Category: Cognitive Psychology

The ‘illusion of control’ is the finding in psychology that people tend to overestimate their perceived control over events in their lives.

The illusion of control is a bias in a positive direction, just like the above-average effect or the optimism bias, that help us feel better about life, even if it is at the cost of truth.

The illusion of control is well documented and has been tested over-and-over in lots of different studies over four decades.

Illusion of control examples

Here’s an example of the illusion of control: you choose an apple which tastes delicious.

You assume you are very skilled at choosing apples (when in fact the whole batch happens to be good today).

Another example of the illusion of control: you enter the lottery and win millions.

You assume that this is (partly) a result of how good your lucky numbers are.

In fact, lotteries are totally random so you can’t influence them with the numbers you choose.

Although most of us know and accept this, we still harbour an inkling that maybe it does matter which numbers we choose.

Magical thinking

Sometimes the illusion of control manifests as magical thinking.

In one study participants watched another person try to shoot a miniature basketball through a hoop (Pronin et al., 2006).

When participants willed the player to make the shot, and they did, they felt it was partly down to them, even though they couldn’t possibly be having any effect.

It’s like pedestrians in New York who still press the button to get the lights to change, despite the fact they do nothing.

Since the late 80s all the traffic signals have been controlled by computer, but the city won’t pay to have the buttons removed.

It’s probably just as well: they help boost people’s illusion of control.

We feel better when we can do something that feels like it might have an effect (even if it doesn’t).

Is the illusion of control beneficial?

It’s sometimes argued that the illusion of control is beneficial because it can encourage people to take responsibility.

It’s like when a person is diagnosed with an illness; they want to take control through starting medication or changing their diet or other aspect of their lifestyle.

Similarly, studies find that hospital patients who are able to administer their own painkillers typically give themselves lower doses than those who have them prescribed by doctors, but they experience no more pain.

Feeling in control can also urge us on to do things when the chances of success are low.

Would you apply for that job if you knew how little control you had over the decision?

No.

But if you never apply for any jobs, you can’t get them.

So we pump ourselves up, polish our résumé and practice our interview technique.

But the illusion of control isn’t all roses.

Illusion of control in financial markets

To return to the discussion of lotteries, we can see the illusion of control operating in the financial markets.

Traders often feel they have more control over the market than they really do.

Indeed one study has shown that the more traders think they are in control, the worse their actual performance (O’Creevy & Nicholson, 2010).

A word of caution there for those who don’t respect the forces of randomness.

More generally, some argue that the illusion of control stops us learning from our mistakes and makes us insensitive to feedback.

When you feel you’re in charge, you are more likely to ignore the warning signals from the environment that things are not under your control.

Indeed an experiment has shown that the more power you feel, the stronger the illusion of control becomes (Fast et al., 2009).

Illusion of futility?

So far, so orthodox.

What’s fascinating is the idea that the illusion of control itself may be an illusion, or at least only part of the story.

What if the illusion of having control depends heavily on how much control we actually have?

After all, we’re not always totally out-of-the-loop like the experiments above suggest.

Sometimes we have a lot of control over the outcomes in our life.

This has been recently tested out in a series of experiments by (Gino et al., 2011).

What they found was that the illusion of control flips around when control over a situation is really high.

When participants in their studies actually had plenty of control, suddenly they were more likely to underestimate it.

This is a pretty serious challenge to the illusion of control.

If backed up by other studies, it reverses the idea that the illusion of control is usually beneficial.

Now we’re in a world where sometimes the illusion is keeping us back.

For example, applying for more jobs increases the chance of getting one, exercise does make you more healthy, buying a new car does make you poorer.

All these are areas in which we have high levels of control but which we may well be assuming we don’t.

This effect will have to be renamed the illusion of futility.

In other words: when you have high control, you underestimate how much what you do really matters.

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Anchoring bias in psychology is an example of a cognitive bias that causes people to rely too much on the first piece of information they get.

The anchoring bias or anchoring effect or anchoring heuristic is a cognitive psychology finding that people over-emphasise the first piece of information they receive.

A simple example of the anchoring bias is the first price quoted for a car: this number will tend to overshadow subsequent negotiations.

The anchoring bias means that people rely too heavily on this first piece of information, even when more is known later on.

Anchoring bias example

To illustrate the anchoring bias or effect, let’s say I ask you how old Mahatma Gandhi was when he died.

For half of you I’ll preface the question by saying: “Did he die before or after the age of 9?”

For the other half I’ll say: “Did he die before or after the age of 140?”

Obviously these are not very helpful statements.

Anyone who has any clue who Gandhi was will know that he was definitely older than 9; while the oldest person who ever lived was 122.

So why bother making these apparently stupid statements?

Because, according to the results of a study conducted by (Strack & Mussweiler, 1997), these initial statements, despite being unhelpful, affect the estimates people make.

This is the anchoring bias, effect or heuristic.

In their experiment, the first group guessed an average age of 50 and the second, 67.

Neither was that close, he was actually assassinated at 87; but you can still see the effect of the anchoring bias on the initial number.

Anchoring bias definition

These might seem like silly little experiments that psychologists do to try and suggest that people are idiots, but actually it’s showing us something fundamental about the way we think.

It’s so basic to how we experience the world that we often don’t notice it.

We have a tendency to use anchors or reference points to make decisions and evaluations, and sometimes these lead us astray.

