Bias Cheat Sheet

The following is a single searchable page (Control + F) for locating the names of biases.  Documented Biases not included in the original 2016 Codex are shown in the Cognitive Bias Codex Addendum.  

The Need to Act Fast may be broken down into categories:

We favor simple-looking options and complete information over complex ambiguous options, such as:

  • Less-is-better Effect The tendency to prefer a smaller set to a larger set judged separately, but not jointly.
  • Occam’s RazorA bias in favor of the simplest solution being the best solution.
  • Conjunction FallacyThe tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than a more general version of those same conditions.
  • Delmore EffectThe tendency to provide more articulate and explicit goals for lower priority areas of our lives.
  • Law of Triviality – The tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.
  • Bike-shedding EffectThe tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.(See Law of Triviality)
  • Rhyme as a Reason EffectRhyming statements are perceived as more truthful.
  • Belief BiasAn effect where someone’s evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.
  • Information BiasThe tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
  • Ambiguity BiasThe tendency to avoid options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.

To avoid mistakes we aim to preserve autonomy and group status, and avoid irreversible decisions, such as:

  • Status Quo BiasThe tendency to like things to stay relatively the same.
  • Social Comparison EffectThe tendency, when making decisions, to favour potential candidates who don’t compete with one’s own particular strengths.
  • Decoy EffectPreferences for either option A or B change in favor of option B when option C is presented, which is completely dominated by option B (inferior in all respects) and partially dominated by option A.
  • ReactanceThe urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice (see also Reverse psychology).
  • Reverse PsychologyA technique involving the assertion of a belief or behavior that is opposite to the one desired, with the expectation that this approach will encourage the subject of the persuasion to do what actually is desired.
  • System JustificationThe tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest. (See also status quo bias.)

To get things done, we tend to complete things we’ve invested time and energy in, such as:

  • Backfire EffectThe reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one’s previous beliefs.
  • Endowment EffectThe tendency for people to demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.
  • Processing Difficulty EffectThat information that takes longer to read and is thought about more (processed with more difficulty) is more easily remembered.
  • Pseudocertainty EffectThe tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
  • Disposition EffectThe tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.
  • Zero-risk BiasPreference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.
  • Unit BiasThe standard suggested amount of consumption (e.g., food serving size) is perceived to be appropriate, and a person would consume it all even if it is too much for this particular person.
  • IKEA EffectThe tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects that they partially assembled themselves, such as furniture from IKEA, regardless of the quality of the end product.
  • Loss AversionThe disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it.
  • Generation EffectThat self-generated information is remembered best. For instance, people are better able to recall memories of statements that they have generated than similar statements generated by others.
  • Escalation of Commitment – The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong.
  • Irrational EscalationThe phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong.
  • Sunk Cost FallacyWhen individuals continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources.  For example, individuals sometimes order too much food and then over-eat just to “get their money’s worth”.

To stay focused we favor the immediate relatable thing in front of us, such as:

  • Identifiable Victim EffectThe tendency to respond more strongly to a single identified person at risk than to a large group of people at risk.
  • Appeal to Novelty – A fallacy in which one prematurely claims that an idea or proposal is correct or superior, exclusively because it is new and modern.
  • Hyperbolic DiscountingDiscounting is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. Hyperbolic discounting leads to choices that are inconsistent over time – people make choices today that their future selves would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning.

To act we must be confident we can make an impact and feel what we do is important, such as:

  • Peltzman EffectThe tendency to take greater risks when perceived safety increases.
  • Risk CompensationWhen people adjust their behavior in response to the perceived level of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected.
  • Effort JustificationWhen people believe a goal is worthwhile if they have worked hard to get there.
  • Trait Ascription BiasThe tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior, and mood while viewing others as much more predictable.
  • Defensive Attribution HypothesisAttributing more blame to a harm-doer as the outcome becomes more severe or as personal or situational similarity to the victim increases.
  • Fundamental Attribution ErrorThe tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior.
  • Illusory SuperiorityOverestimating one’s desirable qualities, and underestimating undesirable qualities, relative to other people.
  • Illusion of ControlThe tendency to overestimate one’s degree of influence over other external events.
  • Actor-observer BiasThe tendency for explanations of other individuals’ behaviors to overemphasize the influence of their personality and underemphasize the influence of their situation (see also Fundamental attribution error), and for explanations of one’s own behaviors to do the opposite (that is, to overemphasize the influence of our situation and underemphasize the influence of our own personality).
  • Self-serving BiasThe tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests.
  • Barnum EffectThe observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests.
  • Forer EffectThe observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests.
  • Optimism BiasThe tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes.
  • Egocentric BiasOccurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would credit them with.
  • Dunning-Kruger EffectThe tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.
  • Lake Wobegon Effect – A natural tendency to overestimate one’s capabilities and see oneself as better than others.
  • Hard-easy EffectBased on a specific level of task difficulty, the confidence in judgments is too conservative and not extreme enough.
  • False Consensus EffectThe tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.
  • Third-person EffectBelief that mass communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves.
  • Social Desirability BiasThe tendency to over-report socially desirable characteristics or behaviours in oneself and under-report socially undesirable characteristics or behaviours.
  • Overconfidence EffectExcessive confidence in one’s own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as “99% certain” turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.

