Bias - BXD - Business Experience Design

(Common flaws in our thinking)

The first step in creating change (improvement) is changing the way we think.

Our greatest hurdle:

Our biases, blind spots, cognitive dissonance and natural resistance to changing our deeply ingrained values and beliefs.

One of the most difficult things to see is our presuppositions, our instincts and reflexes, and the contexts within which we operate that create them. What is our current thinking? Where does it come from? How do we tend to act as a result? What are the effects?

Understanding this gives us a point of comparison, a contrast, that puts us in a better position and to be more conscious designers of how we want our organizations to function.

Thinking about our Thinking:

I know you are a rational, logical, tool-making, knowledge-acquiring individual with the proclivity to leverage more than 20% of your assets (human, intellectual, financial, and otherwise), however:

We all have blind spots: There are a number of ways our values and beliefs interfere with our reasoning processes, our perception of reality, how we use information, form beliefs and make decisions.

When you study Deming, brace yourself: Expect mental conflict.

Expect to battle cognitive dissonance: When your world view is confronted with evidence that contradicts it (and it will), you have to do something:

You can either change your entire worldview, which is quite difficult, especially the older you get. Or you dismiss the evidence all together, learning nothing. My advice:

Choose Transformation

Be forewarned: If you are human, your thought process is less than perfect. Quite biased. Hence the statistical reasoning that I implore you to consider. What is a bias?

A bias is favoring or having prejudice against something based on limited information.

The human brain is an incredible processing machine. It can store an amazing amount of information. One way brains are able to store so much information is by creating mental shortcuts based on repeated patterns. These shortcuts allow us to relate and group information together for quicker processing. However,

These repeated patterns of thinking can lead to inaccurate or unreasonable conclusions that are biased — favoring or having prejudice against someone or something. Biases can seriously impact results.

Think of cognitive biases as mental shortcuts that help us make sense of the world. They help us move along without getting bogged down thinking about the meaning of every interaction or event. Just remember:

Unlike random errors, biases lead to systematic patterns of mistakes.

Status quo. Business as usual. Mediocrity.

My personal top of mind biases:

Confirmation Bias: The tendency to favor information that confirms existing beliefs and ignore or downplay contradictory evidence.

Dunning-Kruger effect: On being ignorant of one’s own ignorance. People with low ability, expertise, or experience tend to overestimate their knowledge or competence. Conversely, those with high ability often underestimate their competence. In other words; the less we know, the more confident we may feel – because we do not yet understand what we are missing.

Black and white thinking: Extreme “all or nothing” thinking. Binary, “yes or no.” Nearly opposite of Deming’s statistical probabilistic thinking.

Curse of knowledge: The assumption that other people know as much as we do on a given topic. Meaning; experts are poorer communicators in their own domain than nonexperts.

Here are a few more biases: Apologies for the incomplete and improper format.

