Title: Cognitive Biases — LearnCoachAssist

Q: What is confirmation bias?
A: Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information that confirms one's pre-existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence. Example: only reading news sources that align with your political views.

Q: What is anchoring bias?
A: Anchoring bias occurs when people rely too heavily on the first piece of information encountered (the "anchor") when making decisions. Example: a high initial price makes a subsequent discount seem like a great deal.

Q: What is the availability heuristic?
A: The availability heuristic is the tendency to judge the likelihood of events based on how easily examples come to mind. Example: overestimating the risk of shark attacks because they receive heavy media coverage.

Q: What is the Dunning-Kruger effect?
A: The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability overestimate their competence, while highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate theirs. It reflects a lack of metacognitive ability.

Q: What is hindsight bias?
A: Hindsight bias is the tendency to believe, after an event has occurred, that one would have predicted it beforehand. Also called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect.

Q: What is the sunk cost fallacy?
A: The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to continue investing in something because of previously invested resources (time, money, effort) rather than evaluating current and future value. Example: finishing a bad movie because you already paid for the ticket.

Q: What is the framing effect?
A: The framing effect occurs when people react differently to the same information depending on how it is presented. Example: "90% survival rate" sounds better than "10% mortality rate," even though they mean the same thing.

Q: What is the bandwagon effect?
A: The bandwagon effect is the tendency to adopt beliefs or behaviors because many other people do. It is driven by social conformity and the desire to belong to the group.

Q: What is the fundamental attribution error?
A: The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overemphasize personality traits and underestimate situational factors when explaining others' behavior. Example: assuming a rude waiter is a bad person rather than having a bad day.

Q: What is the self-serving bias?
A: The self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute successes to internal factors (skill, effort) and failures to external factors (bad luck, unfairness). It protects self-esteem.

Q: What is the halo effect?
A: The halo effect is the tendency for an overall positive impression of a person to influence judgments about their specific traits. Example: assuming an attractive person is also intelligent and kind.

Q: What is the negativity bias?
A: Negativity bias is the tendency for negative experiences, emotions, or information to have a greater impact on psychological states than positive ones of equal intensity. Bad news sticks more than good news.

Q: What is status quo bias?
A: Status quo bias is the preference for the current state of affairs, where any change is perceived as a loss. Example: sticking with a default option on a form rather than switching to a potentially better alternative.

Q: What is survivorship bias?
A: Survivorship bias is the error of focusing on successful examples while overlooking failures. Example: studying only successful entrepreneurs and concluding that dropping out of college leads to success.

Q: What is the gambler's fallacy?
A: The gambler's fallacy is the mistaken belief that past random events affect future probabilities. Example: believing a coin is "due" for heads after several tails, when each flip is independent.

Q: What is the peak-end rule?
A: The peak-end rule states that people judge an experience based on its most intense moment (peak) and how it ended, rather than the average of the experience. This was demonstrated by Daniel Kahneman.

Q: What is choice overload (paradox of choice)?
A: Choice overload occurs when too many options lead to decision paralysis, anxiety, or dissatisfaction. Barry Schwartz argued that more choices can decrease happiness and increase regret.

Q: What is the spotlight effect?
A: The spotlight effect is the tendency to overestimate how much others notice our appearance and behavior. In reality, people pay far less attention to us than we think.

Q: What is optimism bias?
A: Optimism bias is the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive events and underestimate the likelihood of negative events happening to oneself. Example: believing you are less likely than average to get in a car accident.

Q: What is recency bias?
A: Recency bias is the tendency to give disproportionate weight to the most recent events or information when making judgments. Example: evaluating an employee based mostly on their last month of performance.

Q: What is groupthink?
A: Groupthink occurs when a group prioritizes harmony and conformity over critical thinking, leading to poor decision-making. Symptoms include illusions of invulnerability, self-censorship, and pressure on dissenters.

Q: What is the actor-observer bias?
A: The actor-observer bias is the tendency to attribute our own behavior to situational factors but others' behavior to dispositional factors. It is a variant of the fundamental attribution error applied to oneself vs. others.

Q: What is the representativeness heuristic?
A: The representativeness heuristic is the tendency to judge the probability of something based on how similar it is to a prototype. Example: assuming a quiet, book-loving person is a librarian rather than a salesperson.

Q: What is the affect heuristic?
A: The affect heuristic occurs when current emotions influence judgments and decisions. If you feel positive about something, you tend to judge its risks as low and its benefits as high.

Q: What is the Barnum effect (Forer effect)?
A: The Barnum effect is the tendency to accept vague, general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to oneself. This explains why people find horoscopes and personality quizzes convincing.

