Cognitive Biases that Affect Decisions

20-cognitive-biases-that-screw-up-your-decisions

In my ongoing effort to remind myself of the ways I can get it wrong, I post this link to a useful infographic. I believe that one of our most important missions in life is to see past our biases and misconceptions, and the best way is to know what to look for. I’ve made similar posts before, including two on the kind of thinking that goes into conspiracy theories — number one and number two (with infographic) — and one on what goes into bad science (with infographic.) Tap the picture for the full-sized original, or use the link below to go to the original article.

You make thousands of rational decisions every day — or so you think. From what you’ll eat throughout the day to whether you should make a big career move, research suggests that there are a number of cognitive stumbling blocks that affect your behavior, and they can prevent you from acting in your own best interests. Here, we’ve rounded up the most common biases that screw up our decision-making.

Source: Cognitive biases that affect decisions – Business Insider


Discover more from Green Comet

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

About arjaybe

Jim has fought forest fires and controlled traffic in the air and on the sea. Now he writes stories.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

8 Responses to Cognitive Biases that Affect Decisions

  1. Laird Smith says:

    Thanks for the link to Compound Interest. I’ve posted it to my Facebook page as well as the cognitive biases. Some consider science in the same field as poison ivy, something to be avoided.

  2. emmylgant says:

    This explains why I screw up so much. Some mistakes are costly some are not. Cognitive biais is probably why we repeat our mistakes before learning the lesson.

    • arjaybe says:

      We have so many ways of staving off reality, don’t we?

      • emmylgant says:

        Indeed we do! I read somewhere a while back that the most important decisions we take (the ones that affect our lives long term, mostly!) are taken without sufficient information and rely on emotions/feelings…

        • arjaybe says:

          Yes, although I am as sceptical of decisions that rely only on rational logic. I am a great believer in emotional intelligence, that it is at least as reliable as cognitive intelligence. When the facts aren’t sufficient and logic hits a wall, which seems to be very common in my experience, we’re left with our feelings and hunches. We have to rely on them, and I think we can, as long as we examine them as closely as we do our rational decisions.

Please let us know what you think. No registration required.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.