Understanding Cognitive Biases

Discover why it’s so easy for us to find a blind spot in the reasoning of others, yet so difficult to recognize it in ourselves. Most of us believe our reasoning is always sound and logical. But the evidence shows our thinking is easily affected by even the most seemingly benign changes around us.

Explore one of the most well-known and pervasive cognitive biases. We see the effects of confirmation bias in our media, politics, and much more—this tendency for us to only accept information that confirms our existing worldview and to actively reject information that opposes what we already believe to be true.

Learn about biases you have experienced since infancy: pareidolia and anthropomorphism, which are our brain’s tendency to find patterns—particularly faces—in everything around us, and to assign those patterns human characteristics. For most of our evolutionary history, these biases have kept us alive and procreating. But can they also lead us astray?

Consider our tendency to place a high value on things we’ve built ourselves, referred to as the IKEA effect. The psychological concept of effort justification causes us to value our own efforts more than the job might warrant, as we attempt to avoid the cognitive dissonance that a more honest evaluation could bring.

Explore the new set of biases that can develop when individuals must make decisions in a group. Groupthink and group polarization can lead to dire consequences when there is little or no discussion of alternate choices—as evidenced in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Discover how to use three particular cognitive biases to your own advantage. The testing effect, the generation effect, and spacing effect—which come from our brain’s tendencies to use information in specific ways—can lead to improved information retention, better test scores, and a greater depth of knowledge at any stage of life.