurs when people prefer an option with less quantitative value over a better alternative, such as a smaller set of dishes over a larger set that's partially broken. When people consider both options together, their preferences may reverse, and the effect disappears.

Leveling and sharpening are two functions that are automatic and exist within memory. Sharpening is usually the way people remember small details in the retelling of stories they have experienced or are retelling those stories. Leveling is when people keep out parts of stories and try to tone those stories down so that some parts are excluded. Therefore, it makes it easier to fill in the memory gaps that exist.

The levels of processing model (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) focuses on the depth of processing involved in memory, and predicts the deeper information is processed, the longer a memory trace will last.

The list length effect (LLE) is a cognitive psychology term that describes how the length of a list affects the recall of items from it. The LLE states that as the number of items in a list increases, the likelihood of correctly recalling an item decreases. This effect is often explained by the idea that memory resources are divided among more items, resulting in less information available for each item and making recall more difficult.

A loaded question is a complex question that contains an implicit assumption about the respondent's answer. The questioner's intent is often to trick the respondent into revealing a secret, agreeing with a statement that doesn't represent their views, or becoming defensive. Loaded questions can be used as a rhetorical tool to limit direct replies to those that serve the questioner's agenda. They can also be considered a manipulative debate tactic and a form of informal logical fallacy.

A logical fallacy is a deceptive or false argument that may seem stronger than it is, but can be proven wrong with reasoning and further examination. These mistakes in reasoning often occur when a premise doesn't support the conclusion.

Loss aversion in behavioral economics refers to a phenomenon where a real or potential loss is perceived by individuals as psychologically or emotionally more severe than an equivalent gain. For instance, the pain of losing $100 is often far greater than the joy gained in finding the same amount.

Memory inhibition is a cognitive process that allows people to intentionally reduce the accessibility of certain memories, helping them focus on relevant information while suppressing less relevant or interfering information. It's a key aspect of memory management that plays a crucial role in various cognitive functions, such as attention, decision-making, and problem-solving.

The mere exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon that describes how people tend to develop a preference for things or people that are familiar to them. It's also known as the familiarity principle or familiarity effect.

Source misattribution is a mechanism that can lead to the misinformation effect, which is when misleading information impairs memory and can cause inaccurate or false memories. Source misattribution occurs when someone incorrectly remembers the origin of a memory. For example, someone might confuse an officer's assumptions with their own memory of a thief's gender.

The modality effect is a cognitive load learning effect that describes how people recall information differently depending on how it's presented. For example, people tend to recall the last few items of a list better when it's presented orally than visually, which is known as the recency effect. However, visual presentations can sometimes be better for primacy performance, which is the opposite of the recency effect.

In economics, money illusion, or price illusion, is a cognitive bias where money is thought of in nominal, rather than real terms. In other words, the face value (nominal value) of money is mistaken for its purchasing power (real value) at a previous point in time.

The mood congruency effect is a psychological phenomenon in which a person tends to remember information that is consistent with their particular mood. People also tend to recall memories that coincide with the mood they are experiencing at a certain time.

The moral credential effect is a psychological phenomenon in which people are more likely to trust and accept the opinions of someone who has previously taken a moral stance on an issue.

Moral luck is a philosophical concept that describes when someone is given moral praise or blame for an action or its consequences, even if they didn't have full control over it. This can happen when factors outside of the agent's control, such as the circumstances, the results of their actions, or their nature, positively or negatively affect how much they deserve praise or blame.

Naïve cynicism is a psychological egoism and cognitive bias that occurs when people expect others to have more egocentric bias than they actually do. It can also be defined as anticipating bias in how others assess responsibility, such as expecting others' judgments to be motivationally biased.

Naive realism is the tendency to believe our perception of the world reflects it exactly as it is, unbiased and unfiltered. The idea that our senses directly provide us with awareness of objects as they are. This is also known as direct realism or phenomenal absolutism. Naïve realists may believe that what they see reflects reality, but their senses may be deceiving them. For example, seeing someone smiling may lead a naïve realist to believe they are happy, but seeing their hands in their pockets may also lead them to believe they are cold or sad.