Action bias:
- Describes our tendency to favor action over inaction, often to our benefit. However, sometimes, we feel compelled to act, even if there is not evidence that it will lead to a better outcome than doing nothing would.
  - Ex: Inept manager screaming at worker to keep busy even when that busyness is creating waste or non-value add.
  - Many organizations value rapid decision-making over slow deliberation. Often this works well to respond to market changes and maintain a competitive edge. However, hasty decision making is at risk of making suboptimal decisions.
  - Micromanagement is another consequence of the action bias, when managers are urged to act rather than taking a step back and trusting employees to handle tasks independently.
Actor-observer bias:
1. When people attribute their own behaviors to external causes, and the behaviors of others to internal causes.
  1. Ex: When one person arrives early, and another late. The late person is assumed to have a personality defect…
    1. Solve the problem instead of figuring who or what to blame
    2. Be grateful is not any worse
    3. Stop being so judgmental
Addictive bias:
Always being right:
1. When someone will not admit defeat in the face of compelling evidence against their position. Even the last word may not be enough, only to bring the topic up later.
  1. Ex: Physicians not acknowledging mistakes (embarrassing and may lead to poor evaluation, censure or even termination.
    1. Always being right can be wrong, turning people against you, stifling conversations and ideas, and making people want to avoid you.
Ambiguity effect:
1. We tend to avoid options that we consider ambiguous or to be missing information. The tendency to avoid options with unknown results, or about which they lack information. Happens when a person given two viable options does not give equal consideration to them both.
  1. Ex: Considering between three cars and drop the one because warranty information is not on the website.
    1. Recognize its existence and its influence over our decision making.
    2. Put in the time and effort to make decisions
Anchoring bias:
1. When an individual’s decisions are influenced by a particular reference point or ‘anchor.” The tendency to rely too much on the first piece of information when making decisions.
  1. Ex: The higher the performance and skill level of the top most employee, the higher the overall level of the other employees.
  2. Ex: In negotiations: “this is a pretty nice model — they usually go for $20,000 when they’re in such great condition!” ($20k and great condition are the anchors)
    1. Difficult to mitigate
Anthropocentric thinking:
1. The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena.
Anthropomorphism, aka personification:
1. The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as being possessing human-like traits, emotions and intentions.
Apophenia:
1. The tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. (Clustering illusion, illusory correlations, pareidolia.
Appeal to ignorance:
1. Asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false. Or, a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.
  1. Ex: Innocent until proven guilty. Aliens are real because no proof says they are not.
    1. Seek evidence rather than rely on speculation
Assumed similarity bias:
1. Where an individual assumes that others have more traits in common with them than those others actually do.
Attribute substitution:
Attentional bias:
1. An error in diagnosis or other form of analysis in which a person is unable to see the truth because he does not perceive a critical piece of data. The tendency to pay attention to some things while simultaneously ignoring others.
  1. Ex: To pay attention to the positive (liberal) or negative (conservative) words politicians use.
    1. Practice mindfulness (more aware of self and the present moment)
Authority bias:
1. the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion
Availability bias:
1. When you rush the user recruitment process or skip screener questions to attract a bigger pool of users, even if they do not fit the qualifications or characteristics that you have already determined are present in your ideal user.
  1. Ex: Marrying the first person you meet after a divorce.
    1. If you are having trouble recruiting the right users before your deadline, offer a better incentive for participating in your study, adjust your recruitment strategy, or ask your project manager for more time. Do not just take any user who is available.
Availability cascade:
1. A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or “repeat something long enough and it will become true”).
2. A self-reinforcing cycle in which information is perceived to be plausible and correct due to its increasing repetition in the public domain. Reaching critical mass…. People are more likely to believe information that is readily available to them.
  1. Ex: Media covers climate catastrophe, which culminates in a call for legislation.
    1. Do you own research and come to your own conclusions.
Availability heuristic:
1. We make decisions by relying on information that comes most readily to mind. Mental shortcuts that help us understand the world by using information that is easy to recall. Helps us make fast, but sometimes incorrect assessments.
  1. Ex: After hearing a news story, you begin to believe that such tragedies are quite common.
    1. Think before making impulse decisions
    2. Clear out echo chambers
    3. Watch overall trends and patterns
    4. Consider overall statistics
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon:
1. The illusion where something that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbably frequency shortly afterwards.
Backfire effect:
1. The desire to retain their own opinions or false beliefs even when confronted by contradictory evidence. When given evidence is against one’s beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe it more strongly.
2. The tendency to react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one’s previous beliefs.
  1. Ex: Conspiracy theorists. Belief that President Obama was not born in U.S.A.
    1. Recognize where you might suffer from cognitive biases
    2. Recognize that your beliefs may not be correct
    3. Be present in the situation and apply different critical thinking skills to assess new information.
Bandwagon effect:
1. The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.
2. When we do something primarily because other people are doing it, regardless of our beliefs and knowledge. The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.
  1. Ex: Blindly following your competitors. “If your friends jumped off a bridge…”
    1. Create distance from the bandwagon cues
    2. Create optimal conditions for judgement and decision making
    3. Slow down your reasoning process
    4. Hold yourself accountable for your decisions
    5. Examine the bandwagon
Barnum effect, or Forer Effect:
