Common Cognitive Biases and Thinking Errors

YOUR BIZARRE AND BIASED BRAIN

The following is a list of some natural mental biases and common thinking errors that can lead any one of us to accept wrong or dubious claims and beliefs. To become a good skeptic, you don’t need to earn a degree in psychology, but you should have some level of awareness about how your own thinking can trick you. You can never be immune, but the more you know, the safer you will be from self-deception. It can also help you to understand how others may have gone wrong in their thinking when they are trying to convince you of something they believe. Billions of smart, sane, and sincere people fall for nonsense every day because of these weird thought processes.

It may startle some to realize it, but a very small portion of our brain’s activity is what you might describe as conscious, or things we are aware of. Probably more than 90 percent of what is going on in our brains every day is subconscious, meaning we are mostly clueless about it. Think of it like this: Our brain is like a house that has twenty rooms on four floors. But we are allowed to enter only one room in the entire house. The doors to the other nineteen rooms are locked. The house is always busy. A lot of activity is going on in those other nineteen rooms and it all directly impacts us. But we don’t get to peek in.

Basic brain-awareness information should be taught to everyone and taught early. Sadly, however, the vast majority of the world’s people go their entire lives without ever learning about it. This is one of the reasons why so many brains end up in all the wrong places. But not yours, right?

Anchoring. This bias leads us to rely so much on one past experience or one piece of information that we ignore or reject new, more, and better information that contradicts it. Don’t drop anchor in the muck of a past error when you could set sail for more sensible lands.

Argument from authority. We are social creatures who devote a lot of our time to thinking about social ranking. A by-product of this obsession is a tendency to blindly trust the claims and ideas of people who rank above us. Whether or not we realize it, perceptions of authority and superiority impress us and influence us whether they are valid or not. A good skeptic knows to assess the merits of a claim independent of who presents it. Just remember that truth can come from below us and lies can come from above us. Pay less attention to the messenger and more attention to the message.

Argument from ignorance. When you don’t know, you don’t know! Too often, many people think that the absence of a normal, sensible answer must therefore mean that the answer is something special, magical, or supernatural. No, unknown means unknown. When weak skeptics say, “You can’t explain exactly how it happened, so it must me a miracle,” a fair reply is: “You can’t explain exactly how the miracle happened, so it must be a natural event.”

Availability cascade. When you say something repeatedly, you are likely to believe it with increasing confidence, even if it’s not true. It turns out that we actually listen to ourselves when we speak—and trust what we hear. So be careful about what you go around saying. Make sure it’s valid, because your brain is always listening.

Availability heuristic. This is a big one. We tend to be influenced far more by one or two “real-life” examples in our head than we are by more abstract facts and statistics. So if you were to show a person a few studies done by credible researchers that showed ear candling failed to deliver health benefits, a weak skeptic might not be impressed because she’s too busy thinking about a family member who swears ear candling cleared his sinuses and fixed his vertigo problem.

Backfire effect. I observe this one in action all the time, and it drives me nuts. It turns out that there is a natural bias that can make us believe something with greater confidence when we are confronted with evidence or strong arguments that oppose it. Because of this bias toward digging in your heels, more and stronger evidence often results in strengthened irrational belief. Be aware of it and resist it or you may end up defending nonsense.

Base-rate fallacy. This one derails us with ease. We can readily find ourselves focusing on one tiny speck of information (a single story, for example) or on bad data that supports a claim while simultaneously ignoring more credible information or a larger body of data that goes against it.

Bias blind spot. This bias can trip anyone, of course, but I always stress to skeptics that they pay particular attention to it. We can more easily see biases and illogical reasoning in others than we can in ourselves. It seems natural to think you are less likely to be fooled than everyone else around you is. That is the kind of arrogance that will lead you straight into the spider’s web.

Confabulation. This is the scary weakness we all have for remembering things incorrectly yet feeling like the memory is totally accurate. As I’ve described earlier, it’s very easy for the brain to jumble the timeline of events or combine different events to create one believable memory. Good skeptics have to keep this one in mind because very intelligent, confident, respectable, and sincere people can be completely wrong when they describe something that they experienced in the past.

Confirmation bias. As explained previously, this wicked mental filtering process will have you noticing, emphasizing, and remembering information and experiences that support your beliefs while ignoring and tossing out data that contradict your beliefs. Make the effort to pay attention to this tendency and always consider evidence and arguments that go against the grain of your brain. A good skeptic keeps an open mind.

Conformity, also known as the bandwagon effect. You probably think you are an individual who thinks independently and doesn’t care too much about what everybody else thinks or does. The truth is, however, we all feel the lure and often succumb to social pressures when it comes to how we eat, dress, talk, buy things, entertain ourselves, and think. A good skeptic remembers this when doing an inventory of his or her beliefs and conclusions. Did I really think this through, or am I just following the herd? Nothing to be ashamed of here. We all want and need the herd to some degree. Just don’t allow yourself to be blinded by this powerful and constant pull on your brain.