The Lacking Meaning biases may be broken down into categories:

We Project our current mindset and assumptions onto the past and future, such as:

  • Self-consistency BiasIncorrectly remembering one’s past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behavior.
  • Restraint BiasThe tendency to overestimate one’s ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.
  • Projection BiasThe tendency to overestimate how much our future selves share one’s current preferences, thoughts and values, thus leading to sub-optimal choices.
  • Pro-innovation BiasThe tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation’s usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses.
  • Time-saving BiasUnderestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively low speed and overestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively high speed.
  • Planning FallacyThe tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
  • Pessimism BiasThe tendency for some people, especially those suffering from depression, to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening to them.
  • Impact BiasThe tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
  • DeclinismThe predisposition to view the past favorably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.
  • Moral LuckThe tendency for people to ascribe greater or lesser moral standing based on the outcome of an event.
  • Outcome BiasThe tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
  • Hindsight BiasSometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened.
  • Rosy RetrospectionThe psychological phenomenon of people sometimes judging the past disproportionately more positively than they judge the present.
  • Telescoping EffectThe tendency to displace recent events backward in time and remote events forward in time, so that recent events appear more remote, and remote events, more recent.

We think we know what other people are thinking, such as:

  • Illusion of TransparencyPeople overestimate others’ ability to know themselves, and they also overestimate their ability to know others.
  • Curse of KnowledgeWhen better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.
  • Spotlight EffectThe tendency to overestimate the amount that other people notice your appearance or behavior.
  • Extrinsic Incentive ErrorAn exception to the fundamental attribution error, when people view others as having (situational) extrinsic motivations and (dispositional) intrinsic motivations for oneself.
  • Illusion of External AgencyWhen people view self-generated preferences as instead being caused by insightful, effective and benevolent agents.
  • Illusion of Asymmetric InsightPeople perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers’ knowledge of them.

We simplify numbers and probabilities to make them easier to think about, such as:

  • Mental AccountingMental accounting, also known as “two-pocket” theory, is a behavioral bias that occurs when people put their money into separate categories, separating them into different mental accounts, based on, say, the source of the money, or the intent of the account.
  • Appeal to Probability FallacyAn appeal to probability (or appeal to possibility) is the logical fallacy of taking something for granted because it would probably be the case (or might possibly be the case).
  • Normalcy BiasThe refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.
  • Murphy’s LawThe tendency to think that everything that can go wrong, related to confirmation bias.
  • Zero-sum BiasA bias whereby a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another).
  • Survivorship BiasConcentrating on the people or things that “survived” some process and inadvertently overlooking those that didn’t because of their lack of visibility.
  • Subadditivity EffectThe tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.
  • Denomination EffectThe tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g., coins) rather than large amounts (e.g., bills).
  • Magic Number 7+2Lists that are much longer than 7+-2 (Miller) or 4 (Cowan) become significantly harder to remember and process simultaneously.

We imagine things and people we’re familiar with or fond of as better, such as:

  • Out-group Homogeneity BiasIndividuals see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups.
  • Cross-race EffectThe tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying members of a race other than their own.
  • In-group BiasThe tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups.
  • Halo EffectThe tendency for a person’s positive or negative traits to “spill over” from one personality area to another in others’ perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype).
  • Cheerleader EffectThe tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.
  • Positivity EffectThat older adults favor positive over negative information in their memories.
  • Not Invented HereAversion to contact with or use of products, research, standards, or knowledge developed outside a group. Related to IKEA effect.
  • Reactive DevaluationDevaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary.
  • Well-traveled Road EffectUnderestimation of the duration taken to traverse oft-traveled routes and overestimation of the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes.

We fill in characteristics from stereotypes, generalities, and prior histories, such as:

  • Group Attribution ErrorThe biased belief that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole or the tendency to assume that group decision outcomes reflect the preferences of group members, even when information is available that clearly suggests otherwise.
  • Ultimate Attribution ErrorSimilar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.
  • StereotypingExpecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.
  • EssentialismThe view that every entity has a set of attributes that are necessary to its identity and function, or an ‘essence’.
  • Functional FixednessLimits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.
  • Moral Credential EffectOccurs when someone who does something good gives themselves permission to be less good in the future.
  • Just-world HypothesisThe tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just, causing them to rationalize an otherwise inexplicable injustice as deserved by the victim(s).
  • Argument From FallacyThe formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false.
  • Authority BiasThe tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion.
  • Automation BiasThe tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions.
  • Bandwagon EffectThe tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.
  • Placebo EffectA beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment.