The negativity bias, also known as the negativity effect, is a cognitive bias that, even when positive or neutral things of equal intensity occur, things of a more negative nature have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things.

The neglect of probability, a type of cognitive bias, is the tendency to disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty and is one simple way in which people regularly violate the normative rules for decision making. Small risks are typically either neglected entirely or hugely overrated.

The next-in-line effect is the cognitive bias that causes a person to have lower recall for events that happened right before or after a performance. This performance can be any public act, whether it is performing on stage or talking to a group of a few other people.

Non-adaptive choice switching is when, after experiencing a bad outcome from having made a decision, we have a tendency to avoid said decision when faced with another problem, even though it was the optimal choice at the time.

Not invented here is the tendency to avoid using or buying products, research, standards, or knowledge from external origins. It is usually adopted by social, corporate, or institutional cultures. Research illustrates a strong bias against ideas from the outside.

Novelty Bias also referred to as the Novelty Effect, describes a tendency to place undue emphasis on new or novel things

The objectivity illusion is the tendency of people to see themselves as more impartial, more insightful, and less biased than others.

The observer expectancy effect, also known as the experimenter expectancy effect, refers to how the perceived expectations of an observer can influence the people being observed. This term is usually used in the context of research, to describe how the presence of a researcher can influence the behavior of participants in their study.

Omission bias is the phenomenon in which people prefer omission (inaction) over commission (action) and people tend to judge harm as a result of commission more negatively than harm as a result of omission.

The ?optimism bias is essentially a mistaken belief that our chances of experiencing negative events are lower and our chances of experiencing positive events are higher than those of our peers.

The ostrich effect is the tendency to avoid dangerous or negative information by simply closing oneself off from this information.

The outcome bias is an error made in evaluating the quality of a decision when the outcome of that decision is already known.

The outgroup homogeneity bias is the tendency to assume that the members of other groups are very similar to each other, particularly in contrast to the assumed diversity of the membership of one’s own group.

The overconfidence effect is a well-established bias in which a person's subjective confidence in their judgments is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgments, especially when confidence is relatively high. Overconfidence is one example of a miscalibration of subjective probabilities

Parkinson’s law of triviality refers to the tendency of people in organizations?—?and by extension the organizations themselves?—?to give disproportionate attention to trivial issues and details.

The part-list cuing effect, also known as part-set cuing, is a cognitive phenomenon that occurs when studying some items in a list makes it harder to recall other items in the same list. This happens when a subset of previously learned items are used as retrieval cues, and participants' memory performance is worse than when no cues are provided.

The peak–end rule is a psychological heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.

The pessimism bias refers to the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of negative events while underestimating the likelihood of positive events. This attitude of expecting the worst is a prominent cognitive feature of depression and can have considerable ramifications on both a personal and societal level

The picture superiority effect in recognition memory tasks refers to the observation that items studied as pictures are better remembered than items studied as words even when targets are presented as words during the testing phase.

Placement bias is a cognitive bias that influences decision-making based on the placement of options within a set. Often seen in consumer behavior and choice architecture, this bias suggests that the spatial positioning of choices can significantly influence consumers’ selection. The design, layout, and positioning of products in a store or items on a menu, for instance, can subtly guide individuals towards certain decisions, making placement bias a powerful tool for influencing consumer behavior.

The planning fallacy is a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias and underestimate the time needed.

The Pollyanna principle (also called Pollyannaism or positivity bias) is the tendency for people to remember pleasant items more accurately than unpleasant ones. Research indicates that at the subconscious level, the mind tends to focus on the optimistic; while at the conscious level, it tends to focus on the negative.

Socioemotional selectivity theory is a theory of motivation throughout the lifespan. It suggests that as people age they become more selective in the goals they pursue, with older people prioritizing goals that will lead to meaning and positive emotions and younger people pursuing goals that will lead to the acquisition of knowledge.

Present bias is the tendency to settle for a smaller present reward rather than wait for a larger future reward, in a trade-off situation. It describes the trend of overvaluing immediate rewards, while putting less worth in long-term consequences. The present bias can be used as a measure for self-control, which is a trait related to the prediction of secure life outcomes.