Emotional bias. This one is so simple but can cause many problems. Our emotions can easily dominate our attention to the point where we don’t see or consider relevant information right in front of our faces. Emotions are great, the spice of life, but don’t let them rule your decision-making process. Don’t just feel, think!

False-consensus effect. This is the tendency we have to overestimate how many people agree with us about the things we believe. This can cause people to have more confidence in their beliefs. If everyone believes in ghosts, then they must be real.

False memory. This is a common problem in which imagination is mistaken for the memory of something that actually happened. This one has obvious implications for everything from angel sightings and near-death experiences to alien abductions.

Forer effect, also known as the Barnum effect. This bias helps explain the popularity of things like psychic readings and astrology. When given a general personality description, for example, many people naturally think it describes them in a unique and special way, even though it is vague and could apply to many people or even to all people.

Framing effect. This bias scares me as an author. We can be swayed to judge information and ideas based on who delivers them to us and how they are presented. So, if you don’t like me, you may not be inclined to accept my message that skepticism is good for you. I hope you like me. But even if you do like me, don’t let that be the reason you embrace skeptical thinking. Do it because you thought it think it through and it makes sense.

Hallucinations. It is well established that human beings are capable of seeing things that aren’t there. What is really weird is that hallucinations can occur in the same parts of the brain that see and hear real things, so hallucinations can feel totally authentic. The obvious question is, why do so many people who go on and on about paranormal/supernatural sightings fail to consider hallucinations first? If someone says, “It was too real to be a hallucination,” she or he has done nothing more than reveal that she or he doesn’t understand hallucinations.

Hindsight bias. Never underestimate how effective our brains can be at keeping us feeling good about ourselves. This bias is the routine lie we tell ourselves and then believe when we learn that we were dead wrong about something. “I knew it all along,” is an ego-soothing, natural reaction. But you probably already knew that, right?

Illusion-of-truth effect. When we hear a claim that is familiar to us, we are more likely to believe it than we would if we had never heard it before. This means simply being exposed to statements about “X” makes you prone to trust and believe in “X” further down the line when told about it. It can work with ESP and conspiracy theories the same way it works with car commercials and laundry-detergent ads.

Illusory correlation. This is very common. Remember how we love to connect those dots? Well, our brains are so eager to do this that many of us often connect two or more unrelated events and then wrongly conclude that one caused the others or that they are somehow linked in a meaningful way when they are not.

Inattentional blindness. We are capable of staring at something, thinking that we are paying very close attention to the scene, but still missing important or unusual things that are there right in front of our eyes. Remember the gorilla that pounded its chest in the middle of a basketball game.

In-group bias. Everybody knows about this one, but how many make an effort to recognize and resist it when confronted with an extraordinary claim? We tend to respect, admire, and listen to people who are in our groups (nations, religions, schools, clubs, etc.). This can lead us to trust them about a belief or claim over someone who is outside the group, even if the outsider makes more sense.

Irrational escalation. This one can be uncomfortable to deal with, but fight it if the situation demands. This bias can leave us feeling too invested in a decision or a belief to let go and reverse course, even when logic and evidence make it clear that we should. Please don’t spend years or an entire lifetime saddled with a bad belief. If you figure out that it’s wrong, cut your losses and move on.

Observational-selection bias. I notice this one going on in my own head all the time. Whenever I buy a new laptop, MP3 player, or some other gadget, I suddenly see that specific model everywhere. Of course, it’s because I have a heightened awareness of it because I just purchased one. This selective perception can fool us into thinking special or weird things are happening when they aren’t. Oh my gosh, so many people at school today are wearing a crucifix necklace just like mine. It must be a sign.

Pareidolia. This one helps to explain many claims people make about seeing strange things. When we see or hear something that is nothing meaningful, our brains might decide to go ahead and give it meaning anyway. Our brains can create a recognizable picture in a cloud or on a slice of toast. We can also hear words in meaningless noise where none exist.

Priming. Never underestimate how easy it is to manipulate a human being. For example, just by hearing or reading a word, you are likely to think of it and to be influenced by it later in unrelated thoughts and activities—even if you forget all about originally hearing or reading that word.

Status-quo bias. We are creatures of habit. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t changed my hairstyle since first grade. A general reluctance to change can derail us when we try to sort out truth from fiction. If we have a few bad beliefs in our heads, we may hold onto them for no other reason than we like familiarity and don’t like change.

Got all those memorized? I hope you remember them, because there will be a test—it’s called the rest of your life. No, you don’t need to memorize them. But it helps to familiarize yourself with them, and you should at least be vaguely aware of what your subconscious brain is up to every day. Accept that we need these strange biases and weird mental processes. If not for the kooky minefield of tricks, shortcuts, and deceptions inside our heads, we would not function as well as we do in our daily lives. It’s an interesting twist: If our brains were not so nutty, we’d all go nuts. In most cases, the mysterious workings of the brain are necessary for efficient thinking and living. So don’t hate your brain for its deceptive ways in setting you up to make mistakes in reasoning and perception. Thank it for doing the best it can to get you through one more day safely. Just be sure to understand that you can never trust it completely when trying to separate truth from fiction.