We tend to find stories and patterns even when looking at sparse data, such as:

  • ConfabulationWhen we make decisions intuitively and nonconsciously, and rationalize the decisions after the fact.
  • Clustering IllusionThe tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).
  • Insensitivity to Sample SizeThe tendency to under-expect variation in small samples.
  • Neglect of ProbabilityThe tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
  • Anecdotal FallacyWhen someone bases an argument on anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is evidence based solely on the personal experience of one person or a small number of people.
  • Illusion of ValidityBelieving that one’s judgments are accurate, especially when available information is consistent or inter-correlated.
  • Masked Man FallacyWhen one makes an illicit use of Leibniz’s law in an argument. Leibniz’s law states that, if one object has a certain property, while another object does not have the same property, the two objects cannot be identical.
  • Recency IllusionThe illusion that a phenomenon one has noticed only recently is itself recent. Often used to refer to linguistic phenomena; the illusion that a word or language usage that one has noticed only recently is an innovation when it is in fact long-established (see also frequency illusion).
  • Gambler’s FallacyThe tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers. For example, “I’ve flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads.”
  • Hot-hand FallacyThe “hot-hand fallacy” (also known as the “hot hand phenomenon” or “hot hand”) is the belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts.
  • Illusory CorrelationInaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events.
  • PareidoliaA vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse.
  • AnthropomorphismThe tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions.

Too Much Information biases may be broken down into categories:

We notice flaws in others more easily than we notice flaws in ourselves, such as:

  • Bias Blind SpotThe tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.
  • Naive CynicismExpecting more egocentric bias in others than in oneself.
  • Naive RealismThe belief that we see reality as it really is – objectively and without bias; that the facts are plain for all to see; that rational people will agree with us; and that those who don’t are either uninformed, lazy, irrational, or biased.

We are drawn to details that confirm our own existing beliefs, such as:

  • Confirmation BiasThe tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
  • Congruence BiasThe tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.
  • Post-purchase RationalizationThe tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was good value.
  • Choice-supportive BiasThe tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.
  • Selective PerceptionThe tendency for expectations to affect perception.
  • Observer-expectancy EffectWhen a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect).
  • Experimenter’s BiasThe tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.
  • Observer EffectSystematic difference between a true value and the value actually observed due to observer variation.
  • Expectation BiasOccurs when an individual’s expectations about an outcome influence perceptions of one’s own or others’ behavior.
  • Ostrich EffectIgnoring an obvious (negative) situation.
  • Subjective ValidationPerception that something is true if a subject’s belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.
  • Continued Influence EffectThe tendency to believe previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected. Misinformation can still influence inferences one generates after a correction has occurred.
  • Semmelweis ReflexThe tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm.

*Many examples found in Data Science and Executive Decision-making

We notice when something has changed, such as:

  • AnchoringThe 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).
  • ConservatismWhere people tend to favor prior evidence over new evidence or information that has emerged.
  • Contrast EffectThe enhancement or reduction of a certain stimulus’ perception when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.
  • Distinction BiasThe tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.
  • Focusing EffectThe tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.
  • Framing EffectDrawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented.
  • Money IllusionThe tendency to concentrate on the nominal value (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power.
  • Weber-Fechner LawDifficulty in comparing small differences in large quantities.

*Many Examples commonly found in Marketing

Bizarre, funny, visually-striking, or anthropomorphic things stick out more than non-bizarre/unfunny things, such as:

  • Bizarreness EffectBizarre material is better remembered than common material.
  • Humor EffectThat humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones, which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor, the increased cognitive processing time to understand the humor, or the emotional arousal caused by the humor.
  • Von Restorff EffectThat an item that sticks out is more likely to be remembered than other items.
  • Picture Supremacy EffectThe notion that concepts that are learned by viewing pictures are more easily and frequently recalled than are concepts that are learned by viewing their written word form counterparts.
  • Self-relevance EffectThat memories relating to the self are better recalled than similar information relating to others.
  • Negativity BiasPsychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories.