Anchoring the emotions

This sort of things is going on in loads of different areas of our lives.

Take the emotions for starters.

Psychologists have found it can be difficult to predict our future emotions and one reason is that the anchoring bias affects how we feel right now.

That’s why people who have just had lunch feel like they’ll never be hungry again; compared with those who haven’t, who don’t display the same short-sightedness (I have described the relevant study in the context of the projection bias).

Real estate agents, car sellers or negotiators will be nodding their heads.

That’s because the anchoring bias is vital in all these lines of work, and many more.

The initial price you set for the car, house or, more abstractly, for a deal of some kind, tends to have ramifications right through the process of coming to an agreement.

Whether we like it or not, our minds keep referring back to that initial number.

That doesn’t mean you just set the highest possible price you can get away with (although in reality that’s often what is done).

In real life things are more complicated than the Gandhi experiment.

People usually have a choice about which house or car to buy or which deal to take and they can always walk away.

Still, there’s a good reason sticker prices on car forecourts are mostly so high.

Anchoring bias in salary negotiations

You can see the effect of the anchoring bias in salary negotiations.

There’s some evidence that when the initial anchor figure is set high, the final negotiated amount will usually be higher (Thorsteinson, 2011).

Incidentally, the anchoring bias is another reason that you should open negotiations rather than waiting for the employer to tell you the range: because then you can set the anchor higher (more on this in: Ten Powerful Steps to Negotiating a Higher Salary).

Anchoring bias explanation

Since the anchoring bias occurs in so many situations, no one theory has satisfactorily explained it.

There is, though, a modern favourite for explaining the anchoring bias in decision-making.

It is thought to stem from our tendency to look for confirmation of things we are unsure of.

So, if I’m told the price of a particular diamond ring is £5,000, I’ll tend to search around looking for evidence that confirms this.

In this case it’s easy: plenty of diamond rings cost about that, no matter the value of this particular ring.

For all I know about diamond rings it could be worth £500 or £50,000.

The problem is that this explanation is less satisfying when the anchor is so manifestly unhelpful, like when you tell people that Gandhi was older than nine when he died.

Perhaps, then, it’s all down to our fundamental laziness.

When given the Gandhi example we can’t be bothered to make the massive adjustment from the anchor we’re given up to the real value, so we go some way and then stop.

How to avoid the anchoring bias

Whatever the reason for it, the anchoring bias is everywhere and can be difficult to avoid.

That’s especially true when we are deciding what to pay for stuff since we are overly influenced by the price that’s been set.

One way of avoiding the anchoring bias — whether it’s emotional or in decision-making — is by trying to from the anchor state.

This can be done by thinking about other comparisons.

That’s what we’re doing when we comparison shop: getting some new price anchors.

In the realm of the emotions it might mean trying to compare with other emotional states, not just how you feel right now (creating a ‘memory palace‘ for reference emotions may help with this).

When negotiating avoiding the anchoring bias might mean thinking about what the other options are (negotiation theorists call this the ‘BATNA’: the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement).

Alternatively, for nullifying the anchoring bias in decision-making, find out more about the area: experts are less susceptible to it.

There’s little doubt it’s hard, though: some studies suggest that even when you know about it and are forewarned, the anchoring bias can still affect our judgements.

It just shows the power that first piece of information can have on how we make decisions.

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Aphantasia is when people ‘see’ nothing at all when they try to imagine pictures in their minds.

Imagine a tree sitting atop a hill and on that tree, a small yellow bird.

What do you see in your mind’s eye?

About 95 percent of people can visualise something, varying in detail from vivid to vague, depending on their natural abilities.

However, up to 5 percent of people — as many as 1-in-20 — ‘sees’ nothing at all.

They have ‘aphantasia’: a lack of all mental imagery.

While they might be able to imagine the sound of the wind or the feeling of grass between their toes, there is no accompanying image.

What it means to be aphantasic is examined in research that surveyed 267 people with the condition.

Mr Alexei Dawes, the study’s first author, said:

“Aphantasia challenges some of our most basic assumptions about the human mind.

Most of us assume visual imagery is something everyone has, something fundamental to the way we see and move through the world.

But what does having a ‘blind mind’ mean for the mental journeys we take every day when we imagine, remember, feel and dream?”

The researchers compared the experience of aphantasics with 400 people who have mental imagery.

Mr Dawes said:

“We found that aphantasia isn’t just associated with absent visual imagery, but also with a widespread pattern of changes to other important cognitive processes.

People with aphantasia reported a reduced ability to remember the past, imagine the future, and even dream.”

People were asked to recall memories and indicate how vivid their mental imagery was for that moment.

People with aphantasia tended to agree with the statement: “No image at all, I only ‘know’ that I am recalling the memory.”

Those with strong mental imagery agreed with the statement: “Perfectly clear and as vivid as normal vision.”

Mr Dawes explained the results:

“Our data revealed an extended cognitive ‘fingerprint’ of aphantasia characterised by changes to imagery, memory, and dreaming.

We’re only just starting to learn how radically different the internal worlds of those without imagery are.”

Among the aphantasics, one-quarter also had difficulties imagining touch, sound, motion, smell, taste and emotion.

Aphantasics also dream less, which makes sense, considering how important visual imagery is to dreaming.

