Bias List

  • Action bias

    The tendency to favour action over inaction, often to our benefit

  • Actor-observer asymmetry

    The tendency of actors to explain and verify their behavior due to the situation.

  • Ambiguity effect

    The tendency to avoid options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.

  • Anchoring effect

    Final decisions affected by the original starting point.

  • Anthropocentric thinking

    The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena.

  • Anthropomorphism

    The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions.

  • Appeal to novelty (argumentum ad novitatem)

    The tendency to prefer newer options over older.

  • Attentional bias

    Weighted extraction of information.

  • Attraction effect (or decoy effect)

    The choice can be influenced by irrelevant dominated alternatives.

  • Authority bias

    The predisposition towards opinions and actions of authority persons.

  • Automation bias

    Decisions rely on automated aids without reflection.

  • Availability bias

    Higher estimation of probability if the events are easier to remember.

  • Backfire effect

    Individual beliefs get stronger after a correction attempt.

  • Ballot names bias/ballot order effect

    The order of names influences voting choices.

  • Bandwagon effect

    The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same.

  • Barnum effect (Forer effect, subjective validation)

    High accuracy ratings for vague and very general personality descriptions.

  • Base rate fallacy

    Ignoring the base rate probability.

  • Belief bias

    The tendency to evaluate judgements based on the believability of the arguments.

  • Ben Franklin effect

    The tendency to like people to whom a favor was given.

  • Bias blind spot

    The belief that other people are more affected to biases as oneself.

  • Bizarreness effect

    Bizarre items are easier to recall

  • Certainty bias

    The tendency to look for decision heuristics providing certainty to rule some hypothesis in or out.

  • Cheerleader effect

    People seem more attractive in a group than in isolation.

  • Childhood amnesia

    Events from early childhood are harder to recall.

  • Choice-supportive bias

    The tendency to recall past choices better than they actually were.

  • Clustering illusion

    Seeing patterns in random data/noise.

  • Completeness

    The faulty perception of an apparently complete or logical data set and insensitivity to omitted information.

  • Compromise effect

    The tendency to choose non-extreme options.

  • Confirmation bias

    Favoring of information that confirms rather disconfirms preferred beliefs.

  • Congruence bias

    The tendency to seek confirmation for the favorable hypothesis in evaluation.

  • Conjunction Fallacy

    A conjunction P(A&B) appears more probable than its constituents P(A) and P(B).

  • Conservatism

    Insufficient probability revision by new information.

  • Consistency bias (or self-consistency bias)

    The belief that we are more consistent in our attitudes, opinions, and beliefs than we actually are.

  • Continuation Bias

    The predilection of continuing funding on prior investment

  • Continued influence effect

    Previous information influences recall even after correction.

  • Contrast effect

    The contrast effect is a change in evaluation as a result of previous exposure to a similar item different in some characteristics.

  • Cross-race effect

    Superior memory for own-race faces.

  • Cryptomnesia

    Unintended plagiarism (inspiration mistaken for self-generated)

  • Cue-dependent forgetting

    Hard to recall memory without information cues.

  • Curse of knowledge

    The tendency of experts to assume that novices have the same knowledge.

  • Defensive attribution hypothesis

    People attribute less responsibility for negative outcomes to people perceived similar.

  • Denomination effect

    The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts rather than large amounts.

  • Desirability bias (or wishful thinking)

    The tendency to overpredict desirable outcomes and underpredict unwanted outcomes.

  • Digital amnesia (or google effect)

    Harder to recall easy searchable information.

  • Disjunction effect

    The tendency to delay actual decisions because of an unknown outcome in a sequentially following decision.

  • Disposition effect

    The tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.

  • Distinction bias

    The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.

  • Dunning-Kruger effect

    Incompetent people overestimate their competence (and vice-versa).

  • Duration neglect (peak-end rule)

    In evaluating prior experiences people neglect the duration.

  • Egocentric bias

    Post-action overestimation of one’s own contribution.