1. “The fallacy of personal validation.” Refers to the fact that a cleverly worded “personal” description based on general, stereotyped statements will be accepted readily as an accurate self-description by most people. When a person is given a generic personality description that could apply to anyone, but their perception is that it applies uniquely to them. Where individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically to them, yet which are in fact vague and general.
  1. Ex: Horoscopes
    1. Be skeptical. Take overly optimistic or generic statements with a pinch of salt. Ask for details.
    2. Question the sources authority. Trust sources with a good tract record of objectivity and accuracy
    3. Balance positive and negative
Base rate fallacy:
1. Occurs when people rely too heavily on prior information (base rates), instead of focusing on the current situation. A decision-making error in which information about the rate of occurrence of some trait in a population (base-rate information) is ignored or not given appropriate weight.
  1. Ex: Investor presented with to opportunities that vary in terms of the projected risk and return. They may be more likely to choose the riskier option if they are not given sufficient information about its historical performance.
    1. Pay more attention to base rate information
    2. Understand that past performance or behavior is not a valid predictor of future performance or behavior
    3. Consider individual segments of their target audience during product development
    4. A/B split testing
    5. Refrain from making statistical inferences in marketing campaigns
Begging the question, aka circular argument tautology:
1. When the premise of an argument presupposes the truth of its conclusion… When the argument takes for granted what it is supposed to prove. Circular reasoning: An argument that requires that the desired conclusion be true.
  1. Ex: When asked why an exclusive men’s club has such a long waiting line: “the reason there is such a big demand is because everyone wants to get in them.?
    1. Make sure your conclusion is not a mere rewording of your premises. Do not argue in a circle.
Belief bias:
1. When we decide what is believable based on our knowledge, past experiences, and beliefs, rather than logic. When we accept arguments that align with our preexisting beliefs.
  1. Ex: In political election, when the loser claims the opponent cheated. When a candidate wins by a slim margin and then proceeds to govern as if they have a mandate befitting of a landslide election.
    1. Break the argument down into chunks. If A, then B. If B, then C. Therefore, if A, then C. If the premises lead to an accurate conclusion, the argument is valid.
    2. Distinguish between validity and truth.
    3. Remain objective
Ben Franklin effect:
1. Where a person who has performed a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than they would be if they had received a favor from that person.
Berkson’s paradox:
Black and white thinking:
1. All or nothing thinking. Everything is either ALL right or ALL wrong. Absolute
  1. Ex: Negative thinking. I am the best/worst at…
    1. Think in terms of probabilities.
    2. Switch the word Always and Never with Sometimes. All or Nothing becomes Some, Perfect becomes good at some things.
Bias blind spot:
1. When people are unaware of their own biases. Recognizing the impact of biases on the judgment of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one’s own judgment.
  1. Ian says he is a better driver than most… right after his third accident this year.
    1. Increase self-awareness
    2. Identify who and what makes you uncomfortable
    3. Educate yourself on the many different cognitive biases
Bizarreness effect:
1. Bizarre material is better remembered than common material
Blaming:
1. Where we do not like something and we blame the person, not the environment or circumstances. The practice of strongly and unfairly assigning blame to an individual, group, or organization that is unpopular.
  1. Ex: A consultant who blames a customer for a product failure in an environment of corporate narcissism where customers are viewed as incompetent and insiders as flawless.
    1. Own your part
    2. Set and intention to stop your blaming behavior
    3. Start paying attention
    4. Remind others of the 50-50 rule that makes both parties equally accountable
Boundary extension:
1. Remembering the background of an image as being larger or more expensive than the foreground.
Catastrophizing:
1. To imagine the worst possible outcome of an action or event. To view or talk about an event or situation as worse than it actually is.
  1. Ex: If my partner leaves I will never find anyone else and never be happy again.
    1. Do not exaggerate: Be specific
    2. Sleep
    3. Understand thoughts do not define you
    4. Do not confuse the present with the future
    5. Get physical
Cheerleader effect: the tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.
Cherry picking:
1. Occurs when someone selects and presents only the evidence that supports their stance while ignoring the evidence that would contradict it.
2. Suppressing evidence (or incomplete evidence) by pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position.
  1. Ex: Every advertisement ever written.
  2. Ex: A news report on gun violence showing footage from shootings, while presenting no statistics about how many people were saved by guns that year.
    1. Take into account ALL the relevant information available to you, by using various debiasing techniques, such as slowing down your reasoning process and avoiding forming a hypothesis too early
Childhood amnesia:
1. The inability of children and adults to recall events that took place during their infancy and early childhood.
  1. Ex: What do you remember as a baby?
    1. Discuss your past encounters and other meaningful incidents
    2. See childhood photographs
    3. Visit the places you lived
Choice-supportive bias:
1. To retroactively ascribe positive attributes to an option one has selected and/or to demote the forgone options.
  1. Ex: Buying a share in the stock market because many people believe it will gain value in the future.
    1. List the pros and cons for each option before making the choice
    2. Consider the arguments of people who made different choices
    3. Keep a certain humility and stay flexible in our attitude.
Clustering illusion:
1. When people tend see patterns even when there are not any. To expect random events to appear more regular or uniform than they are in reality. The tendency to erroneously consider the inevitable ‘streaks’ or ‘clusters’ arising in small samples from random attributes to be non-random
  1. In finance, this would be the investor observing patterns in random events.
  2. To see faces in the clouds or outlines of animals in rocks. The human brain seeks patterns and rules.
    1. Look for actual trends rather than perceived ones (using statistical analyses such as regression analysis and correlation tests
    2. Do not jump to conclusions without testing
    3. Get expert help
    4. Get larger samples
Common source bias:
1. The tendency to combine or compare research studies from the same source, or from sources that use the same methodologies or data
Confirmation bias:
1. Occurs when you start looking for evidence to prove a hypothesis you have. When we seek or only listen to information which confirms our preconceptions or, at worst, our misconceptions. To favor information that confirms or strengthens one’s beliefs or values.
  1. Raymond Nickerson (American psychology professor): “If one were to attempt to identify a single problematic aspect of human reasoning that deserves attention above all others, the confirmation bias would have to be among the candidates for consideration.”
    1. Pay attention to how you interact with information
    2. Ask open-ended questions when conducting interviews
    3. Get into the habit of actively listening without adding your own opinions.
    4. Include a large sample of users with diverse perspectives.
Congruence bias:
1. To over-rely on testing one’s initial hypothesis (the most congruent one) while neglecting to test alternative hypotheses.
  1. Ex: Choosing news and media sources that present stories that support your views.
    1. Ask: How likely is a yes answer, if I assume that my hypothesis is false?
    2. Think of alternative hypotheses, then choose a test most likely to distinguish them, a test that will probably give different results depending on which is true.
Conjunction fallacy:
1. The belief that the conjunction of two events happening is more probable than one happening.
  1. Ex: If you hear about an earthquake and a tsunami on the same day and think there will be another quake or tsunami soon.
    1. When hearing a complicated explanation that has too many convenient assumptions or vivid details (a pitch or cause of phenomenon), be aware that each additional assumption lowers the likelihood of it being true.
    2. When asked to estimate the probability or percentages, think about a finite number, like 100 people.
Connotation fallacies (a form of attribution fallacy):
1. Occurs when a dysphemistic (derogatory or unpleasant) word is substituted for the speaker’s actual quote and used to discredit the argument.
  1. Ex: Loony bin versus mental hospital
    1. Often meant to shock or offend.
    2. Used to humiliate individuals.
Conservatism (or regressive) bias:
1. The tendency to favor prior evidence over new evidence and therefore hold onto old opinions even in the face of compelling new insights.
  1. Ex: In marketing analytics, when new analysis breaks conventional belief, people get defensive and pull up old tests…
    1. Research every bet you place.
    2. Allow numbers to make decisions for you
    3. Remember: without risk there is no reward
Consistency bias:
1. The belief that one’s past actions, thoughts or feelings are the same as they are now. A shortcut; once your brain has committed to something, you no longer have to think about that thing.
2. Once we have committed to a course of action or to a belief, we pressure ourselves to conform to that commitment.
  1. Ex: Habits. And: To gain a sales commitment, the salesperson will have you write down your “commitment.” By getting you to make just a small commitment, a skilled compliance practitioner can get you to make larger and larger ones.
    1. Listen to your gut (instead of being lured into a compliance trap. Call them out.
    2. Ask yourself: Knowing what I know now, would I make this decision again?
Context effect:
1. The context (environmental factors) that surrounds an event effects how an event is perceived and remembered. The influence of environmental factors on one’s perception of a stimulus.
  1. Ex: Sales strategy of having comfortable flooring – the more comfortable, the more likely you will stick around and shop. Also; the apparent brightness of a stimulus depends not only on its own luminance, but also on that of the surrounding stimulation
    1. Talk openly about context switching
    2. Increase the distance between the available options, add more options to the mix,
Continued influence effect:
1. Misinformation continues to influence memory and reasoning about an event, despite the misinformation having been corrected. Where the original memory is affected by incorrect information received later.
Contrast effect:
1. The bias that distorts our perception of something when we compare it to something else, by enhancing the differences between them.
  1. Ex: Enhance your beauty by hanging with ugly people. Some optical illusions.
    1. In HR, use a structured interview process
Courtesy bias:
1. The tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one’s true opinion, so as to avoid offending anyone.
Cross-race effect:
1. The tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying members or a race other than their own.
Converse accident fallacy:
1. Occurs when a rule that applies only to an exceptional case is wrongly applied to all cases in general. Arguing from a qualified position or particular case to an unqualified and general rule. Known as fallacies of presumption.
  1. Ex: Because patients with certain illnesses are permitted to use marijuana, marijuana should be legal for everyone.
    1. Avoid hasty generalizations
Cross-race effect:
1. The tendency to more easily recognize and remember faces that belong to one’s own racial group.
  1. Ex: All Asians looking people are Chinese
    1. Seek continual exposure to ethnic groups that differ from your own
Cryptomnesia:
1. An implicit memory phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that a current thought or idea is a product of their own creation when in fact they have encountered it previously and forgotten about it.
2. The reappearance of a suppressed or forgotten memory that is mistaken for a new experience.
  1. Accidental joke stealing and plagiarism
    1. Know it is possible
    2. Know the form it is likely to take
    3. Seek outside opinions
    4. Accept that minor cryptomnesia will happen
Curse of knowledge:
1. Occurs when an individual, who is communicating with other individuals, assumes that the other individuals have the background knowledge to understand. When we incorrectly assume that everyone knows as much as we do on a given topic.
  1. Ex: Experts are poorer communicators in their own domain than nonexperts.
    1. Know your audience’s base subject knowledge
    2. Tone down your vocabulary
    3. Tell a story
    4. Ditch abstractions
    5. Provide examples
    6. Use visuals.
Declinism:
Decoy effect, attraction effect, asymmetric dominance effect:
1. When consumers change their preference between two options when presented with a third option.
  1. Ex: Slight upsell. The decoy is priced to make on the other options much more attractive.
    1. Focus on only buying as much as you really need, and clarify ahead of time what characteristics are most important to you.
Defensive attribution hypothesis:
1. A term where an observer attributes the causes for a mishap to minimize their fear of being a victim or cause in a similar situation.