Professor Joel Pearson, study co-author, said:

“Aphantasics reported dreaming less often, and the dreams they do report seem to be less vivid and lower in sensory detail.

This suggests that any cognitive function involving a sensory visual component—be it voluntary or involuntary—is likely to be reduced in aphantasia.”

Aphantasics find it harder to recall memories and they are, overall, less vivid.

Mr Dawes said:

“Our work is the first to show that aphantasic individuals also show a reduced ability to remember the past and prospect into the future.

This suggests that visual imagery might play a key role in memory processes.”

What aphantasia feel like

Aphantasia can be an isolating experience for some, researchers have found (Zeman et al., 2015).

Tom Ebeyer, 25, from Ontario, Canada, who has aphantasia, didn’t discover he lacked a common mental ability until the age of 21:

“It had a serious emotional impact.

I began to feel isolated — unable to do something so central to the average human experience.

The ability to recall memories and experiences, the smell of flowers or the sound of a loved one’s voice; before I discovered that recalling these things was humanly possible, I wasn’t even aware of what I was missing out on.

The realisation did help me to understand why I am a slow at reading text, and why I perform poorly on memorisation tests, despite my best efforts.”

All of Mr Ebeyer’s senses are affected.

He can’t summon up any smell, emotion, sound, texture or taste.

Mr Ebeyer said:

“After the passing of my mother, I was extremely distraught in that I could not reminisce on the memories we had together.

I can remember factually the things we did together, but never an image.

After seven years, I hardly remember her.

To have the condition researched and defined brings me great pleasure.

Not only do I now have an official title to refer to the condition while discussing it with my peers, but the knowledge that professionals are recognising its reality gives me hope that further understanding is still to come.”

Professor Adam Zeman, the study’s first author, said:

“This intriguing variation in human experience has received little attention.

Our participants mostly have some first-hand knowledge of imagery through their dreams: our study revealed an interesting dissociation between voluntary imagery, which is absent or much reduced in these individuals, and involuntary imagery, for example in dreams, which is usually preserved.”

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Dawes et al., 2020).

The psychology of money: including post-purchase rationalisation, the relativity trap, rosy retrospection and the restraint bias.

We all make mistakes with money, some more than others.

And in this economy, who needs it?

But many of these mistakes are avoidable if we can understand how we think about money.

Here are 10 biases that psychological research has shown affect our judgement…and how to avoid them.

1. Status quo bias

One of the biggest reason people lose out financially is they stick with what they know, despite much better options being available.

We tend to choose the same things we chose before.

And we continue to do this even when better options are available, whether it’s goods or services.

Research on investment decisions shows this bias (e.g. Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988).

People stick to the same old pension plans, stocks and shares, even though there are better options available.

It’s hard to change because it involves more effort and we want to avoid regretting our decision.

But there is better value out there if you’re prepared to look.

2. Post-purchase rationalisation

After we buy something that’s not right, we convince ourselves it is right.

Most people refuse to accept they’ve made a mistake, especially with a big purchase.

Marketers know this, so they try to encourage part-ownership first, using things like money-back guarantees.

Once you’ve made a decision, you convince yourself it was the right one (see: cognitive dissonance), and also start to value it more because you own it (e.g. Cohen et al., 1970).

Fight it! If the goods or services aren’t right, return them.

Most country’s legal systems incorporate a cooling off period, so don’t rationalise, return it!

3. Relativity trap

We think about prices relatively and businesses know this.

That’s why recommended retail prices are set high, then discounted.

Some expensive options on restaurant menus are there only to make the regular meals look reasonable in comparison.

The relativity trap is also called the anchoring effect.

One price acts like an anchor on our thinking.

It’s easy to fall for, but also easy to surmount by making comparisons they don’t want you to make (read more about the relativity trap).

Use price comparison websites.

And try comparing across categories of goods.

Is an iPad really worth a month’s groceries or three years of cinema trips or a new set of clothes?

4. Ownership effect

We value things more when we own them.

So when it comes to selling our stuff, we tend to set the price too high.

It’s why you sometimes see second-hand goods advertised at ridiculous prices.

Unlike professionals, amateur sellers develop an emotional attachment to their possessions (read the research on 6 quirks of ownership).

It also works the other way. When bidding on eBay, it’s possible to feel you already partly own something before you actually buy it.

So you end up paying above the market value.

When buying or selling you have to try and be dispassionate.

Be aware that unless you set limits, your unconscious may take over.

5. Present bias

In general humans prefer to get the pleasure right now, and leave the pain for later.

Economists call this hyperbolic discounting.

In a study by Read and van Leeuwen (1998), when making food choices for next week, 74 percent of participants chose fruit.

But when deciding for today, 70 percent chose chocolate.

That’s humans for you: chocolate today, fruit next week.

The same is true of money. Marketers know we are suckers for getting discounts right now, so they hide the pain for later on (think mobile phone deals). Unfortunately buy now, pay later offers are often very bad deals.

One way to get around this is to think about your future self when making a purchasing decision.

Imagine how ‘future you’ will see the decisions of ‘present you’.

If ‘future you’ wouldn’t like it, don’t do it.

6. Fear of losses

People tend to sell things when they go up in price, but hold on to them when they go down.

It’s one demonstration of our natural desire to avoid losses.

This effect has been seen in a number of studies of stock-market trading (e.g. Weber & Camerer, 1998).

