Three Cognitive Biases That Influence Decision Making

A former home improvement store clerk based in North Carolina, Steven Dasho studied at North Shore Community College and Asheville Bunville Technical Community College. During his time as a student, Steven Dasho has developed an interest in psychology.

In psychology, the term “cognitive bias” refers to often-unconscious thought processes that cause people to reach questionable conclusions. Here are three of the most common cognitive biases you may encounter.

Stereotyping - Everyone has heard of stereotyping, or the tendency to ascribe certain characteristics to a person or group based on commonly held beliefs. Although stereotyping is generally viewed as an unproductive behavior in today’s society, it helps us quickly identify others as friends or enemies, which may have served an important purpose earlier in human history.

Conservatism bias - When presented with new information about something, people tend to favor prior evidence regardless of the objective merit of the new evidence. As such, new theories about the world are often slow to take hold.

Placebo effect - When people believe that something has an effect on them, that effect is more likely to be experienced. Most commonly applied in medicine, the placebo effect can result in measurable improvements in patients who are given nothing more than a sugar pill, which they believe is medicine.