  • Empathy gap

    Decisions influenced by a current emotional state and the overestimation of how long this current state will be present.

  • End of history illusion

    The tendency to believe that we stay the same person for the rest of our life.

  • Endowment effect

    The tendency for people who own a good to value it more than people who do not.

  • Escalation of commitment

    The tendency to increase commitment despite suboptimal outcome.

  • Exaggerated expectation

    Higher expectations of success for self-generated actions.

  • Experimenter effect (or Pygmalion effect or observer-expectancy effect)

    One’s expectations influence the behaviour of others.

  • Extrinsic incentive bias

    The tendency to believe that other are more extrinsically motivated than oneself.

  • Fact-value confusion

    The tendency to weight values over facts in judgement.

  • Fading affect bias

    Negative emotions fade more than positive ones.

  • False consensus effect

    The overestimation of the agreement of others with one’s own opinion.

  • False memory

    Imagination is mistaken as memory.

  • False uniqueness

    The tendency to qualify individual traits as unique, even when they are not.

  • Focusing illusion

    The tendency to focus to much on a subset of the information.

  • Framing effect

    Different perception of the same information or problem depending if it is framed towards gain or losses.

  • Functional fixedness

    Alternative uses of artifacts not imaginable due to traditional use.

  • Fundamental attribution error (or correspond-dence bias)

    The tendency to draw inferences about a person's dispositions from behaviors that can be entirely explained by the situations in which they occur.

  • Gambler’s Fallacy/Monte Carlo fallacy

    “The gambler’s fallacy is the expectation of a reversal following a run of a particular outcome” p. 193

  • Group attribution error

    Tendency to infer the attitudes of an entire social group strictly on the basis of one group member’s behaviour and vice-versa.

  • Group-serving bias

    The tendency to attribute positive results to the group’s actions and negative results to external factors.

  • Halo effect

    The tendency to evaluate a person by their overall attractiveness.

  • Hard-easy effect (an aspect of overconfidence - overestimation)

    Overconfidence for hard tasks, underconfidence for easy tasks.

  • Hindsight bias

    The tendency to recall past predictions for a specific outcome as more accurate as they actually were.

  • Hostile attribution bias

    The tendency to read ambiguous intends as hostile.

  • Hot-hand fallacy

    Believing that the chance of hitting are greater following a hit than following a miss.

  • Humor effect

    Humorous information is easier to recall.

  • Hyperbolic discounting (or present bias)

    The tendency to weight short-term awards stronger than long-term benefits.

  • Identifiable victim effect

    The tendency to offer more (help, donations) to clearly identifiable victims.

  • IKEA effect

    Item connected to self-effort are higher valued.

  • Illusion of asymmetric insight

    The belief that one knowns more about others than others know about oneself.

  • Illusion of control

    The tendency to overestimate one’s influence in externally driven events.

  • Illusion of explanatory depth

    The tendency to believe that we understand complex phenomena better than we really do.

  • Illusion of external agency

    The tendency to attribute positive outcomes to mysterious external agents.

  • Illusion of transparency

    The overestimation of the insights others have in one’ own mental state.

  • Illusion of validity

    People predict the outcome that appears most representative of the evidence not according to probability.

  • Illusory correlation

    The inaccurate perception of a relation between unrelated events and items.

  • Illusory superiority (better-than-average effect or above-average effect, an aspect of overconfidence)

    Overestimation of one’s own abilities.

  • Illusory truth effect

    A repeated plausible statement is believed to be true.

  • Imaginability bias

    Events that are imaginable are perceived as more likely.

  • Impact bias

    The tendency to predict future emotional reactions as more intense.

  • In-group favoritism

    The tendency to prefer people from one’s own group.

  • Information bias

    Seeking more information even if irrelevant for decision.

  • Insensitivity to sample size

    Ignoring the sample size in probability estimation

  • Insight bias

    The tendency to undervalue persistence and overvalue insight in the creative process

  • Isolation effect

    The focus on randomly perceived distinctive components of choices.

  • Just-world hypothesis

    The tendency to believe that people get what they deserve.

