If you want to be making decisions successful at anything, you need self-awareness. Once you understand where your blind spots lie, you can take steps to correct them. You may feel like some cognitive biases are making decisions unavoidable, but as with every other part of your personality, it’s possible to mitigate their effects on your life. Here’s an overview of different cognitive biases and how they can affect your life for making decisions better or worse in more ways than you might think.

Confirmation bias

One of the most common cognitive biases is confirmation bias. This is the tendency to seek out information that supports your existing opinion and ignore anything that challenges it. It’s the reason why people who believe that vaccines cause autism also believe that eating too many beans will make you explode. You can even see confirmation bias in the way people form their political identities. If you grew up in a conservative family and are now liberal, you probably still have conservative leanings just because that’s what you grew up with.

Loss Aversion Bias

Loss aversion bias is the tendency to feel the pain of a loss more strongly than the pleasure of a gain. It influences your decision-making process and affects your ability to choose a path that will lead to long-term success. In one famous study, researchers gave one group of participants money and gave a different group the choice between receiving the money immediately or waiting two weeks and receiving more.

The anchoring bias

Anchoring bias is the tendency to place too much weight on first impressions. When you make any decision for the first country email list time, you look back at past examples to find a similar situation and use the outcome to inform your new decision. The problem is that past events are not a reliable guide to future outcomes. The first number you hear in any situation, such as the cost of a car or the salary in a job offer, acts as an “anchor” for all future decisions.

Backfire effect

The backfire effect is the phenomenon where challenging someone’s deeply held belief with facts and evidence only makes them defend their original opinion even more strongly. This is one of the most frustrating the first step is to define the main terms cognitive biases, because it’s nearly impossible to convince someone to give up their beliefs through logical arguments. The backfire effect shows that people don’t always respond to facts and evidence in the way you’d expect.

Belief Bias

Belief bias is the tendency to judge the merits of an argument based on how closely it adheres to your preconceptions. This often happens when people use examples to support their arguments. You may recognize that other examples contradict your position, but you don’t bring them up because you don’t want to admit that you’re wrong.

Sometimes you don’t even realize that you’re using biased examples, and other times you may be aware but don’t changsha mobile phone number list care because you want to win the argument. Even if you start out with good intentions, your desire to win can lead you down a dangerous path. You need to be aware of belief bias to avoid falling into its trap. Always acknowledge examples that contradict your position and make sure you are fair in your assessment of all the evidence.

Availability Heuristic

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that judges the likelihood of something based on how easy it is to bring examples to mind. The availability heuristic is a useful cognitive shortcut in many situations, but it can lead you to make some pretty irrational choices. Let’s say you want to buy a new washing machine. You read reviews online and see that one model has a lot of complaints about breaking down, while another model has very few complaints.

You might think the second machine is a better choice, even though it has a lot more complaints overall. The first machine is more memorable because there are so many dramatic stories about machines breaking down during the wash cycle. The second machine has a more boring story about getting the job done without a hitch. The first machine is more readily available in your mind, so you naturally think of it as the better choice.

Clustering Illusion

The clustering illusion is when you notice a pattern after it has happened and assume that it happened as a result of some causal factor. For example, let’s say you’re looking for a new job, but every time you apply for a job, you don’t get it. You then realize that many other people are also applying for the same jobs and not getting them.