1 Belief, Decision-making and Behavioral Flashcards
Action bias
The tendency for someone to act when faced with a problem even when inaction would be more effective, or to act when no evident problem exists.
Additive bias
The tendency to solve problems through addition, even when subtraction is a better approach.
Agent detection
The inclination to presume the purposeful intervention of a sentient or intelligent agent.
Ambiguity effect
The tendency to avoid options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.
Anchoring
The tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor”, on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject).
Anthropocentric thinking
The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena.
Anthropomorphism
The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions. The opposite bias, of not attributing feelings or thoughts to another person, is dehumanized perception, a type of objectification.
Attentional bias
The tendency of perception to be affected by recurring thoughts.
Attribute substitution
Occurs when a judgment has to be made (of a target attribute) that is computationally complex, and instead a more easily calculated heuristic attribute is substituted. This substitution is thought of as taking place in the automatic intuitive judgment system, rather than the more self-aware reflective system.
Automation bias
The tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions.
Availability heuristic
The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater “availability” in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.
Backfire effect
The reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one’s previous beliefs.
Base rate fallacy
The tendency to ignore general information and focus on information only pertaining to the specific case, even when the general information is more important.
Belief bias
An effect where someone’s evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.
Berkson’s paradox
The tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities.
Clustering illusion
The tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).
Common source bias
The tendency to combine or compare research studies from the same source, or from sources that use the same methodologies or data.
Compassion fade
The predisposition to behave more compassionately towards a small number of identifiable victims than to a large number of anonymous ones.
Confirmation bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
Congruence bias
The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.
Conjunction fallacy
The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than a more general version of those same conditions.
Conservatism bias
The tendency to revise one’s belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.
Continued influence effect
The tendency to believe previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected. Misinformation can still influence inferences one generates after a correction has occurred.
Contrast effect
The enhancement or reduction of a certain stimulus’ perception when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.