Therefore, we often rely on mental shortcuts (called heuristics) to help make sense of the world with relative speed. On the other hand, unconscious bias, or cognitive bias, represents the set of biases that are unintentional - you are not aware of your attitudes and the behaviors that result from them (Lang, 2019).Ĭognitive bias is often a result of your brain’s attempt to simplify information processing - we receive roughly 11 million bits of information per second, but we can only process about 40 bits of information per second (Orzan et al., 2012). However, these biases can often be dangerous when they take the form of conscious stereotyping. Conscious bias, or explicit bias, is intentional - you are aware of your attitudes and the behaviors that result from them (Lang, 2019).Įxplicit bias can be good because it helps provide you with a sense of identity and can lead you to make good decisions (for example, being biased towards healthy foods).

In psychology, there are two main branches of biases: conscious and unconscious. Biases are natural - they are a product of human nature - and they don’t simply exist in a vacuum or in our mind’s - they affect the way we make decisions and act. Cognitive biases can be caused by a number of different things, such as heuristics (mental shortcuts), social pressures, and emotions.īroadly speaking, bias is a tendency to lean in favor of or against a person, group, idea, or thing, usually in a way that is unfair. Biases are unconscious and automatic processes designed to make decision-making quicker and moreĮfficient. References What is Cognitive Bias? A cognitive bias is a subconscious error in thinking that leads you to misinterpret information from the world around you, and affects the rationalityĪnd accuracy of decisions and judgments.But before we dive into these different biases, let’s backtrack a bit first and define what bias even is. These are just a few of the many instances of cognitive bias that we experience every day of our lives. Or have you ever found yourself only reading news stories that further support your own opinion? Have you ever shouted, “I knew that was going to happen!” after your favorite baseball team gives up a huge lead in the ninth inning and loses?

Have you ever been so busy talking on the phone that you don’t notice the light has turned green and it is your turn to cross the street?

Although these biases are unconscious, there are small steps we can take to train our minds to adopt a new pattern of thinking and mitigate the effects of these biases.

Cognitive biases have direct implications on our safety, our interactions with others, and the way we make judgments and decisions in our daily lives.

Another example is the false consensus effect.

Confirmation bias, hindsight bias, self-serving bias, anchoring bias, availability bias, the framing effect, and inattentional blindness are some of the most common examples of cognitive bias.These biases result from our brain’s efforts to simplify the incredibly complex world in which we live.Cognitive biases are unconscious errors in thinking that arise from problems related to memory, attention, and other mental mistakes.

Hindsight bias ap psychology