I continue to follow Dr. Poornima Luthra’s work on LinkedIn with great interest. This is from a recent post about how biases can take many forms. In her words:

Most biases can be divided into two broad categories:

1️⃣ identity-related biases

2️⃣ situation-related/information processing biases

Last week, we looked at identity-related biases so let’s turn our attention to situation-related/information processing biases.

There are over 50 such biases that exist. Here are some common ones that you may recognise in yourself and others:

Fundamental Attribution Error: We judge others on their personality or fundamental character, but we judge ourselves on the situation.

Self-Serving Bias: Our failures are situational, but our successes are our responsibility.

Intergroup Favoritism: We favor people who are in our in-group as opposed to an out-group.

Groupthink: Due to a desire for conformity and harmony in the group, we make irrational decisions, often to minimize conflict.

Halo (Horn) Effect: If you see a person as having a positive (negative) trait, that positive impression will spill over into their other traits.

False Consensus: We believe more people agree with us than is actually the case.

Anchoring: We rely heavily on the first piece of information introduced when making decisions.

Confirmation Bias: We tend to find and remember information that confirms our perceptions.

Belief Bias: We judge an argument’s strength not by how strongly it supports the conclusion but how plausible the conclusion is in our own minds.

Framing Effect: We often draw different conclusions from the same information depending on how it’s presented.

Authority Bias: We trust and are more often influenced by the opinions of authority figures.

And my favourite (though I do believe we need a new name for it that does not make reference to those who are visually impaired)

Blind Spot Bias: We do not think we have bias, and we see it in others more than in ourselves.

👉🏽 Recognise any of these?

👉🏽 Any other biases that you have noticed in yourself or others not covered above?

Curious to explore more of these biases?

Check out the image below of the cognitive bias codex above.

I like this definition of cognitive bias: A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own “subjective reality” from their perception of the input. An individual’s construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, and irrationality.

Think of Karl Rove’s “alternate reality,” the millions of US Americans who are in denial about the state of their country and what’s fact vs. fiction, and the conspiracy theorists and racists across the ideological spectrum.

Shalom (שלום), MAA