The fact that prices are falling, though, is a big clue.

If you can fight the fear of losing, in the end it could leave you better off.

7. Familiarity bias

Advertising works partly because we like what we know, even if we only vaguely know it.

We even choose familiar things when there are clear signals that it’s not the best option (Richter & Spath, 2006).

Always check if you’re buying something for the right reasons.

Mere familiarity means the advertisers are winning.

Smaller companies that can’t or won’t afford pricey TV commercials often provide better products and services.

8. Rosy retrospection

We tend to remember our decisions as better than they really were.

This is a problem when we come to make similar decisions again.

We have a bias towards thinking our previous decision was a good one; it could be the holiday, house or car you chose (e.g. Mitchell & Thompson, 1994).

That’s partly why we end up making the same financial mistakes again: we forget we made the same mistake before.

Before making an important financial decision, try to dredge up the real outcomes of previous decisions.

Only without the rose-tinted spectacles can we avoid repeating our mistakes.

9. Free!

The word ‘free’ has a magical hold on us and marketers know it.

Behavioural economics research shows we sometimes take a worse deal overall just to get something for free.

Watch out if you are offered something for ‘free’ as sometimes the deal is not that good.

10. Restraint bias

Many mistakes with money result from a lack of self-control.

We think we’ll control ourselves, but, when faced with temptation, we can’t.

Studies like Nordgren et al., (2009) show people are woefully optimistic in predicting their self-control.

So, don’t put yourself in the situation of being tempted.

This is why cutting up credit cards is often recommended.

We’re mostly weaker than we think, so we shouldn’t give ourselves the opportunity.

Pareidolia is seeing meaning in an object, pattern or shape when there is none.

Face pareidolia is the common experience of seeing faces in the moon, in clouds or even in a lake seen from space.

It is a type of pareidolia, which is seeing meaning in an object, pattern or shape when there is none.

Face pareidolia is so strong that even vague patterns of shadows can appear to contain faces, such as the pictures of the region of Mars called Cydonia (see below).

While seeing faces in all kinds of objects was once thought a sign of psychosis or a type of disorder, nowadays pareidolia is viewed as a normal part of human experience.

The so-called ‘face on Mars’

Face pareidolia

The reason for face pareidolia is that the brain interprets illusory faces using the same cognitive processes that identify real human faces.

In other words, the brain is automatically ‘looking’ for faces everywhere.

Professor David Alais, the study’s first author, said:

“From an evolutionary perspective, it seems that the benefit of never missing a face far outweighs the errors where inanimate objects are seen as faces.

There is a great benefit in detecting faces quickly, but the system plays ‘fast and loose’ by applying a crude template of two eyes over a nose and mouth.

Lots of things can satisfy that template and thus trigger a face detection response.”

Face recognition is so important to human beings that we process faces in just a few hundreds of milliseconds.

Professor Alais said:

“We know these objects are not truly faces, yet the perception of a face lingers.

We end up with something strange: a parallel experience that it is both a compelling face and an object.

Two things at once.

The first impression of a face does not give way to the second perception of an object.”

Lake in the Vladimir oblast, Russia

Pareidolia and facial expressions

Our brains have specialised ‘face recognition’ circuits, which non-faces also get processed by automatically.

That is why we also see facial expressions in inanimate objects.

And, as social creatures, we look for meaning in those faces.

The clouds, moon, Mars or a rock do not just conceal a human face, but we also see happiness, sadness or laughter in them as well, Professor Alais said:

“Pareidolia faces are not discarded as false detections but undergo facial expression analysis in the same way as real faces.

We need to read the identity of the face and discern its expression.

Are they a friend or a foe? Are they happy, sad, angry, pained?”

That is why the lake above looks like it is not just a face, but a face that is off its face.

A series of experiments conducted by Professor Alais and colleagues revealed that pareidolia goes further: imagined faces are even processed in the same biased way as real faces.

In a Tinder-like situation of judging one face after another, our assessment of one face is influenced by the last.

The same is true of inanimate objects.

Professor Alais said:

“When objects look compellingly face-like, it is more than an interpretation: they really are driving your brain’s face detection network.

And that scowl, or smile; that’s your brain’s facial expression system at work.

For the brain, fake or real, faces are all processed the same way.”

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (Alais et al., 2021).

Just noticeable difference was investigated by a 19th century psychologist called Gustav Fechner, who perfected the technique.

Just noticeable difference in psychology is the amount a sensation, like weight, has to be changed in order to be noticeable.

For example, imagine you have an orange in each hand, but one is slightly heavier than the other.

How small does the difference in weight between the oranges have to be before you can notice?

That is just noticeable difference.

Just noticeable difference is a part of an area of psychology called psychophysics, which is the scientific study of how our sensations and perceptions are affected by stimuli.

Development of just noticeable difference

Just noticeable difference or the difference threshold was first described by the physiologist Ernst Weber.

It was expanded on by Gustav Fechner, a physicist turned proto-psychologist.

It was Fechner who, with the publication of his masterwork Elements of Psychophysics in 1860, is often credited with helping to found experimental psychology (Fechner, 1860).

Strange, really, for a man who set out to prove plants have souls.

Psychophysics might have a name that sounds exciting, but its experimental methods are pretty dull.

Just noticeable difference examples

What Fechner was interested in was measurement, measuring the relationship between a stimulus and the resulting sensation.