2. We have a tendency to attribute a cause to events. We find it uncomfortable to think that events happen by chance or by accident. If things happen by chance, then bad things could happen to us at any time. Therefore, we make an attribution error. This is a nifty trick to defend us from discomfort.
  1. Ex: Played out in auto accidents, natural disasters, muggings, rapes and robberies, etc.
    1. Get comfortable with discomfort
    2. Consider chaos
    3. Think about external factors
Denomination effect:
1. People may be less likely to spend larger denominations than their equivalent in smaller denominations.
  1. Ex: May spend twenty $1 bills rather than a $20 bill.
    1. When investing, think of a company holistically rather than just focusing on the price at which it is trading.
    2. Carry larger, prettier bills
    3. Carefully evaluate the value of money that is being spent, regardless of the denomination of the currency, and to make decisions that are based on the overall value of money rather than the denomination of the bills.
Denying the antecedent:
1. When it is assumed in an “If/ then” statement, that if the first part of the statement (if) is false, then the second part (then) must also be false.
  1. Ex: If Jane works harder than John, then she will get a job. John does not work harder than Jane. Therefore, John will not get a job.
    1. Approach arguments critically. Back up ideas with evidence and consider other possible explanations.
Disposition effect:
Disqualifying the positive:
1. Treating positive events like flukes, thereby clinging to a more negative worldview and set of low expectations for the future.
  1. Ex: Jane delivers a great musical performance. Everyone congratulates her. She responds by saying “Thanks, but I hit a wrong note. Didn’t you notice?”
  2. Ex: When all you focus on throughout the day is getting stuck in traffic, when many other positive things happened.
    1. Recognize when it is happening
    2. Look at the facts
    3. Do a cost-benefit analysis
    4. Find things you are grateful for
    5. Practice receiving positive feedback
Distinction bias:
1. The tendency to overvalue the differences between two options when they are compared side by side, rather than when they are evaluated separately.
2. The tendency to view two options as more distinctive when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.
  1. Ex: When comparing two television sets next to each other, the difference in quality between two very similar, high quality televisions may appear great.
    1. Examine each option on its own
      1. Joint evaluation causes us to view our options as more dissimilar. We nitpick over minute details, which leads us to overvalue things of little consequence.
      2. Separate evaluation allows us to view each option as its own independent unit
Dread aversion:
Dunning-Kruger effect:
1. The Dunning-Kruger effect reveals how individuals with limited experience tend to overestimate their skills and knowledge due to the unawareness of what they don’t know.
2. Ignorant of your own ignorance
3. Occurs when a person’s lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area causes them to overestimate their own competence. By contrast, this effect also causes those who excel in a given area to think the task is simple for everyone, and underestimate their relative abilities as well.
  1. Ex: When underperformers grossly overestimate their ability to do something
  2. When someone is not only really bad at an activity, but is also unable to realize that they are bad because of how bad they are at that activity.
  3. The irony of the Dunning-Kruger Effect is that, Professor Dunning notes, “the knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one is not good at that task—and if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at that task.”
    1. Gain more knowledge on a topic. (opposite is imposter syndrome)
    2. Take time to reflect
    3. See learning as a way forward
    4. Challenge your own beliefs
    5. Change your reasoning
    6. Learn from feedback
    7. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780123855220000056?via%3Dihub
Duration neglect:
1. The principle that the length of an experience has little effect on the memory of that event, and thus does not have an impact on the pleasantness or unpleasantness associate with experience.
  1. Ex: People judge an experience by the most intense point and the end point
    1. Focus on the positive elements of memory or reframe the timeline of a moment.
Effort justification:
1. A person’s tendency to attribute greater value to an outcome if they had to put effort into achieving it. This can result in more value being applied to an outcome than it actually has.
  1. IKEA effect: The tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects they partially assembled themselves.
Egocentric bias:
1. The tendency to rely too heavily on one’s own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality.
  1. Ex: To assume when speaking publicly, that your nervousness is move apparent to the audience that is actually the case (because it is to apparent to yourself).
    1. Use self-distancing language
    2. Increase self-awareness
    3. Consider alternative viewpoints
    4. Slowing down your reasoning process
Einstellung effect:
1. When we are familiar with a problem, and when we think we have the right answer, we stop seeing alternatives.
  1. Ex: In school, we are taught to answer problems, not to reframe them. The student’s job is to solve them, not change or question them.
    1. Find or solve the right problem
Emotional reasoning:
1. A thinking error when people use their emotions as proof, rather than using facts
  1. Ex: I am feeling inadequate, so I must be worthless.
  2. Ex: I feel afraid, so I must be in a dangerous situation.
    1. Step back from your thoughts: Practice not engaging with your thoughts. Notice the thought, then fact check it.
    2. Stick with data
Empathy gap:
1. People tend to underestimate how much their emotions affect their perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors.
  1. Ex: If you are angry because of a recent conflict with a colleague, you may have trouble relating to someone who is feeling calm and collected.
    1. Mirror the person you are speaking with.
End of history illusion:
Endowment effect:
1. Describes how people tend to value items that they own more highly than they would if they did not belong to them.
  1. Ex: When you sell your used items online and after a few days find that not a single person responds with interest.
    1. Be aware of the opposite thing it is trying to accomplish
    2. Use your imagination (that you no longer own the item)
    3. Hide stuff from yourself
    4. Remember your Why (to declutter?)
Equivocation:
1. Calling two different things by the same name.
2. An informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument. It is a type of ambiguity that stems from a phrase having two or more distinct meanings, nor from the grammar or structure of the sentence.
  1. Ex: When I asked you if I should turn left, you said right.
