api: YAML JSON TOON Database version: 1.0.0 format: yaml dataset: id: 2747 slug: cognitive-biases title: Cognitive Biases description: Common systematic patterns of deviation from rational judgment. summary: A working list of named cognitive biases, each with a one-line description of the systematic error it names. Entries cover judgment under uncertainty, memory, social perception and decision framing, so one lookup can serve a decision-review checklist or a reasoning-failure taxonomy. use_when: - You are building a decision-review checklist and need consistent names for failure modes. - You want to label a reasoning error precisely instead of calling it generically 'bias'. caveats: - Biases overlap and some names describe the same phenomenon from different angles (the primacy effect and anchoring both involve early information). - Not every named bias has the same replication record; the effect can be small or context-dependent. related: - logical-fallacies - defense-mechanisms - learning-theories entry_count: 40 fields: - section: data field: bias type: string example: Confirmation Bias - section: data field: description type: string example: Favoring information that confirms existing bel… category: Psychology category_slug: psychology tags: psychology,biases,cognition view_count: 39 created_at: 1793403093 updated_at: 1793403093 data: - bias: Confirmation Bias description: Favoring information that confirms existing beliefs. - bias: Anchoring description: Over-relying on the first piece of information offered. - bias: Availability Heuristic description: Judging probability by how easily examples come to mind. - bias: Dunning-Kruger Effect description: Unskilled individuals overestimate their ability. - bias: Sunk Cost Fallacy description: Continuing an endeavor because of previously invested resources. - bias: Hindsight Bias description: Believing past events were more predictable than they were. - bias: Bandwagon Effect description: Adopting beliefs or behaviors because others do. - bias: Fundamental Attribution Error description: Overweighting personality and underweighting situation when explaining other people's behavior. - bias: Actor-Observer Bias description: Explaining one's own actions by the situation but other people's actions by their character. - bias: Self-Serving Bias description: Crediting successes to oneself and blaming failures on external factors. - bias: Optimism Bias description: Expecting good outcomes to be more likely, and bad ones less likely, for oneself than for others. - bias: Overconfidence Effect description: Holding more certainty in one's judgments than their accuracy supports. - bias: Planning Fallacy description: Underestimating the time, cost and risk of a plan while overestimating its benefits. - bias: Framing Effect description: Reaching different decisions from logically equivalent information depending on how it is presented. - bias: Loss Aversion description: Feeling losses more strongly than equivalent gains, which pushes people to avoid losses. - bias: Endowment Effect description: Valuing something more highly merely because one owns it. - bias: Status Quo Bias description: Preferring the current state of affairs and treating change as a loss. - bias: Halo Effect description: Letting a favorable impression in one area color judgments of unrelated traits. - bias: Survivorship Bias description: Drawing conclusions from the cases that survived a selection process while ignoring those that did not. - bias: Base Rate Neglect description: Giving too little weight to how common something is in general when evaluating specific evidence. - bias: Gambler's Fallacy description: Believing that independent random events are 'due' to reverse after a streak. - bias: Recency Bias description: Giving disproportionate weight to the most recent events or information. - bias: Primacy Effect description: Remembering and weighting the earliest items in a sequence more than later ones. - bias: Representativeness Heuristic description: Judging probability by how closely something resembles a typical case rather than by statistical likelihood. - bias: Negativity Bias description: Giving more weight to negative information and experiences than to positive ones of equal size. - bias: In-Group Bias description: Favoring members of one's own group over outsiders in evaluation and treatment. - bias: False Consensus Effect description: Overestimating how many other people share one's own beliefs and behaviors. - bias: Curse of Knowledge description: Struggling to imagine what it is like not to know something once you know it. - bias: Spotlight Effect description: Overestimating how much other people notice one's appearance and actions. - bias: Illusion of Control description: Overestimating one's influence over events that are largely determined by chance. - bias: Belief Perseverance description: Clinging to a belief after the evidence that supported it has been discredited. - bias: Authority Bias description: Attributing greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure and being unduly influenced by it. - bias: Mere-Exposure Effect description: Coming to prefer things simply because they are familiar. - bias: Peak-End Rule description: Judging an experience mainly by its most intense moment and its ending, not by its average. - bias: Normalcy Bias description: Underestimating the likelihood and impact of a disaster because nothing like it has happened before. - bias: Decoy Effect description: A third, inferior option shifts preference between two other options. - bias: Law of the Instrument description: Over-relying on a familiar tool for every problem ('if all you have is a hammer'). - bias: Bias Blind Spot description: Recognizing the impact of biases on others' judgment more readily than on one's own. - bias: Clustering Illusion description: Seeing meaningful patterns or streaks in random data. - bias: Affect Heuristic description: Letting current emotion stand in for an assessment of risk or benefit.