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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cognitive bias | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:37:33.804678+00:00 | kb-cron |
The content and direction of cognitive biases are not "arbitrary". Debiasing is the reduction of biases in judgment and decision-making through incentives, nudges, and training. Cognitive bias mitigation and cognitive bias modification are forms of debiasing specifically applicable to cognitive biases and their effects. One debiasing technique aims to decrease biases by encouraging individuals to use controlled processing compared to automatic processing. Because they cause systematic errors, cognitive biases cannot be compensated for using a wisdom of the crowd technique of averaging answers from several people. Reference class forecasting is a method for systematically debiasing estimates and decisions, based on what Daniel Kahneman has dubbed the outside view. Cognitive bias modification (CBM) refers to the process of modifying cognitive biases in healthy people and also refers to a growing area of psychological (non-pharmaceutical) therapies for anxiety, depression and addiction called cognitive bias modification therapy (CBMT). CBMT is sub-group of therapies within a growing area of psychological therapies based on modifying cognitive processes with or without accompanying medication and talk therapy, sometimes referred to as applied cognitive processing therapies (ACPT). Although cognitive bias modification can refer to modifying cognitive processes in healthy individuals, CBMT is a growing area of evidence-based psychological therapy, in which cognitive processes are modified to relieve suffering from serious depression, anxiety, and addiction. CBMT techniques are technology-assisted therapies that are delivered via a computer with or without clinician support. CBM combines evidence and theory from the cognitive model of anxiety, cognitive neuroscience, and attentional models. Even one-shot training interventions, such as educational videos and debiasing games that taught mitigating strategies, significantly reduced the commission of several cognitive biases. Cognitive bias modification has also been used to help those with obsessive-compulsive beliefs and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This therapy has shown that it decreases the obsessive-compulsive beliefs and behaviors. In relation to reducing the fundamental attribution error, monetary incentives and informing participants they will be held accountable for their attributions have been linked to the increase of accurate attributions.
== Common theoretical causes of some cognitive biases == Bias arises from various processes that are sometimes difficult to distinguish. These include:
Bounded rationality — limits on optimization and rationality Prospect theory Evolutionary psychology — Remnants from evolutionary adaptive mental functions. Mental accounting Adaptive bias — basing decisions on limited information and biasing them based on the costs of being wrong Attribute substitution — making a complex, difficult judgment by unconsciously replacing it with an easier judgment Attribution theory Salience Naïve realism Cognitive dissonance, and related: Impression management Self-perception theory Information-processing shortcuts (heuristics), including: Availability heuristic — estimating what is more likely by what is more available in memory, which is biased toward vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged examples Representativeness heuristic — judging probabilities based on resemblance Affect heuristic — basing a decision on an emotional reaction rather than a calculation of risks and benefits Emotional and moral motivations deriving, for example, from: The two-factor theory of emotion The somatic markers hypothesis Introspection illusion Misinterpretations or misuse of statistics; innumeracy. Social influence The brain's limited information processing capacity Noisy information processing (distortions during storage in and retrieval from memory). For example, a 2012 Psychological Bulletin article suggests that at least eight seemingly unrelated biases can be produced by the same information-theoretic generative mechanism. The article shows that noisy deviations in the memory-based information processes that convert objective evidence (observations) into subjective estimates (decisions) can produce regressive conservatism, the belief revision (Bayesian conservatism), illusory correlations, illusory superiority (better-than-average effect) and worse-than-average effect, subadditivity effect, exaggerated expectation, overconfidence, and the hard–easy effect.
== Individual differences in cognitive biases ==
People do appear to have stable individual differences in their susceptibility to decision biases such as overconfidence, temporal discounting, and bias blind spot. That said, these stable levels of bias within individuals are possible to change. Participants in experiments who watched training videos and played debiasing games showed medium to large reductions both immediately and up to three months later in the extent to which they exhibited susceptibility to six cognitive biases: anchoring, bias blind spot, confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, projection bias, and representativeness. Individual differences in cognitive bias have also been linked to varying levels of cognitive abilities and functions. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) has been used to help understand the connection between cognitive biases and cognitive ability. There have been inconclusive results when using the Cognitive Reflection Test to understand ability. However, there does seem to be a correlation; those who gain a higher score on the Cognitive Reflection Test, have higher cognitive ability and rational-thinking skills. This in turn helps predict the performance on cognitive bias and heuristic tests. Those with higher CRT scores tend to be able to answer more correctly on different heuristic and cognitive bias tests and tasks. Age is another individual difference that has an effect on one's ability to be susceptible to cognitive bias. Older individuals tend to be more susceptible to cognitive biases and have less cognitive flexibility. However, older individuals were able to decrease their susceptibility to cognitive biases throughout ongoing trials. These experiments had both young and older adults complete a framing task. Younger adults had more cognitive flexibility than older adults. Cognitive flexibility is linked to helping overcome pre-existing biases.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links == Media related to Cognitive biases at Wikimedia Commons Quotations related to Cognitive bias at Wikiquote The Roots of Consciousness: To Err Is human Cognitive bias in the financial arena (archived 20 June 2006) A Visual Study Guide To Cognitive Biases