The tendency for questions to include assumptions that shape respondents' answers by implying a certain outcome or scenario.

Prevention bias refers to the cognitive bias that occurs when individuals place more emphasis and effort on preventing negative outcomes than on making equivalent gains.

In simplest terms, the primacy effect refers to the tendency to recall information presented at the start of a list better than information at the middle or end. This is a cognitive bias that is believed to relate to the tendency to rehearse and relate memory storage systems.

The pro-innovation bias is a prevailing belief that society should adopt innovations without allowing for social alterations.

Probability matching is a decision strategy in which predictions of class membership are proportional to the class base rates. Thus, if in the training set positive examples are observed 60% of the time, and negative examples are observed 40% of the time, then the observer using a probability-matching strategy will predict (for unlabeled examples) a class label of "positive" on 60% of instances, and a class label of "negative" on 40% of instances.

The processing difficulty effect is that people have an easier time remembering information that takes longer to read and understand.

The projection bias is a self-forecasting error, where we overestimate how much our future selves will share the same beliefs, values and behaviors as our current selves, causing us to make short-sighted decisions.

The proportionality bias, also known as major event/major cause heuristic, is the tendency to assume that big events have big causes.

Prospect theory, also known as loss-aversion theory, is a psychological and behavioral economic theory that explains how people make decisions when faced with risk, uncertainty, and probability. It suggests that people's choices are influenced by how prospects are presented in terms of losses and gains, as well as their associated probabilities.

The pseudocertainty effect is the tendency for people to perceive an outcome as certain while it is actually uncertain in multi-stage decision making.

Puritanical bias refers to 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.

The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon that describes how high expectations can lead to improved performance, while low expectations can lead to worse performance.

Reactance theory is a model stating that in response to a perceived threat to?—?or loss of?—?a behavioral freedom, a person will experience psychological reactance (or, more simply, reactance), a motivational state characterized by distress, anxiety, resistance, and the desire to restore that freedom.

Reactive devaluation is a cognitive bias that causes people to devalue proposals from an opposing party or someone they dislike. It can be a major barrier in negotiations, and can lead to conflicts, poor decision-making, and people rejecting reasonable offers.

The recency effect is a cognitive bias in which those items, ideas, or arguments that came last are remembered more clearly than those that came first.

The recency illusion is the belief or impression, on the part of someone who has only recently become aware of a long-established phenomenon, that the phenomenon itself must be of recent origin.

Regret aversion occurs when a decision is made to avoid regretting an alternative decision in the future. Regret can be a powerless and discomforting state and people sometimes make decisions in order to avoid this outcome.

The reminiscence bump is the tendency for older adults (over forty) to have increased or enhanced recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood.

Repetition blindness (RB) is a phenomenon observed in rapid serial visual presentation. People are sometimes poor at recognizing when things happen twice. Repetition blindness is the failure to recognize a second happening of a visual display.

The representativeness heuristic is a cognitive bias that involves judging the likelihood of an event or object based on how similar it is to a known category, prototype, or stereotype. It's a mental shortcut that can help people make quick judgments, but it can also lead to inaccurate decisions.

Restrain bias is the tendency to overestimate our ability to resist temptations when making a decision. This can lead to more exposure to said temptation.

The rhyme-as-reason effect, also known as the Eaton–Rosen phenomenon, is a cognitive bias where sayings or aphorisms are perceived as more accurate or truthful when they rhyme.

Risk compensation is a theory that suggests people change their behavior in response to perceived risk levels. For example, people may be more careful when they feel at greater risk, or less careful when they feel more protected. However, this change in behavior can sometimes offset the benefits of safety improvements, and may even lead to higher risks.

Rosy retrospection refers to our tendency to recall the past more fondly than the present, all else being equal. It is a cognitive bias that runs parallel with the concept of nostalgia, though the latter does not always directly imply a biased recollection.

Salience bias (also referred to as perceptual salience) is a cognitive bias that predisposes individuals to focus on or attend to items, information, or stimuli that are more prominent, visible, or emotionally striking.