Q: What is the illusion of control?
A: The illusion of control is the tendency to overestimate one's ability to influence events that are largely determined by chance. Example: blowing on dice before rolling them in a game.

Q: What is inattentional blindness?
A: Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice a fully visible object when attention is focused elsewhere. The famous "invisible gorilla" experiment by Simons and Chabris demonstrated this.

Q: What is change blindness?
A: Change blindness is the failure to detect changes in a visual scene, especially when the change occurs during a brief disruption. It reveals the limitations of visual attention and memory.

Q: What is the mere exposure effect?
A: The mere exposure effect is the tendency to develop a preference for things simply because we are familiar with them. Repeated exposure increases liking, even without conscious awareness.

Q: What is the endowment effect?
A: The endowment effect is the tendency to value something more once we own it compared to when we don't. Example: demanding more to sell a coffee mug than you would pay to buy one.

Q: What is loss aversion?
A: Loss aversion, identified by Kahneman and Tversky, is the principle that losses feel roughly twice as painful as equivalent gains feel pleasurable. It is a core concept in prospect theory.

Q: What is prospect theory?
A: Prospect theory, developed by Kahneman and Tversky, describes how people make decisions involving risk. Key insights include loss aversion, reference dependence, and diminishing sensitivity to gains and losses.

Q: What is the decoy effect?
A: The decoy effect occurs when the introduction of a third, inferior option makes one of the original options look more attractive. Marketers use this to steer consumers toward a preferred product.

Q: What is the IKEA effect?
A: The IKEA effect is the tendency to place higher value on things we helped create, regardless of quality. People overvalue self-assembled furniture, homemade food, or personal projects.

Q: What is the false consensus effect?
A: The false consensus effect is the tendency to overestimate how much others agree with our beliefs and behaviors. We assume our opinions are more common than they actually are.

Q: What is the just-world hypothesis?
A: The just-world hypothesis is the belief that people generally get what they deserve. This can lead to victim-blaming, where people assume bad things happen to those who somehow earned them.

Q: What is the curse of knowledge?
A: The curse of knowledge occurs when someone who is well-informed about a topic finds it difficult to think about it from the perspective of someone less informed. It impairs communication and teaching.

Q: What is the planning fallacy?
A: The planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate the time, cost, and effort needed to complete a task, even when past experience suggests it will take longer. It was identified by Kahneman and Tversky.

Q: What is the authority bias?
A: Authority bias is the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinions of an authority figure and be more influenced by them, even when the authority is not an expert in the relevant field.

Q: What is the conjunction fallacy?
A: The conjunction fallacy occurs when people assume that a specific condition is more probable than a general one. In the famous "Linda problem," people judged "feminist bank teller" as more likely than "bank teller" alone.

Q: What is normalcy bias?
A: Normalcy bias is the tendency to underestimate the likelihood or impact of a disaster and assume things will function normally. It can slow response times during emergencies like evacuations.

Q: What is the projection bias?
A: Projection bias is the tendency to assume that others share our current thoughts, feelings, or values. It also refers to projecting current preferences onto our future selves.

Q: What is the zero-risk bias?
A: Zero-risk bias is the preference for completely eliminating one small risk over a larger overall risk reduction. People prefer certainty even when the alternative provides greater expected benefit.

Q: What is moral licensing?
A: Moral licensing occurs when doing something good gives people psychological permission to then do something bad. Example: exercising in the morning and then overeating, feeling you've "earned" it.

Q: What is the base rate fallacy?
A: The base rate fallacy is the tendency to ignore general statistical information (base rates) in favor of specific case information. Example: fearing terrorism on planes while ignoring the far higher base rate of car accident deaths.

Q: What is the contrast effect?
A: The contrast effect occurs when perception of something is influenced by comparison with something recently observed. Example: a mediocre candidate seems better after interviewing a terrible one.

Q: What is the clustering illusion?
A: The clustering illusion is the tendency to see patterns in random data. Example: believing a basketball player has a "hot hand" when their hits and misses are actually random.

Q: What is the denomination effect?
A: The denomination effect is the tendency to spend more when using small denominations or electronic payment versus large bills. People are reluctant to "break" a large bill.

Q: What is scope insensitivity (scope neglect)?
A: Scope insensitivity is the tendency to be insufficiently sensitive to the scale of a problem. People will donate similar amounts to save 2,000 or 200,000 birds, because the emotional response doesn't scale proportionally.

Q: What is the ostrich effect?
A: The ostrich effect is the tendency to avoid negative information by "burying one's head in the sand." Example: avoiding checking your bank account or investment portfolio during a market downturn.