He did this using a variety of experimental methods.

Typically, though, he would give a participant two weights and ask them which they thought was heavier.

Then he would repeat this procedure over and over and over again until he was satisfied he had enough measurements.

In one such experiment he took 24,576 measurements.

Fechner wanted to prove there was a mathematical relationship between stimulus and sensation.

In doing this he perfected the technique of measuring ‘just noticeable difference’ gained from his mentor, Ernst Weber.

This is done by decreasing the differences between different stimuli – say the weight of two balls – until the participant can no longer tell them apart.

It is not just weights that were investigated.

Psychologists have looked at the smallest changes in levels of light that people can detect, the smallest levels of pressure, sound, smell, hearing, touch and taste — the list goes on.

The soul-life of plants

The irony is that Fechner set about this huge mountain of rather hard-headed measurements for quite whimsical reasons.

He wanted to provide evidence for his philosophical ideas, most notable amongst these was his insistence that plants had minds.

Indeed he devoted a whole book to discussing the ‘soul-life of plants’.

Fechner also believed that plants, like humans were part of a hierarchy of minds, at the top of which sat our sun, and above that, the universe as a whole.

These free-floating ideas seem a far cry from the 24,576 meticulous measurements, but such is the human spirit.

Few of Fechner’s ideas have survived in modern psychophysics and yet Fechner’s obsession with measurement lives on today in many areas of psychology.

Indeed, it is for his methods more than his findings that he is celebrated.

It has been argued that ability measurement is the single largest contribution psychology has made to society (Michell, 1999).

While IQ and personality test may not bear much direct relation to Fechner’s ideas, their spirit is the same: to measure, to quantify, to know the difference between.

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Explore these 21 examples of classic cognitive biases in everyday thinking — and how to avoid them.

Cognitive biases in psychology are systematic biases in thinking that can be irrational.

Over the decades psychologists have discovered all kinds of cognitive biases.

Some cognitive biases tell us why the incompetent don’t know they’re incompetent, other cognitive biases tell us why it’s difficult to estimate our future emotions and some why we feel more transparent to others than we really appear.

Many of these cognitive biases result from our minds using little short-cuts to help us navigate through a complicated world.

Unfortunately the result of these cognitive biases can be that we reach irrational decisions.

Understanding how these cognitive biases operate may help you make better decisions in all sorts of situations, both at home and work.

More than that, though, it will help you understand your own mind.

Below are summaries of each cognitive bias, for a fuller description and how to fight them, click the link.

1. Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias causing the poorest performers to be least aware of their own incompetence.

This cognitive bias has been scientifically demonstrated among undergraduates taking a classroom exam, medical students assessing their interviewing skills, clerks evaluating their performance and in many other situations.

Time and time again, the worst performers are the least aware of their own shortcomings.

The reason for the Dunning-Kruger effect seems to be that poor performers fail to learn from their mistakes.

One solution is that the incompetent should be directly told they are incompetent.

2. Worse-Than-Average Bias

There’s a flip-side to the Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias: sometimes the competent don’t know when they’re competent.

People tend to underestimate their ability at stereotypically difficult tasks like playing chess, telling jokes, juggling or computer programming.

This is the worse-than-average effect.

This means that when you’re good at something, you tend to assume that other people are good at it as well.

So, when you’re faced with a difficult task that you are good at, you underestimate your own ability.

3. Cognitive Biases: Impact Bias

The impact bias is our tendency to overestimate our emotional reaction to future events.

Research shows that most of the time we don’t feel as bad as we expect to when things go wrong.

Similarly we usually don’t get quite the high we expect when things go right for us.

The impact bias is a cognitive bias that pervades our lives, with studies finding that:

• Two months after a relationship finishes people are generally not as unhappy as they expect.
• Sports fans are generally not as happy as they expect when their team wins.

4. Hindsight Bias

The hindsight bias is the common cognitive bias where people assume that events could only have turned out the way they did.

The hindsight cognitive bias is sometimes known as the knew-it-all-along-phenomenon or creeping determinism.

Hindsight bias can distort memories, make people overconfident and change their predictions about future events.

5. Cognitive Biases: Egocentric Bias

The egocentric bias is the general rule that we think we know better.

The egocentric bias strikes in the boardroom, in schools, in hospitals and everywhere where two or more people are gathered together and one turns to the other and says: “What do you think?”

This cognitive bias is the reason why every person and every generation has to make its own mistakes.

People have a tendency not to listen until after it’s too late.

6. Memory Bias

The type of memories we retrieve to make decisions are often biased to unusual examples that are either very positive or very negative.

To make decisions that will make us happy in the future we need to acknowledge how the memory bias can warp our predictions.

When making decisions about the future, we naturally use events from the past as litmus tests.

Our memories contain a huge database of experiences, all with emotions in tow, which help us work out what will give us pleasure in the future.

7. Projection Bias

People directly project their current emotional state into the future, forgetting their current feelings will likely change.

Research has shown that we can have considerable difficulty predicting our future requirements because our current emotional states override them.

This is called the projection bias and it occurs despite the fact that we have plenty of experience of the problem and its undesirable consequences.

8. Distinction Bias

The distinction bias is one of the cognitive biases that operates when we have to make choices between competing options.

For example, two of the most important choices in life are where to live and what job to take.