*Many examples commonly found in Social Media

We notice things already primed in memory or repeated often, such as:

  • Availability HeuristicThe 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.
  • Attention BiasThe tendency of perception to be affected by recurring thoughts.
  • Illusory Truth EffectA tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity. These are specific cases of truthiness.
  • Mere Exposure EffectThe tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.
  • Context EffectThat cognition and memory are dependent on context, such that out-of-context memories are more difficult to retrieve than in-context memories (e.g., recall time and accuracy for a work-related memory will be lower at home, and vice versa).
  • Cue-dependent ForgettingThe failure to recall information without memory cues. The term either pertains to semantic cues, state-dependent cues or context-dependent cues.
  • Mood-congruent Memory BiasThe improved recall of information congruent with one’s current mood.
  • Frequency Illusion – The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias).
  • Baader–Meinhof PhenomenonThe illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias).
  • Empathy GapThe tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.
  • Omission BiasThe tendency to judge harmful actions (commissions) as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful inactions (omissions).
  • Base rate FallacyThe tendency to ignore base rate information (generic, general information) and focus on specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case).

*Many Examples found in Marketing/Branding

 

What to Remember biases may be broken down into categories:

We store memories differently based on how they were experienced, such as:

  • Tip-of-the-tongue PhenomenonWhen a subject is able to recall parts of an item, or related information, but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item. This is thought to be an instance of “blocking” where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other.
  • Google EffectThe tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines.
  • Next-in-line EffectWhen taking turns speaking in a group using a predetermined order (e.g. going clockwise around a room, taking numbers, etc.) people tend to have diminished recall for the words of the person who spoke immediately before them.
  • Testing EffectThe fact that you more easily remember information you have read by rewriting it instead of rereading it.
  • Absent-mindednessWhere a person shows inattentive or forgetful behavior, often caused by a low level of attention (“blanking” or “zoning out”), intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes a person oblivious to events around him or her, or unwarranted distraction of attention from the object of focus by irrelevant thoughts or environmental events.
  • Levels of Processing EffectThat different methods of encoding information into memory have different levels of effectiveness.

We reduce events and lists to their key elements such as:

  • Suffix EffectDiminishment of the recency effect because a sound item is appended to the list that the subject is not required to recall.
  • Serial Position EffectThat items near the end of a sequence are the easiest to recall, followed by the items at the beginning of a sequence; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered.
  • Part-list Cuing EffectThat being shown some items from a list and later retrieving one item causes it to become harder to retrieve the other items.
  • Recency Effect An order of presentation effect that occurs when more recent information is better remembered and receives greater weight in forming a judgment than does earlier-presented information.
  • Primacy EffectThe tendency to recall information presented at the start of a list better than information at the middle or end.
  • Memory InhibitionWhen being shown some items from a list makes it harder to retrieve the other items.
  • Modality EffectThat memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the list items were received via speech than when they were received through writing.
  • Duration NeglectThe neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value.
  • List-length EffectA smaller percentage of items are remembered in a longer list, but as the length of the list increases, the absolute number of items remembered increases as well. For example, consider a list of 30 items (“L30”) and a list of 100 items (“L100”). An individual may remember 15 items from L30, or 50%, whereas the individual may remember 40 items from L100, or 40%. Although the percent of L30 items remembered (50%) is greater than the percent of L100 (40%), more L100 items (40) are remembered than L30 items (15).
  • Serial Recall EffectThe tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst.
  • Misinformation EffectMemory becoming less accurate because of interference from post-event information.
  • Leveling and SharpeningMemory distortions introduced by the loss of details in a recollection over time, often concurrent with sharpening or selective recollection of certain details that take on exaggerated significance in relation to the details or aspects of the experience lost through leveling. Both biases may be reinforced over time, and by repeated recollection or re-telling of a memory.
  • Peak-end RuleThat people seem to perceive not the sum of an experience but the average of how it was at its peak (e.g., pleasant or unpleasant) and how it ended.

We discard specifics to form generalities, such as:

  • Fading Affect BiasA bias in which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly than the emotion associated with positive events.
  • Negativity BiasPsychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories.
  • PrejudiceAn unjustified or incorrect attitude (usually negative) towards an individual based solely on the individual’s membership of a social group.
  • Stereotypical BiasExpecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual. (Gender Bias)
  • Implicit StereotypesWhen people have attitudes towards others or associate stereotypes with them without conscious knowledge.
  • Implicit AssociationsThe speed with which people can match words depends on how closely they are associated.

We edit and reinforce some memories after the fact, such as:

  • Spacing EffectThat information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a long span of time rather than a short one.
  • SuggestibilityA form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.
  • False MemoryA form of misattribution where imagination is mistaken for a memory.
  • CryptomnesiaA form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination, because there is no subjective experience of it being a memory.
  • Source ConfusionConfusing episodic memories with other information, creating distorted memories.
  • Misattribution of MemoryThe ability to remember information correctly, but being wrong about the source of that information.