It is systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own subjective reality from their perception of the input, then it this "reality", not the objective input, that may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases can oftentimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. The biases you can discover on this site, together with their definitions, come directly from the Cognitive Bias Codex.
A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently, under the availability heuristic, people tend heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.
There is over 170 cognitive biases that we have collected for you to browse amongst. Are you interested to see their definitions and categories? Please visit the Explorer page to find out more!
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