Both choosing a house and choosing a job have a huge impact on the rest of our lives.

Getting it right can mean years of happiness, but recent psychological research on the ‘distinction bias’ suggests we may often get it wrong, which could mean years of misery.

9. Cognitive Biases: Contrast Effect

People expect that a good experience will be more enjoyable when it follows a bad experience.

In fact, research on jelly bean tasting shows that the contrast effect can be a complete mirage created by our expectations.

The same is true when bad experiences follow good – there is an expectation that the bad experience will then be even worse, although often it’s not.

10. The More Choice Effect

People expect that having more options will make them happier, but often it doesn’t.

Research with gourmet jams has found people can be happier, and even better motivated, when they have fewer options to choose from.

In some situations, no choice at all may be better than choosing between two options – even when both options are equally enticing.

11. Just World Hypothesis

Children are often heard to whine to their parents: “But that’s not fair!” and their agitated parents reply: “Tough, life’s not fair.”

With age you hear people express less and less surprise at life’s unfairness.

We still whine about it, but we’re less surprised.

Still, there’s some part of us that likes to believe the world should be fair.

Psychologists call this kernel of teenage righteousness ‘the just-world hypothesis’ and it is another of the cognitive biases.

12. System Justification Bias

The system justification bias is one of the cognitive biases that act to maintain the status quo.

People think like this all the time.

They tend to go with what they know rather than a new, unknown option.

People feel safer with the established order in the face of potential change.

That’s partly why people buy the same things they bought before, return to the same restaurants and keep espousing the same opinions.

13. Availability Heuristic

The availability heuristic, sometimes known as the availability bias is the tendency to judge probabilities on the basis of how easily examples come to mind.

The cognitive bias helps explain why people continue to buy lottery tickets.

If people really understood their chances of winning the lottery, they would never buy a ticket, yet people tend to remember the instances of people winning, rather than all the people who lost.

14. Illusion of Transparency Cognitive Bias

The illusion of transparency is the cognitive bias that leads us to believe that our emotions are transparent to others.

In fact, they are not, or at least not as much as we think.

You can test this illusion by tapping out the rhythm to a song and getting a friend to try and guess what it is.

15. Illusion of Control Bias

The ‘illusion of control’ is the finding in psychology that people tend to overestimate their perceived control over events in their lives.

The illusion of control is a bias in a positive direction, just like the above-average effect or the optimism bias, that help us feel better about life, even if it is at the cost of truth.

16. Cognitive Biases: Endowment Effect

A strange thing happens in the mind when you buy something.

No matter what it is—a pair of jeans, a car or even a house—in that moment when an object becomes your property, it undergoes a transformation.

Because you chose it and you associate it with yourself, its value is immediately increased.

If someone offers to buy it from you, the chances are you want to charge much more than they are prepared to pay.

That is a cognitive bias called the endowment effect.

17. Illusory Correlations

Illusory correlations are about when the mind makes connections that don’t exist.

Everyday examples are when you turn the light on and there’s a power-cut, or when you stamp your foot and there’s a simultaneous clap of thunder.

For a single moment, you feel like you’ve got super-powers.

In fact, there is no link.

18. Cognitive Biases: Anchoring Effect

The anchoring bias or anchoring effect or anchoring heuristic is a cognitive bias in which people over-emphasise the first piece of information they receive.

A simple example of the anchoring bias is the first price quoted for a car: this number will tend to overshadow subsequent negotiations.

The anchoring bias means that people rely too heavily on this first piece of information, even when more is known later on.

19. Confirmation Bias

The confirmation bias is the fact that people search for information that confirms their view of the world and ignore what doesn’t fit.

In an uncertain world, people love to be right because it helps us make sense of things.

Indeed some psychologists think it’s akin to a basic drive.

One of the ways they strive to be correct is by looking for evidence that confirms they are correct, sometimes with depressing or comic results

20. Well-Travelled Road Effect

To understand this cognitive bias, think about driving a route that’s very familiar.

It could be your commute to work, a trip into town or the way home.

Whichever it is, you know every twist and turn like the back of your hand.

On these sorts of trips it’s easy to zone out from the actual driving and pay little attention to the passing scenery.

The consequence is that you perceive that the trip has taken less time than it actually has.

This is the well-travelled road effect: people tend to underestimate the time it takes to travel a familiar route.

The corollary is that unfamiliar routes seem to take longer.

21. Cognitive Biases: Sobering Up Effect

The sobering up effect is the a cognitive bias that causes us to become more pessimistic as a big moment approaches.

For example:

• Results of medical tests: people who took a medical test were more optimistic when the results were four weeks away than a few minutes away.
• Performance in an exam: people think their exam marks will be higher when asked one month before the results compared with 50 minutes before getting their grades.
• Driving test expectations: people are more pessimistic about their own driving skills when told they have to take a test to prove it right away.

If you’ve experienced something like this then you’re not alone.

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Hypnosis is a real phenomenon but there are many myths and misunderstandings about it. Here are 8 common ones.

Hypnosis is a mental state in which people display focused attention, vivid fantasies, increased susceptibility to suggestion and reduced peripheral awareness.

In other words, hypnosis puts people in a trance.

Hypnosis certainly can be an effective therapy, particularly for pain and anxiety.