Q: What is naive realism?
A: Naive realism is the belief that we see the world objectively and that people who disagree must be uninformed, irrational, or biased. It is a major source of interpersonal and political conflict.

Q: What is belief perseverance?
A: Belief perseverance is the tendency to cling to one's initial beliefs even after the evidence supporting them has been discredited. Simply presenting counter-evidence is often insufficient to change deeply held beliefs.

Q: What is the in-group bias?
A: In-group bias is the tendency to favor members of one's own group over outsiders. It can manifest as more positive evaluations, greater trust, and preferential treatment toward in-group members.

Q: What is the out-group homogeneity bias?
A: The out-group homogeneity bias is the tendency to perceive members of other groups as more similar to each other than members of one's own group. "They're all the same" versus seeing diversity within your own group.

Q: What is reactance?
A: Reactance is the emotional reaction against perceived threats to one's freedom or autonomy. When people feel their choices are restricted, they often desire the forbidden option even more.

Q: What is the Zeigarnik effect?
A: The Zeigarnik effect is the tendency to remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. This is why cliffhangers in TV shows are so compelling — the unfinished narrative lingers in memory.

Q: What is the bystander effect?
A: The bystander effect is the phenomenon where individuals are less likely to help a victim when others are present. Diffusion of responsibility increases with the number of bystanders.

Q: What is the herd mentality?
A: Herd mentality (or mob mentality) is the tendency for individuals to follow the actions or beliefs of a larger group, often abandoning their own judgment. It is related to the bandwagon effect but often more extreme.

Q: What is the illusion of transparency?
A: The illusion of transparency is the tendency to overestimate how apparent our internal states are to others. We think our nervousness, lies, or emotions are more visible than they actually are.

Q: What is functional fixedness?
A: Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. It impairs creative problem-solving by preventing novel uses of familiar objects.

Q: What is the empathy gap?
A: The empathy gap (hot-cold empathy gap) is the tendency to underestimate the influence of emotional states on behavior and decisions. When calm, we misjudge what we'd do when angry, hungry, or in pain.

Q: What is the ambiguity effect?
A: The ambiguity effect is the tendency to avoid options where the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown. People prefer known risks over unknown risks, even when the unknown option may be better.

Q: What is the Pygmalion effect?
A: The Pygmalion effect (Rosenthal effect) occurs when higher expectations lead to improved performance. In education, teachers' positive expectations of students can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Q: What is the Golem effect?
A: The Golem effect is the opposite of the Pygmalion effect: lower expectations lead to decreased performance. When authority figures expect less, individuals tend to perform worse.

Q: What is system justification bias?
A: System justification bias is the tendency to defend and justify existing social, economic, and political systems, even at the expense of one's own group or self-interest.

Q: What is the negativity effect in impressions?
A: In impression formation, the negativity effect means that negative traits disproportionately influence overall impressions compared to positive traits. One rude act can outweigh many kind acts.

Q: What is anchoring and adjustment?
A: Anchoring and adjustment is a heuristic where people start from an initial value (anchor) and adjust insufficiently to reach a final answer. The adjustment is typically too small, leaving estimates biased toward the anchor.

Q: What is the primacy effect in social psychology?
A: The primacy effect is the tendency for first impressions to carry more weight than later information. Information presented early disproportionately shapes our overall perception of a person.

Q: What is the distinction bias?
A: Distinction bias is the tendency to view two options as more different when evaluating them side by side than when evaluating them separately. It leads to overvaluing minor differences.

Q: What is the identifiable victim effect?
A: The identifiable victim effect is the tendency to respond more strongly to a single, identifiable person in need than to a large, anonymous group. "One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic."

Q: What is the automation bias?
A: Automation bias is the tendency to over-rely on automated systems and technology, even when they produce errors. People may ignore contradictory information from non-automated sources.

Q: What is the nocebo effect?
A: The nocebo effect occurs when negative expectations lead to negative outcomes. If a patient believes a treatment will cause side effects, they are more likely to experience them, even with a placebo.

Q: What is the self-reference effect?
A: The self-reference effect is the tendency for people to better encode and recall information that is related to themselves. Information processed in relation to the self is more memorable.

Q: What is Weber's Law and how does it relate to bias?
A: Weber's Law states that the just noticeable difference is proportional to the stimulus magnitude. In decision-making, this means we notice a $5 discount more on a $20 item than on a $500 item, even though the savings are the same.

Q: What is the Google effect (digital amnesia)?
A: The Google effect is the tendency to forget information that can easily be found online. People remember less when they know a search engine can provide the answer, but better remember where to find it.

Q: What is the disposition effect?
A: The disposition effect is investors' tendency to sell winning investments too early and hold losing ones too long. It is driven by loss aversion and the desire to avoid realizing a loss.