    1. Give clear definitions of terms
    2. Avoid synonyms
    3. Speak precisely
    4. Stick to the topic at hand
    5. Be explicit
Essentialism:
1. The notion that there are some attributes that are necessary to the identity or function of a given entity.
2. A bias that favors ideas or objects that have an underlying nature that can be defined. This leads to discrimination and stereotypes.
  1. All teenage girls wear makeup and dye their hair the same color or that gay men enjoy shopping and fashion.
    1. Use Occam’s Razor (the simplest solution) when trying to make sense of something.
    2. When treating others remember that every person is unique and the likelihood of them having any one trait is very unlikely.
Euphoric recall:
1. The tendency of people to remember past experiences in a positive light, while overlooking negative experiences associated with that event.
Exaggerated expectation:
1. The tendency to expect or predict more extreme outcomes than those outcomes that actually happen.
Experimenter’s (or expectation) bias:
1. The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weights for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.
External control fallacies
Extrinsic incentives bias:
1. an exception to the fundamental attribution error, where people view others as having (situational) extrinsic motivations and (dispositional) intrinsic motivations for oneself
Fading affect bias:
1. A bias in which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly that then emotion associated with positive events.
Fallacy Fallacy
Fallacy of accident or sweeping generalization
Fallacy of change
Fallacy of composition
Fallacy of fairness
Fallacy of false cause
Fallacy of many questions
False consensus effect:
1. The assumption that others will think the same way as you do. At peak, it is when you assume anyone who does not agree with you is abnormal.
  1. When you meet a new person, you might assume they share your political beliefs, because you both live in the same town.
    1. By identifying and articulating your assumptions.
    2. Survey large groups of people.
False memory
Figure of speech
Filtering
Focusing effect
Form function attribution bias
Fortune telling
Framing effect:
1. We react differently to the same information depending on how it’s worded.
  1. Ex: It is plainly leading to ask, “isn’t this choice better?” But what about, “which choice do you prefer?”
Frequency illusion:
1. Once something has been noticed than every instance of that thing is noticed, leading to the belief it has a high frequency of occurrence.
Functional fixedness:
1. A tendency limited a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.
Fundamental attribution error:
1. The tendency for people to overemphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior^[113] (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).
Fundamental pain bias
Gambler’s fallacy
Gender differences in eyewitness memory:
1. The tendency for a witness to remember more details about someone of the same gender.
Generation effect (self-generation effect):
1. That self-generated information is remembered best.
  1. Ex: People are generally better able to recall memories of statements that they have generated than similar statements generated by others.
Genetic fallacy
G.I. Joe fallacy
Global labeling
Google effect:
1. The tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using search engines.
Group attribution error:
1. the biased belief that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole or the tendency to assume that group decision outcomes reflect the preferences of group members, even when information is available that clearly suggests otherwise.
Groupthink:
1. The psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.
Groupshift:
1. The tendency for decisions to be more risk-seeking or risk-averse than the group as a whole, if the group is already biased in that direction
Halo effect:
1. he tendency for a person’s positive or negative traits to “spill over” from one personality area to another in others’ perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype)
Hard-easy effect
Hasty generalization
Heaven’s reward fallacy
Hindsight bias: The inclination to see past evens as being predictable.
Hostile attribution bias:
1. The tendency to interpret others’ behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign.
Hostile media effect
Hot hand fallacy
Hot-cold empathy gap
Humor effect:
1. That humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones, which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor, the increases cognitive processing time to understand the humor, or the emotional arousal caused by the humor
Hyperbolic discounting
Illusion of asymmetric insight
Illusion of control
Illusion of explanatory depth
Illusion of external agency
Illusion of transparency
Illusory of truth effect:
1. People are more likely to identify as true statements those they have previously heard (even if they cannot consciously remember having heard them), regardless of the actual validity of the statement. In other words, a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one.
Illusion of validity
Illusory correlation:
1. Inaccurately seeing a relationship between two events related by coincidence.
Illusory superiority
Impact bias
Implicit association:
1. Where the speed with which people can match words depends on how closely they are associated.
Implicit bias (aka unconscious bias):
A collection of attitudes and stereotypes we associate to people without our conscious knowledge.
1. When we only interview people within a limited set of identity profiles, such as race, age, gender, socioeconomic status, and ability. These profiles are generally based on assumptions we have about certain types of people. Ex: We might cause you to feel uncomfortable interviewing people whose life experiences are different from your own. On the other hand, we might choose to interview people from typically excluded groups, but then ask potentially offensive questions because of our internalized stereotypes.
  1. We can reflect on our behaviors, and we can ask others to point our implicit biases.
Imposter syndrome
Information bias:
1. The assumption that all information is useful when trying to make a decision and that more is always better.
  1. The reverse is often true, as seen in the need for data scientists and simple dashboards.
Indication of causation
Information bias
Ingroup bias
Insensitivity to sample size
Intentionality bias:
1. The tendency to judge human action to be intentional rather than accidental.
Internal control fallacies
Introspective bias: aka: Hungry judge effect
Irrational escalation
Irrelevant conclusion
Jealousy bias
Jumping to conclusions
Just-world hypothesis:
1. the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just, causing them to rationalize an otherwise inexplicable injustice as deserved by the victim(s).
Just-world phenomenon
Knowledge bias
Labeling and misleading
Lag effect, aka spacing effect:
1. The phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of time in a single season.