Hypnosis can achieve all sorts of fascinating effects, among other things, people can:

• have visual or auditory hallucinations,
• move their bodies without intending to,
• and feel less pain.

But much of what many people believe about hypnosis is total and utter rubbish.

Here are 8 very common myths:

Myth 1: Only the mentally weak can be hypnotised

It is a myth that only the mentally weak are susceptible to hypnosis.

In fact, the exact reverse is probably more true.

The higher your intelligence and the stronger your self-control, the more easily you are hypnotised.

That’s because entering a hypnotic trance is all about concentrating, so people with mental health problems can find it difficult under hypnosis.

However, finding it hard to enter a hypnotic state doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.

People naturally vary in how susceptible they are to hypnosis.

Studies have shown that around 30 percent of people are relatively resistant to hypnosis.

Although, with effort, a hypnotic state can usually be achieved eventually.

Myth 2: Under hypnosis, people are helpless

It is a myth that people are helpless under hypnosis.

It’s difficult to get people to do things under hypnosis that they wouldn’t normally do.

While hypnotised people are still in touch with their morals and normal standards of behaviour.

That said, though, it is possible to reduce people’s inhibitions under hypnosis and they will more readily accept suggestions.

Stage hypnotists rely on this heightened suggestibility, along with picking the types who, let’s say, don’t mind a little attention.

That’s how they get people to quack like ducks and the rest.

Don’t we all know someone who would quack like a duck if it meant everyone would look at them?

Myth 3: Hypnosis is sleep

Yes, people look like they’re asleep when they’re hypnotised because their eyes are sometimes closed and they look peaceful.

But it is a myth that under hypnosis they are asleep.

The brain waves of a person who is hypnotised are nothing like those of a person who is asleep.

In fact, the hypnotic trance is a heightened state of concentration.

A high level of alpha waves on an EEG show that a hypnotised person is awake, alert and very responsive.

Myth 4: Hypnotherapy works in one session

It is a myth that hypnosis alone can cure any ailment in one session.

Nevertheless, some of the most outrageous curative claims are made about hypnotism (although usually not by hypnotherapists themselves).

These have their origins in stage hypnotism as well as hucksters of all types.

Of course, people regularly repeat claims that they were cured in only one session of hypnotherapy because it’s such a good story.

Who wants to hear about how it took you a decade, three divorces and 19,423 nicotine patches to give up smoking?

The truth is that almost no one is cured in one session, if they are cured at all through hypnosis.

Hypnotherapists usually insist that patients commit to 6 sessions, or sometimes 20 sessions.

This isn’t naked profiteering, change takes time.

Even then, hypnotherapy is often used as an added extra to some other kind of treatment, rather than as the main method.

Myth 5: Hypnotists must be flamboyant or weird

It is a myth that practitioners of hypnosis need to look unusual or flamboyant.

That’s just people in showbusiness.

In reality, it would be distracting if the person trying to hypnotise you had swirling eyes, kept talking about black magic and wore very loud ties.

Your average hypnotist is much more likely to wear a grey suit.

Myth 6: Under hypnosis long forgotten memories can be retrieved.

It is a myth that under hypnosis, long forgotten memories can be retrieved.

But, if you believe this one, then you’re in very good company.

Many members of the public think this is true, as do some psychologists and many hypnotherapists themselves.

Except that nowadays most people in the know think that the hypnotic trance isn’t much good for accurately retrieving memories.

Worse, hypnotists can easily implant false memories, because people in a hypnotic trance are easily suggestible.

That scene in the movie where hypnosis helps the victim see the killer’s face is pure Hollywood: entertaining but total fiction.

Myth 7: You can’t lie under hypnosis

It is a myth that you cannot lie under hypnosis — in fact, you can!

Hypnosis is not some kind of magical state in which you can only speak the truth.

This is a natural result of the fact that you are not helpless when hypnotised and your usual moral (and immoral) faculties are still active.

Not only can you lie under hypnosis, but lying is not necessarily any more detectable hypnotised than when not (Sheehan & Statham, 1988).

Myth 8: You’ve never experienced hypnosis

Many people think they’ve never been hypnotised since they’ve never been to a hypnotherapist or been involved in stage hypnosis.

In reality, most of us have experienced a state of mild hypnosis, at least.

For example, when you drive a long distance and start to feel dissociated from your body and the car, that’s a mild state of hypnosis.

Your unconscious is taking care of all the mechanical aspects of driving while you conscious mind is free to float around.

Or if you’ve every meditated then you’ve hypnotised yourself.

Meditation is really a specific type of hypnosis.

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The magic number 7 plus or minus 2 in psychology refers to the fact that we can fit about seven pieces of information into our short-term memories.

It is sometimes said human beings are nothing more than a collection of memories.

Memories for people, events, places, sounds and sights.

Our whole world is funnelled in through our memories. In fact, they may be our most prized possessions.

The study of memory has always been central to psychology – this article describes one of its most influential findings.

The title of this article comes from a 1956 study by the psychologist George A. Miller in which he describes the capacity of human memory (Miller, 1956).

The article’s opening has become famous amongst historians of psychology:

“My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer.

For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public journals.

This number assumes a variety of disguises, being sometimes a little larger and sometimes a little smaller than usual, but never changing so much as to be unrecognizable.”

The magical number seven (plus or minus 2)

It’s not just Miller who was persecuted by this number though, it’s all of us.

