Biases
In order to make good decisions, we use our knowledge and our reasoning. Often, this knowledge and reasoning is sound and solid. Sometimes, however, we are swayed by biases or by others manipulating a situation. For example, let’s say you and three friends wanted to rent a house and had a combined target budget of $1,600. The realtor shows you only very run-down houses for $1,600 and then shows you a very nice house for $2,000. Might you ask each person to pay more in rent to get the $2,000 home? Why would the realtor show you the run-down houses and the nice house? The realtor may be challenging your anchoring bias. In this case, you’re so focused on the amount of money you are willing to spend that you may not recognize what kinds of houses are available at that price point.
anchoring bias
An anchoring bias occurs when you focus on one piece of information when making a decision or solving a problem.
confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that confirms your existing beliefs.
For example, if you think that your professor is not very nice, you notice all of the instances of rude behavior exhibited by the professor while ignoring the countless pleasant interactions they are involved in on a daily basis. This bias proves that first impressions do matter and that we tend to look for information to confirm our initial judgments of others.
You can view the transcript for “Confirmation Bias: Your Brain is So Judgmental” here (opens in new window).
hindsight bias
Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did.
Imagine you recently took a math exam. After receiving your grade, you can’t help but think, “I should have known all the answers! It was so obvious!” This is hindsight bias in action. You now believe that the correct answers were easily predictable and that you should have been able to solve every problem effortlessly. However, during the exam, you were faced with time pressure, complex calculations, and challenging concepts that made the questions more difficult than they appear in hindsight. Hindsight bias can lead you to underestimate the difficulty you encountered in the moment and overlook the factors that influenced your performance.
representative bias
Representative bias describes a faulty way of thinking, in which you unintentionally stereotype someone or something; for example, you may assume that your professors spend their free time reading books and engaging in intellectual conversation, because the idea of them spending their time playing volleyball or visiting an amusement park does not fit in with your stereotypes of professors.
availability heuristic
The availability heuristic (also known as the availability bias) is a heuristic in which you make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision.
To use a common example, would you guess there are more murders or more suicides in America each year? When asked, most people would guess there are more murders. In truth, there are twice as many suicides as there are murders each year. However, murders seem more common because we hear a lot more about murders on an average day. Unless someone we know or someone famous takes their own life, it does not make the news. Murders, on the other hand, we see in the news every day. This leads to the erroneous assumption that the easier it is to think of instances of something, the more often that thing occurs. Biases tend to “preserve that which is already established—to maintain our preexisting knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and hypotheses” (Aronson, 1995; Kahneman, 2011).
Imagine that you are deciding what you want your major to be in college. You remember hearing stories from friends and family members who pursued business degrees and found successful careers. The availability heuristic might lead you to prioritize business as your preferred major, as those success stories are more easily recalled and readily available in your memory. In doing so, you might overlook other fields of study that could align better with your interests and strengths, simply because they are less represented in the anecdotes and examples you’ve encountered. By relying solely on the availability of certain narratives, you may inadvertently limit your exploration of other academic paths that could be equally or even more fulfilling for you.
Primacy and Recency Biases
Other related biases are known as the primacy effect and recency effect. The primacy effect is a cognitive bias that suggests that people tend to remember and give more weight to information that they receive first while the recency effect says that people will best remember the information they are given last. These both stem from the serial position effect, which is the tendency to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst. For instance, if someone reads a long list of words, they’re more likely to remember the words at the end of the list (this is the recency effect), as well as those at the beginning of the list (the primacy effect). If you meet a lot of new people while at a party, you are more likely to remember those you met at both the beginning and end due to these biases.
summary of prominent decision biases
| Bias | Description |
|---|---|
| Anchoring | Tendency to focus on one particular piece of information when making decisions or problem-solving |
| Confirmation | Focuses on information that confirms existing beliefs |
| Hindsight | A belief that the event just experienced was predictable |
| Representative | Unintentional stereotyping of someone or something |
| Availability | A decision is based upon either an available precedent or an example that may be faulty |