The tendency to choose an option that meets a minimum threshold of acceptability, rather than the optimal solution. This explains why respondents might select the first or last option listed or choose a familiar answer.

The "saying is believing" (SIB) effect is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a communicator's memories and impressions of a message topic are influenced by a message tailored to a specific audience. It's a type of cognitive dissonance that causes people to adjust their beliefs to align with the message they've shared, especially after conveying it to others. This effect can help people maintain internal consistency, which is important for mental equilibrium and a sense of self-coherence.

Scope neglect or scope insensitivity is a cognitive bias that occurs when the valuation of a problem is not valued with a multiplicative relationship to its size. Scope neglect is a specific form of extension neglect

Selection bias is a distortion in a measure of association (such as a risk ratio) due to a sample selection that does not accurately reflect the target population.

Selective perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and analyzing stimuli from the environment, and it can be conscious or unconscious. It involves focusing on certain things while ignoring others that are distracting, unimportant, or contradict our values and expectations. Selective perception can also be described as selective attention, exposure, or distortion.

Self-enhancement bias is the tendency to describe oneself in a more favorable way than would be expected based on norms. It can also be defined as a strategic pattern of discrepancies between self-ratings and relevant social norms. Self-enhancement can manifest in many forms, including behavioral, moral, judgmental, and performance domains. For example, someone might attribute a good grade on a test to studying hard or being good at the material, but blame a bad grade on an unfair test or the teacher not liking them.

In essence, the self-relevance effect posits that our memory performance is substantially improved for information we consider to be self-relevant.

Self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute our successes to internal, personal factors, and our failures to external, situational factors. In other words, we like to take credit for our triumphs, but we are more likely to blame others or circumstances for our shortcomings.

The Semmelweis reflex or "Semmelweis effect" is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs, or paradigms.

The serial position effect is a cognitive bias that describes how people tend to recall information based on its position in a sequence. People tend to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst. This effect is caused by a combination of the primacy effect and the recency effect

Shared information bias (also known as the collective information sampling bias, or common-information bias) is known as 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). Harmful consequences related to poor decision-making can arise when the group does not have access to unshared information (hidden profiles) in order to make a well-informed decision.

The tendency for questions to assume a direct and simple relationship between two variables, which may not accurately reflect the complexity or variability of real-world situations.

Social comparison bias or social comparison theory is the idea that individuals determine their own worth based on how they compare to others.

Social cryptomnesia is a failure 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.

In social science research, social-desirability bias is a type of response bias that is the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. It can take the form of over-reporting "good behavior" or under-reporting "bad", or undesirable behavior. The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports. This bias interferes with the interpretation of average tendencies as well as individual differences.

Source confusion, also known as source misattribution or unconscious transference, is a type of memory error. It occurs when someone does not remember where certain memories come from.

The spacing effect demonstrates that learning is more effective when study sessions are spaced out. This effect shows that more information is encoded into long-term memory by spaced study sessions, also known as spaced repetition or spaced presentation, than by massed presentation ("cramming").

The spotlight effect is the phenomenon where people tend to overestimate how much others notice aspects of one’s appearance or behavior.

A status quo bias is a cognitive bias which results from a preference for the maintenance of one's existing state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss or gain. Corresponding to different alternatives, this current baseline or default option is perceived and evaluated by individuals as a positive.

stereotype, in psychology, a fixed, oversimplified, and often biased belief about a group of people. Stereotypes are typically rationally unsupported generalizations, and, once a person becomes accustomed to stereotypical thinking, he or she may not be able to see individuals for who they are.

The subadditivity effect is a cognitive bias that describes the tendency to judge the probability of a whole as less than the probabilities of its parts. For example, in a risk assessment, people may assign a lower risk to a general category, like "health risks," than to specific risks within that category, like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes.

Subjective validation, sometimes called personal validation effect, is a cognitive bias by which people will consider a statement or another piece of information to be correct if it has any personal meaning or significance to them.

