File of Bias II, List

In the first part of this topic I introduced the reason why your brain might lie to you, and introduced what its called "cognitive bias". In this entry I will talk about them in a more specific way and I will introduce a list of them.

In a general, non formal way, we can describe cognitive bias as "things that seems that follow the rules of logic" that, once you look them closer, you realize they dont follow the rules of logic at all. Our brain has a big collection of them and here I will show a few examples:

Confirmation Bias: 

Confirmation Bias can be defined as the human tendency to search for proof that shows that what they are saying is right, and to ignore proof that shows that they are not.

In other words, we have the tendency to "believe" something we would like to happen, and then search for things that strenghtheng our believe, and when we found something against what we believe, we try to ignore it as if "it didnt happen" or "its just a coincidence".

This bias is one of the most common in human beings

Examples of this could be:

- my boss think we should place our logo in the middle of our website. All the experts told him that it will look bad  and make the users not to read properly the content of our website, however, his family told him that it was a good idea, so he order us to ignore the experts.

Also, here you can find an example in where Dickman shows an example of confirmation bias from the movie "The man with Two Brains".

Hindsight Bias:

Hindsight bias happens when, after something happened, we tell to ourselves - and the others - that we knew it before it happened, because it was obvious. However, we didnt show any sign of knowing or guessing it beforehand.

Examples:
- someone had the news that he was accepted into a college. When he tells his mother she says, “I really had a feeling that you were going to get in” (even though she had expressed doubts to his father earlier that week). 

Framing Bias:

Framing bias happens when, in order to describe something, we take as granted a certain context, ignoring other context that might describe it too.

Example:

- I like a lot gore movies. I want to give a present to someone I know, and as I like a lot this gore movie, I am sure he/her will like it, although I never asked him/her if they like gore movies (the frame of reference is myself, and I assume all people will like the same things I do)

- They told me that this medicine has 33% of chances to save 600 people and 66% of saving no one. I would accept that medicine to be used (positive framing)

- They told me that this medicine has 33% of the people that will take it will not die, and 66% of chances that all people will die. I would not accept that medicine to be used (negative frame, but same case than the other example)

Bias Blind Spot

This bias refers to the belief that we tend to have a more acurate judgement than others, so we believe our opinions are less affected by cognitive bias than other people.

Example

- I am told that I did a mistake. I dont think so, because usually my choices are better than other's.

Gambler's fallacy

This bias descrives the tendency we have to believe in "luck", that is, when random events happens, we tend to believe that "lucky ones" appear together, and "unluky ones" also tend to group