Q: What is proportionality bias?
A: Proportionality bias is the assumption that big events must have big causes. It contributes to conspiracy theories — people struggle to accept that major events (e.g., assassinations) can have simple explanations.

Q: What is the declinism bias?
A: Declinism is the tendency to view the past favorably and believe that society is in decline. People often romanticize previous eras while focusing on current problems.

Q: What is the hot-hand fallacy?
A: The hot-hand fallacy is the belief that a person who has been successful will continue to be successful, even when each event is independent. Despite feeling real, research shows "streaks" are often within normal randomness.

Q: What is reactance theory?
A: Reactance theory, proposed by Jack Brehm, states that when people feel their freedom to choose is threatened, they experience psychological reactance — an unpleasant motivational state that drives them to restore the threatened freedom.

Q: What is the less-is-better effect?
A: The less-is-better effect occurs when a smaller or lesser option is preferred when evaluated alone, but not when compared side by side. Example: a $45 scarf in a fancy box seems better than a $55 coat without packaging.

Q: What is the peak performance bias?
A: Peak performance bias is the tendency to judge people by their best moments rather than their average or typical behavior. This can lead to unrealistic expectations in hiring, relationships, and self-evaluation.

Q: What is selective perception?
A: Selective perception is the tendency to filter information based on expectations, allowing confirming information through while blocking disconfirming information. Fans of opposing sports teams will see different fouls in the same game.

Q: What is the default effect?
A: The default effect is people's tendency to stick with the pre-set or default option when given a choice. Organ donation rates are dramatically higher in countries with opt-out (default yes) systems than opt-in systems.

Q: What is the bizarreness effect?
A: The bizarreness effect is the tendency to remember unusual or bizarre material better than common material. Incorporating odd imagery into study materials can enhance recall.

Q: What is the blind spot bias?
A: The blind spot bias is the tendency to recognize cognitive biases in others but fail to see them in oneself. Most people believe they are less biased than the average person.

Q: What is the Dunning-Kruger effect's relationship to metacognition?
A: The Dunning-Kruger effect stems from poor metacognitive skills — the same knowledge needed to produce correct responses is also needed to recognize incorrect ones. Unskilled individuals lack the ability to evaluate their own competence.

Q: What is the omission bias?
A: Omission bias is the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions. People may feel more guilty about causing harm through action (commission) than through failure to act (omission).

Q: What is outcome bias?
A: Outcome bias is the tendency to judge a decision based on its outcome rather than on the quality of the decision at the time it was made. A bad decision can have a good outcome and vice versa.

Q: What is the focusing illusion?
A: The focusing illusion, described by Kahneman, is the idea that "nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it." Attention to a factor inflates its perceived importance.

Q: What is hyperbolic discounting?
A: Hyperbolic discounting is the tendency to prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards. The preference reverses as both rewards are pushed further into the future. It explains procrastination and impulsive spending.

Q: What is the Ben Franklin effect?
A: The Ben Franklin effect is the phenomenon where doing a favor for someone makes you like them more. It demonstrates cognitive dissonance — we rationalize the effort by convincing ourselves we like the person.

Q: What is pareidolia?
A: Pareidolia is the tendency to perceive meaningful patterns (especially faces) in random or ambiguous stimuli. Examples include seeing faces in clouds, toast, or power outlets.

Q: What is the effort justification effect?
A: Effort justification is a form of cognitive dissonance where people value outcomes more when they have put significant effort into achieving them. Harsh initiations make group membership feel more valuable.

Q: What is the Pratfall effect?
A: The Pratfall effect is the tendency for an otherwise competent person to become more likeable after making a minor mistake. Small blunders make highly competent people seem more human and relatable.

Q: What is the third-person effect?
A: The third-person effect is the tendency to believe that media and persuasive communications affect others more than oneself. People assume they are less susceptible to advertising and propaganda than average.

Q: What is subjective validation?
A: Subjective validation is the tendency to perceive two unrelated events as connected because a belief or expectation demands a relationship. It underlies belief in astrology, psychic readings, and superstitions.

Q: What is information bias?
A: Information bias is the tendency to seek more information even when it cannot affect the decision. Additional data can feel useful even if it is irrelevant, leading to analysis paralysis.

Q: What is the broken window theory as a cognitive phenomenon?
A: From a psychological perspective, the broken window theory suggests that visible signs of disorder encourage further disorder. Seeing litter makes people more likely to litter — environmental cues activate norms about acceptable behavior.

Q: What is the backfire effect?
A: The backfire effect occurs when presenting evidence against someone's belief actually strengthens that belief. Corrective information can be counterproductive when it threatens a person's identity or worldview.