Law of the instrument:
1. An over-reliance on a familiar too or method, ignoring or under-valuing alternative approaches.
  1. Ex: “If all you have is a manner, everything looks like a nail.”
Less-is-better effect
Leveling and sharpening:
1. Memory distortions introduced by the loss of details in a recollection over time, often concurrent with sharpening to selective recollection of certain details that take on exaggerated significance in relation to the details or aspects of the experience lost through leveling. Both biases may be reinforced over time, and by repeated recollections or re-telling of a memory.
Levels of processing effect:
1. That different methods of encoding information into memory have different levels of effectiveness.
List length effect:
1. A smaller percentage of items are remembered in a longer list, but as the length of the list increases, the absolute number of items remembered increases as well.
Loss aversion
Magical thinking
Magnification and minimization
Memory inhibition:
1. Being shown some items from a list makes it harder to retrieve the other items.
Mental filter
Mere exposure effect
Mind reading
Misattribution
Misattribution of memory:
1. The misidentification of the origin of a memory. Misattribution is likely to occur when individuals are unable to monitor and control the influence of their attitudes, toward their judgments, at the time of retrieval.^[142] Misattribution is divided into three components: cryptomnesia, false memories, and source confusion.
Misinformation effect:
1. Memory becoming less accurate because of interference from post-event information, where misinformation about an event, despite later being corrected, continues to influence memory about the event.
Misleading vividness
Modality effect:
1. That memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the list items were received via speech than when they were received through writing.
Money illusion
Mood congruent memory bias:
1. The improved recall of information congruent with one’s current mood.
Moral credential effect
Moral luck:
1. The tendency for people to ascribe greater or lesser moral standing based on the outcome of an event.
Naïve cynicism
Natural fallacy
Negativity bias:
1. Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories.
Neglect of probability
Next-in-line effect:
1. When taking turns speaking in a group, using a predetermined order, people tend to have diminished recall for the words of the person who spoke immediately before them
Non-adaptive choice switching
Normalcy bias:
1. The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.
Not invented here:
1. An aversion to contact with or use of products, research, standards, or knowledge developed outside a group.
Objectivity illusion
Observer-expectancy effect:
1. A researcher’s biases can subconsciously influence study participants.
  1. Your point of view about how users will interact with a product can subtly inform how you ask a question and how a subject responds.
Omission bias
Optimism bias
Osborn effect
Ostrich effect
Outcome bias
Outgroup homogeneity bias:
1. Where individuals see members of other groups as being relatively less varied than members of their own group.
Overconfidence bias
Overgeneralization
Overwhelming exception
Pareidolia:
1. A tendency to perceive a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) as significant.
  1. Ex: Seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man on the moon, hearing non-existent hidden messages or records played in reverse.
Parkinson’s lay of triviality
Part-list cueing effect:
1. That being shown some items from a list and later retrieving one item causes it to become harder to retrieve the other items.
Peak-end rule:
1. We tend to judge an experience more on how we felt at its most intense point rather than on its average.
  1. Ex: Interviewed someone who was particularly passionate, perhaps angry or upset, you might make more of their comments than was warranted simply because they were more memorable than others.
Persistence:
1. The unwanted recurrence of memories of a traumatic event.
Personalization
Pessimism bias
Picture superiority effect:
1. The notion that concepts that are learned by viewing pictures are more easily and frequently recalled that are concepts that are learned by viewing their written word from counterparts.
Placement bias:
1. Tendency to remember ourselves to be better than others at tasks which we rate ourselves above average and the tendency to remember ourselves to be worse than others at tasks which we rate ourselves below average
Plan continuation fallacy
Plant blindness
Planning fallacy
Polarized thinking
Positivity effect:
1. That older adults favor positive over negative information in their memories
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Post-purchase rationalization
Present bias
Prevention bias
Primacy effect:
When you remember the first participant most strongly.
1. Sometimes the first person you meet makes the strongest impression, because you’re in a new situation or having a new experience. To overcome:
Take detailed notes or recordings for each interview or conversation you have.
Interview each participant in the same way.
1. Consistency makes it easier to compare and contrast over time. Consistency makes it more likely that you will remember the unusual and important moments that happen throughout your research.
Probability matching:
Processing difficulty effect:
1. That information that takes longer to read and is thought about more (processed with difficulty) is more easily remembered.
Pro-innovation bias:
1. When championing a new idea at all costs and be blind to the limitations and weaknesses inherent in it.
  1. Ex: A $50,000 test ran delivered huge returns. “It’s the future. We should redirect millions more into it!”
Projection bias
Proof by verbosity
Proportionality bias:
Pseudo certainty effect
Puritanical bias:
1. The tendency to attribute cause of an undesirable outcome or wrongdoing by an individual to a moral deficiency or lack of self-control rather than taking into account the impact of broader societal determinants .
Pygmalion effect:
1. The phenomenon whereby others’ expectations of a target person affect the target person‘s performance.
Reactance, aka Reverse Psychology:
1. The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants one to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain one’s freedom of choice
Reactive devaluation
Recency bias:
When it is easiest to remember the last thing you heard in an interview, conversation, or similar setting, because it is the most recent.
1. When talking to someone, you are more likely to remember things they shared at the end of the conversation.
  1. Take detailed notes or recordings for each interview or conversation you have. Interview each participant in the same way
    1. Consistency makes it easier to compare and contrast over time. Consistency makes it more likely that you will remember the unusual and important moments that happen throughout your research.
Recency illusion