  • Labelling effect/verbal overshadowing

    A verbal label on a stimulus raises recall.

  • Less is better effect

    The preference of the lesser option in separate but not joint evaluations.

  • Leveling and sharpening

    The exaggeration and/or weakening of selected characteristics of the original figure in recall.

  • Levels-of-processing effect

    Deep level processed information is easier to recall.

  • Linear bias (or exponential growth bias)

    The tendency to underestimate exponential future growth.

  • List-length effect

    Items from a longer list are harder to recall.

  • Loss aversion

    The tendency to avoid losses is stronger then to acquiring gains.

  • Magical Thinking

    The tendency to ignore or denote causal relationships in decisions.

  • Mere-exposure effect (or familiarity)

    The tendency to affect choices by familiarity of items and options.

  • Mis-information effect

    Accurate recall is influenced by new but wrong information between event and recall.

  • Modality effect (or mode bias)

    Recall depend on modality of information

  • Money illusion

    The tendency to think in nominal rather than real monetary values.

  • Mood-congruent judgment

    The influence of mood on judgment.

  • Mood-congruent memory

    Memories are elicited congruent to mood.

  • Moral credential effect

    The tendency to prejudiced attitudes with beforehand established nonprejudiced credentials.

  • Moral luck

    Moral blame depends on outcome not just intent and action.

  • Naïve cynicism

    The tendency to predict that others are more self-serving in their assessment of responsibility.

  • Naïve realism

    The belief that WE see reality objectively.

  • Negative creativity bias (or bias against creativity)

    The tendency to assess creative ideas as more negative.

  • Negativity bias

    Stronger weighting of negative cues in evaluations.

  • Neglect of probability

    Probabilities of outcomes are ignored.

  • Next-in-line effect

    Hard to recall items just before/after a performance.

  • Not invented here syndrome

    The tendency to value items from an external source negatively.

  • Omission bias

    Harmful actions are evaluated as worse than harmful inactions (omissions).

  • Opportunity cost neglect

    The tendency to neglect opportunity costs in decisions.

  • Optimism bias

    The tendency to perceive positive outcomes more probable than negative ones.

  • Ostrich effect

    The tendency to avoid negative information.

  • Out-group homogeneity bias

    In-group members perceive their own group as more variegated and complex than do out-group members.

  • Outcome bias

    The tendency to evaluate decisions and decision makers only by outcome.

  • Overprecision (an aspect of overconfidence)

    Overconfidence in one’s quality of judgement.

  • Pareidolia

    Tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.

  • Part-list cueing effect

    Harder to recall after exposition to subset of the information.

  • Partial information bias

    Options with only partially available information are devalued towards options with complete information.

  • Pessimism bias

    The tendency to see positive outcomes less probable for oneself.

  • Phantom effect

    The tendency to affect choices by dominant but unavailable alternatives.

  • Picture superiority effect

    Images are easier to recall than words.

  • Planning Fallacy

    Overoptimistic in task implementation prediction.

  • Positivity effect

    Positive events are easier to recall than negative ones (especially for older people).

  • Problem-solving set

    The tendency to familiar – mechanized -solutions based on the problem set.

  • Processing difficulty effect

    Information which is difficult to understand is easier to recall.

  • Projection bias

    The tendency to assume that future tastes or preference will be the same as today.

  • Pseudocertainty effect

    The tendency to frame some alternatives as certain.

  • Reactance

    Reactance is a reaction (often counteraction) to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away their choices or limiting the range of alternatives.

  • Reactive devaluation

    Negative evaluation of options originated by an antagonist.

  • Regression towards the mean

    The tendency to ignore the regression towards the mean in predictions.

  • Regressive bias

    Observer’s overestimation of low frequencies and underestimation of high frequencies.

  • Reminiscence bump

    Older people easier recall early-life/adole-scence memories.

  • Restraint bias

    The tendency to overestimate one’s own ability to resist temptations.

  • Revelation effect

    Information presented in incomplete form leads to a higher recognition.