The suffix effect is the reduction in the recall ability of the last few items of a just-spoken list caused by appending a nominally irrelevant item, or suffix. The effect is widely assumed to comprise a "structural" terminal component, affecting just the last item, and a strategy sensitive preterminal component.

The sunk cost fallacy is our tendency to continue with an endeavor we've invested money, effort, or time into—even if the current costs outweigh the benefits.

Surrogation is a psychological phenomenon found in business practices whereby a measure of a construct of interest evolves to replace that construct.

Survivorship bias is a type of sample selection bias that occurs when an individual mistakes a visible successful subgroup as the entire group. In other words, survivorship bias occurs when an individual only considers the surviving observation without considering those data points that didn't “survive” in the event.

System justification theory (SJT) is a social psychology theory that explains why people may defend and justify existing social, economic, and political systems, even if they are flawed or disadvantageous. SJT posits that people are motivated to rationalize the status quo because they believe the systems are fair and advantageous. This motivation can manifest itself in a number of ways, including stereotyping, ideology, attribution, and implicitly or nonconsciously.

Systemic bias is the inherent tendency of a process to support particular outcomes. The term generally refers to human systems such as institutions.

The telescoping effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to misremember the timing of events. It refers to the inaccurate perception of time, where people may see recent events as more distant than they are, and distant events as more recent. This mental error can occur when making temporal assumptions about past events.

The testing effect is the idea that learning and memory are improved when a learning period includes practice tests or other activities that encourage information retrieval. This effect is also known as retrieval practice, practice testing, or test-enhanced learning.

The third-person effect hypothesis predicts that people tend to perceive that mass media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves, based on personal biases. The third-person effect manifests itself through an individual's overestimation of the effect of a mass communicated message on the generalized other, or an underestimation of the effect of a mass communicated message on themselves.

The time-saving bias predicts that, when increasing speed from a low speed, time saving is underestimated whereas an increase from a relatively high speed is overestimated.

Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations.

Truth bias is people's inclination towards believing, to some degree, the communication of another person, regardless of whether or not that person is actually lying or being untruthful. It is human nature to believe communication is honest, which in turn makes humans highly vulnerable to deception.

The ultimate attribution error (UAE) is a cognitive bias that causes people to attribute negative behaviors from outgroups to inherent flaws, while attributing positive behaviors to situational factors. In contrast, positive behaviors from ingroup members are often attributed to their character, and negative behaviors to their circumstances. This can lead to stereotypes, intergroup tension, and "us-versus-them" thinking.

The tendency for people to want to complete a unit of a given item or task. People believe there is an optimal unit size and want to get through to the end because they get satisfaction from completing it.

The Verbatim Effect is a cognitive bias observed in psychology that refers to the phenomenon where people are more likely to remember the general gist of the information rather than the precise, detailed version.

The Von Restorff effect, also known as the "isolation effect", predicts that when multiple homogeneous stimuli are presented, the stimulus that differs from the rest is more likely to be remembered.

The well traveled road effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to estimate how long it will take to travel a route differently depending on how familiar they are with it. People often think that routes they've traveled before will take less time than unfamiliar routes. This can lead to errors when trying to determine the most efficient route to an unfamiliar destination, especially if one option includes a familiar route while the other doesn't. The effect is most noticeable when people are driving, but it can also affect pedestrians and public transportation users.

The women-are-wonderful effect is the phenomenon found in psychological and sociological research which suggests that people associate more positive attributes with women when compared to men. This bias reflects an emotional bias toward women as a general case.

The worse-than-average effect or below-average effect is the human tendency to underestimate one's achievements and capabilities in relation to others. It is the opposite of the usually pervasive better-than-average effect (in contexts where the two are compared or the overconfidence effect in other situations).

Zero-risk Bias is a tendency to prefer the complete elimination of a risk even when alternative options produce a greater reduction in risk overall.

Zero-sum bias is a cognitive bias towards zero-sum thinking; it is people's tendency to intuitively judge that a situation is zero-sum, even when this is not the case. This bias promotes zero-sum fallacies, false beliefs that situations are zero-sum. Such fallacies can cause other false judgements and poor decisions.