Regression fallacy:
1. Assuming something has returned to normal because of corrective actions taken while it was abnormal.
Reminiscence bump:
1. The recalling of more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than personal events from other lifetime periods.
2. Repetition blindness:
  1. Unexpected difficulty in remembering more than one instance of a visual sequence.
Restraint bias
Rhyme as reason effect
Risk compensation, aka Peltzman effect
Rosy retrospection:
1. The remembering of the past as having been better than it really was.
Saying is believing effect:
1. Communicating a socially tuned message to an audience can lead to a bias of identifying the tuned message as one’s own thoughts.
Salience bias:
1. The tendency to focus on items that are more prominent or emotionally striking and ignore those that are unremarkable, even though this difference is often irrelevant by objective standards.
Selection Bias:
1. Occurs when working with a group of study participants who haven’t been selected randomly, whether intentionally or not. The effect is that certain types of people might be more likely to be included than others, skewing results.
Selective perception:
1. The tendency for expectations to affect perception.
Self-relevance effect:
1. That memories relating to the self are better recalled than similar information relating to others.
Self-serving bias:
1. The tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests (see also group-serving bias).
Semmelweis reflex:
1. The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm.
Serial position effect: That items near the end of a sequence are the easiest to recall, followed by the items at the beginning of a sequence; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered.
Shared information bias:
1. The tendency for group members to spend more time and energy discussing information that all members are already familiar with (i.e., shared information), and less time and energy discussing information that only some members are aware of (i.e., unshared information).
Should statements
Slothful induction
Spacing effect:
1. That information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over and long span of time rather than a short one.
Social comparison bias:
1. The tendency, when making decisions, to favor potential candidates who do not compete with ones own particular strengths.
Social desirability bias:
1. The tendency to over-report socially desirable characteristics or behaviors in oneself and under-report socially undesirable characteristics or behaviors.
2. Happens when a participant answers a question based on what they think you want to hear.
  1. You are describing a feature of the app you have designed that really excites you, and your tone of voice changes. If this happens, it is likely that the participant won’t be honest about their negative opinions of the feature, since you are so positive about it.
    1. Reassure participants that their answers will not hurt anyone’s feelings and that you really want to hear their honest opinions in order to improve your work.
Source confusion
Status quo bias
Steelman
Stereotyping:
1. An exaggerated belief or distorted truth about a person or group of people that allows for little or no individual differences or social variation.
  1. Ex: Lazy customers: A simple, static segmentation strategy may be a convenient first step, yet it ignores a wealth of granular consumer level data and insight and can lead to dull, unoriginal customer experiences.
Strawman:
Subadditivity effect:
1. The tendency to estimate that the likelihood of a remember event is less than the sum of its mutually exclusive components.
Subjective validation
Suffix effect:
1. Diminishment of the recency effect because a sound item is appended to the list that then subject is not required to recall
Suggestibility
Sunk cost fallacy:
The idea that the deeper we get into a project we’ve invested in, the harder it is to change course without feeling like we have failed or wasted time.
1. I might as well keep watching this terrible movie because I have watched an hour of it already.
2. You might have invested hours into designing a new feature, but then learned that the feature does not really address a user problem.
  1. Break down your project into smaller phases, and then outline designated points where you candecide whether to continue or stop.
Surrogation:
Survivorship bias:
1. Concentrating on the people or things that “survived” some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility.
System justification
Systematic bias
Tachypsychia:
1. When time perceived by the individual either lengthens, making events appear to slow down, or contracts.
Telescoping effect:
1. The tendency to displace recent events backwards in time and remote events forward in time, so that recent events appear more remote, and remote events more recent.
Testing effect:
1. The fact that one more easily recall information one has read by rewritten it instead of rereading it. Frequent testing of material that has been committed to memory improves memory recall.
Time-saving bias
Tip of the tongue phenomenon:
1. When a subject is able to recall parts of an item, or related information, but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item. This is thought to be a instance of “blocking” where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other.
Trait ascription bias
Travis syndrome:
1. Overestimate the significance of the present. It is related to chronological snobbery with possibly an appeal to novelty logical fallacy being part of the bias.
Truth bias:
1. People’s inclination towards believing, to some degree, the communication of another person, regardless of whether or not that person is actually lying or being untruthful.
Turkey illusion
Two quoke Jordan harbinger
Typical mind fallacy
Ultimate attribution error:
1. Similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.
Unconscious bias, aka implicit bias
Unit bias
Value-action gap, aka attitude-behavior gap, intention-behavior gap.
1. the difference between what people say and what people do.
  1. Ex: 60% of participants said they were “likely” or “very likely” to buy a kitchen appliance in the next 3 months. 8 months later, only 12% had.
    1. Use qualitative AND quantitative data (descriptive and numerical)
Value selection bias
Verbatim effect:
1. That the “gist” of what someone has said is better remember than the verbatim wording. This is because memories are representations, not exact copies.
Verbosum
Von Restorff effect:
1. That an item that sticks out is more likely to be remembered than other items.
Weber-Fechner law
Well travelled road effect:
1. The tendency to underestimate the duration taken to traverse oft-travelled routes and overestimate the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes.
Women are wonderful effect
Worse than average effect:
1. A tendency to believe ourselves to be worse than others at tasks which are difficult
Zeigarnik effect:
1. That uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones.
Zero-sum bias
Zero-risk bias