  • Rhyme as reason effect

    Statements that rhyme are perceived as more likely to be true.

  • Risk compensation (or risk homeostasis)

    The tendency to adjust one’s behavior in response to the perceived level of risk.

  • Rosy retrospection

    Recall of events is more positive than the actual experience.

  • Salience bias

    The tendency to focus on items that are more prominent.

  • Scale effect

    The perceived variability of data depends on the presentation scale.

  • Segregation bias

    Segregated (isolated) evaluation of sequenced alternatives leads to different choice outcomes.

  • Selection/Survivor bias

    Unconscious use of inadequate and incomplete samples of data.

  • Self-generation effect (or generation effect)

    Recall is easier for self-generated content then content simply read.

  • Self-reference effect

    Self-related information is easier to recall.

  • Self-serving bias

    The tendency to attribute positive results to oneself and the external factors to negative outcomes.

  • Semmelweis reflex

    The tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.

  • Serial-positioning effect (recency, primacy)

    First (primacy) and last (recency) items in a list are best recalled.

  • Sexual overperception bias

    The tendency to over- or underestimate the sexual interest of another person in oneself.

  • Shared information bias

    The tendency to ignore the information only few members of a group are aware of (and focus on information the majority is aware of).

  • Similarity bias

    The tendency to judge probability of events by perceived similarity.

  • Social comparison bias

    The tendency to decision which do not compete one’s own strength.

  • Social desirability bias

    The tendency to respond to questionnaires in a socially approved manner.

  • Source confusion

    The imagining of an event which never really happened can increase the perceived certainty that it did in fact occur.

  • Spacing effect

    Information presented spaced not massed is easier to recall.

  • Spotlight effect

    The tendency to overestimate how people noticed one’s own behavior.

  • Status quo bias

    The tendency to avoid options that demand a change.

  • Stereotyping

    Assuming characteristics of individuals based on the membership of a certain group.

  • Subadditivity effect

    The overall probability is estimated as less than the (added) probabilities estimations of the sub-parts.

  • Subtractive neglect

    The tendency to overlook subtractive changes or options.

  • Suffix effect

    An irrelevant sound at the end of a list diminishes recency effect in recalling

  • Suggestibility

    Ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken as memory

  • Sunk cost fallacy

    The tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made.

  • Surrogation

    Imitate measures of a goal as the goal.

  • Survival processing effect

    Words processed in a survival context are remembered better than words processed in non-survival contexts.

  • System justification bias

    The tendency to justify unfair systems to defend status quo.

  • Telescoping effect

    The displacement of events in time in recall

  • Testing effect

    Tested information is better recalled

  • Third-person effect

    The tendency to see others more affected by mass media than oneself.

  • Time-saving bias

    Overestimation of time savings by increased speed.

  • Tip of the tongue phenomenon

    Recall of parts of an item, but frustratingly not the whole.

  • Trait ascription bias

    The tendency to see own traits as variable and traits of others as predictable.

  • Ultimate attribution error

    The tendency to attribute failures of outgroup people to behavior or personality and of ingroup people to situation.

  • Unit bias

    The tendency to believe that an existing an offered unit of some entity is the appropriate and optimal amount for consumption.

  • Verbatim effect

    Easier to recall gist than exact wording.

  • Von Restorff effect

    Better recall for distinctive items.

  • Weber-Fechner law

    Small differences in large quantities are harder to perceive than vice-versa.

  • Well-travelled road effect

    Underestimation of the difficulty of repeating a familiar task and overestimation of the difficulty of a novel task.

  • Women are wonderful effect

    More positive attributions are associated to women.

  • Worse-than-average effect (or below-average effect)

    The underestimation of own strengths in relation to others in tasks perceived as difficult.

  • Zeigarnik effect

    Uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones.

  • Zero-risk bias

    The proportion of risk reduction is weighted stronger than the absolute risk reduction.

  • Zero-sum bias

    The tendency to perceive decisions as zero-sum game (one’s gain, another one’s losses).