The illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events, for instance to feel that they control outcomes that they demonstrably have no influence over. The effect was named by psychologist Ellen Langer and has been replicated in many different contexts. It is thought to influence gambling behavior and belief in the paranormal. Along with illusory superiority and optimism bias, the illusion […]
Monthly Archives: April 2014
Illusory correlation
Illusory correlation is the phenomenon of perceiving a relationship between variables (typically people, events, or behaviors) even when no such relationship exists. A common example of this phenomenon would be when people form false associations between membership in a statistical minority group and rare (typically negative) behaviors as variables that are novel or salient tend to capture the attention. This is one […]
Impact bias
The impact bias, a form of which is the durability bias, in affective forecasting, is the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of future feeling states. Causes Other explanations for the occurrence of the impact bias are the following: Misconstrual of future events When predicting how an experience will impact us emotionally, events which have […]
Information bias
Information bias is a type of cognitive bias, and involves e.g. distorted evaluation of information. An example of information bias is believing that the more information that can be acquired to make a decision, the better, even if that extra information is irrelevant for the decision.
Insensitivity to sample size
Insensitivity to sample size is a cognitive bias that occurs when people judge the probability of obtaining a sample statistic without respect to the sample size. For example, in one study subjects assigned the same probability to the likelihood of obtaining a mean height of above six feet [183 cm] in samples of 10, 100, and 1,000 men. In other words, variation […]
Escalation of commitment
Escalation of commitment was first described by Barry M. Staw in his 1976 paper, “Knee deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action”. More recently the term sunk cost fallacy has been used to describe the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new […]
Just-world hypothesis
The just-world hypothesis or just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias (or assumption) that a person’s actions always bring morally fair and fitting consequences to that person, so that all noble actions are eventually rewarded and all evil actions are eventually punished. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of—a universal force that restores […]
Less-is-better effect
The less-is-better effect is a type of preference reversal that occurs when the lesser or smaller alternative of a proposition is preferred when evaluated separately, but not evaluated together. The term was first proposed by Christopher Hsee. The effect has also been studied by Dan Ariely.
Money illusion
In economics, money illusion, or price illusion, refers to the tendency of people to think of currency in nominal, rather than real, terms. In other words, the numerical/face value (nominal value) of money is mistaken for its purchasing power (real value). This is false, as modern fiat currencies have no intrinsic value and their real value is derived from their ability to be […]
Negativity effect
In psychology, the negativity effect is the tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they dislike, to attribute their positive behaviors to the environment and their negative behaviors to the person’s inherent nature. The negativity effect is the inverse of the positivity effect, which is found when people evaluate the causes of the behaviors of a person […]