Here's a list of 20 common cognitive biases that humans often exhibit. Keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive, but it covers many of the most well-known biases:
- Confirmation bias: The tendency to favor information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs or values.
- Anchoring bias: The tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information encountered when making decisions.
- Availability heuristic: The tendency to overestimate the importance of information that is easily recalled or available.
- Hindsight bias: The tendency to believe, after an event has occurred, that we would have predicted or expected the outcome.
- Self-serving bias: The tendency to attribute our successes to our own abilities and our failures to external factors.
- Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to overemphasize personal characteristics and ignore situational factors when judging others' behavior.
- Groupthink: The tendency to conform to the opinions or decisions of a group, often at the expense of critical thinking and individual judgment.
- Sunk cost fallacy: The tendency to continue investing in a decision based on the amount already invested, rather than evaluating the current and future value.
- Negativity bias: The tendency to give more weight to negative experiences than positive ones.
- Optimism bias: The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes and underestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes.
- Representativeness heuristic: The tendency to judge the probability of an event based on how similar it is to a prototype or stereotype.
- False consensus effect: The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and opinions.
- Halo effect: The tendency to let our impression of one characteristic of a person or thing influence our overall evaluation of them.
- Gambler's fallacy: The belief that past events can influence the probability of future independent events.
- Just-world hypothesis: The tendency to believe that the world is fair, and people get what they deserve.
- In-group bias: The tendency to favor members of our own group over those in other groups.
- Dunning-Kruger effect: The tendency for people with low ability at a task to overestimate their ability and for people with high ability to underestimate their ability.
- Status quo bias: The preference for maintaining the current state of affairs over making changes.
- Recency bias: The tendency to weigh recent events more heavily than earlier events.
- Illusory correlation: The perception of a relationship between two variables when no such relationship exists or is very weak.