What this magical number represents – 7 plus or minus 2 – is the number of items we can hold in our short-term memory.

So, while most people can generally hold around seven numbers in mind for a short period, almost everyone finds it difficult to hold ten digits in mind.

Remember that memory is a slippery concept: short-term memory for psychologists refers to things that are currently being used by our brains right now.

For example, as you’re reading this post the words you’ve read go into short-term memory for a very short period, you extract some meaning (hopefully) and then the meaning is either stored or discarded.

You’ll probably still have some faint memory of this article tomorrow, but won’t be able to remember most of the actual words.

Disputing the magical number seven

All sorts of experiments and theories have followed disputing the magical number seven approach to memory.

More recent studies have, for example, shown how we put items together in order to ‘chunk’ data.

Still, the basic concept that our immediate short-term memory is relatively limited is still valid.

If you think seven isn’t much then be thankful you’re not a six-month-old infant.

Recent research suggests they can only hold one thing in short-term memory (Kaldy & Leslie, 2005).

Poor little chaps — it explains a lot though.

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The illusion of truth effect in psychology is the tendency to believe false information if it is repeated often enough.

The illusion of truth effect, is very simple: people are more likely to believe something, the more often it is repeated to them.

With repetition, it is easier for the human mind to process a statement relative to other competing ideas that have not been repeated over-and-over again.

Repetition is used everywhere to persuade people, in advertising, politics and the media, and it certainly works.

Examples of the illusion of truth effect

We see ads for the same products over and over again.

Politicians repeat the same messages endlessly (even when it has nothing to do with the question they’ve been asked).

Journalists repeat the same opinions day after day.

Can all this repetition really be persuasive?

It seems too simplistic that just repeating a persuasive message should increase its effect, but that’s exactly what psychological research finds (again and again).

Repetition is one of the easiest and most widespread methods of persuasion because of the illusion of truth effect.

In fact it’s so obvious that we sometimes forget how powerful it is.

People rate statements that have been repeated just once as more valid or true than things they’ve heard for the first time.

They even rate statements as truer when the person saying them has been repeatedly lying (Begg et al., 1992).

That is how powerful the illusion of truth effect is.

And when we think something is more true, we also tend to be more persuaded by it.

Several studies on the illusion of truth have shown that people are more swayed when they hear statements of opinion and persuasive messages more than once.

How the illusion of truth effect works

The illusion of truth effect works at least partly because familiarity breeds liking.

As we are exposed to a message again and again, it becomes more familiar.

Because of the way our minds work, what is familiar is also true — hence the illusion of truth.

Familiar things require less effort to process and that feeling of ease unconsciously signals truth, this is called cognitive fluency.

As every politician knows, there’s not much difference between actual truth and the illusion of truth.

Since illusions are often easier to produce, why bother with the truth?

Reversing the illusion of truth

The exact opposite of the illusion of truth is also true.

If something is hard to think about, then people tend to believe it less.

Naturally this is very bad news for people trying to persuade others of complicated ideas in what is a very complicated world.

Some studies have even tested how many times a message should be repeated for the maximum effect of the illusion of truth.

These suggest that people have the maximum confidence in an idea after it has been repeated between 3 and 5 times (Brinol et al., 2008).

After that, repetition ceases to have the same effect and may even reverse.

Because TV adverts are repeated many more times than this, advertisers now use subtle variations in the ads to recapture our attention and avoid the illusion of truth backfiring.

This is an attempt to avoid the fact that while familiarity can breed liking, over-familiarity tends to breed contempt.

When the illusion of truth fails

Repetition is effective almost across the board when people are paying little attention, but when they are concentrating and the argument is weak, the effect disappears (Moons et al., 2008).

In other words, it’s no good repeating a weak argument to people who are listening carefully — then the illusion of truth does not operate.

But if people aren’t motivated to scrutinise your arguments carefully then repeat away with abandon—the audience will find the argument more familiar and, therefore, more persuasive.

This suggests we should remain critical while watching TV adverts or the illusion of truth effect will creep in under our defences.

You might think it’s better to let the ads wash over you, without thinking too much, but just the reverse is true.

Really we should be highly critical of the illusion of truth otherwise, before we know it, we’re singing the jingle, quoting the tag-line and buying the product.

When the argument is strong, though, it doesn’t matter whether or not the audience is concentrating hard, repetition will increase persuasion and the illusion of truth effect works.

Unfortunately, I find it’s often people with the best arguments who don’t take advantage of the illusion of truth.

Persuading groups

When people are debating an issue together in a meeting, you can see a parallel effect.

When one person in a group repeats their opinion a few times, the other people think that person’s opinion is more representative of the whole group (see my previous article: loudest voice = majority opinion).

The same psychology is at work again: to the human mind there is little difference between appearances and truth.

What appears to be true might as well actually be true, because we tend to process the illusion as though it were the truth.

It’s a depressing enough finding about the human ability to process rational arguments, but recent research has shown an even more worrying effect.

We can effectively persuade ourselves through repetition — which takes the illusion of truth to new heights.

A study has shown that when an idea is retrieved from memory, this has just as powerful a persuasive effect on us as if it had been repeated twice (Ozubko et al., 2010).

The aspiring sceptic, therefore, should be especially alert to thoughts that come quickly and easily to mind—we can easily persuade ourselves with a single recall of a half-remembered thought.

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