api: YAML JSON TOON Database
version: 1.0.0
format: json
dataset:
  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[2]: 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[2]: 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[3]: logical-fallacies,defense-mechanisms,learning-theories
  category: Psychology
  category_slug: psychology
  tags: "psychology,biases,cognition"
  view_count: 0
  entry_count: 40
  fields[2]{section,field,type,example}:
    data,bias,string,Confirmation Bias
    data,description,string,Favoring information that confirms existing bel…
data[40]{bias,description}:
  Confirmation Bias,Favoring information that confirms existing beliefs.
  Anchoring,Over-relying on the first piece of information offered.
  Availability Heuristic,Judging probability by how easily examples come to mind.
  Dunning-Kruger Effect,Unskilled individuals overestimate their ability.
  Sunk Cost Fallacy,Continuing an endeavor because of previously invested resources.
  Hindsight Bias,Believing past events were more predictable than they were.
  Bandwagon Effect,Adopting beliefs or behaviors because others do.
  Fundamental Attribution Error,Overweighting personality and underweighting situation when explaining other people's behavior.
  Actor-Observer Bias,Explaining one's own actions by the situation but other people's actions by their character.
  Self-Serving Bias,Crediting successes to oneself and blaming failures on external factors.
  Optimism Bias,"Expecting good outcomes to be more likely, and bad ones less likely, for oneself than for others."
  Overconfidence Effect,Holding more certainty in one's judgments than their accuracy supports.
  Planning Fallacy,"Underestimating the time, cost and risk of a plan while overestimating its benefits."
  Framing Effect,Reaching different decisions from logically equivalent information depending on how it is presented.
  Loss Aversion,"Feeling losses more strongly than equivalent gains, which pushes people to avoid losses."
  Endowment Effect,Valuing something more highly merely because one owns it.
  Status Quo Bias,Preferring the current state of affairs and treating change as a loss.
  Halo Effect,Letting a favorable impression in one area color judgments of unrelated traits.
  Survivorship Bias,Drawing conclusions from the cases that survived a selection process while ignoring those that did not.
  Base Rate Neglect,Giving too little weight to how common something is in general when evaluating specific evidence.
  Gambler's Fallacy,Believing that independent random events are 'due' to reverse after a streak.
  Recency Bias,Giving disproportionate weight to the most recent events or information.
  Primacy Effect,Remembering and weighting the earliest items in a sequence more than later ones.
  Representativeness Heuristic,Judging probability by how closely something resembles a typical case rather than by statistical likelihood.
  Negativity Bias,Giving more weight to negative information and experiences than to positive ones of equal size.
  In-Group Bias,Favoring members of one's own group over outsiders in evaluation and treatment.
  False Consensus Effect,Overestimating how many other people share one's own beliefs and behaviors.
  Curse of Knowledge,Struggling to imagine what it is like not to know something once you know it.
  Spotlight Effect,Overestimating how much other people notice one's appearance and actions.
  Illusion of Control,Overestimating one's influence over events that are largely determined by chance.
  Belief Perseverance,Clinging to a belief after the evidence that supported it has been discredited.
  Authority Bias,Attributing greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure and being unduly influenced by it.
  Mere-Exposure Effect,Coming to prefer things simply because they are familiar.
  Peak-End Rule,"Judging an experience mainly by its most intense moment and its ending, not by its average."
  Normalcy Bias,Underestimating the likelihood and impact of a disaster because nothing like it has happened before.
  Decoy Effect,"A third, inferior option shifts preference between two other options."
  Law of the Instrument,Over-relying on a familiar tool for every problem ('if all you have is a hammer').
  Bias Blind Spot,Recognizing the impact of biases on others' judgment more readily than on one's own.
  Clustering Illusion,Seeing meaningful patterns or streaks in random data.
  Affect Heuristic,Letting current emotion stand in for an assessment of risk or benefit.