7 Stupid Thinking Errors You Probably Make
The brain isn’t a flawless piece of machinery. Although it is powerful and comes in an easy to carry container, it has it’s weaknesses. A field in psychology which studies these errors, known as biases. Although you can’t upgrade your mental hardware, noticing these biases can clue you into possible mistakes.
How Bias Hurts You
If you were in a canoe, you’d probably want to know about any holes in the boat before you start paddling. Biases can be holes in your reasoning abilities and they can impair your decision making.
Simply noticing these holes isn’t enough; a canoe will fill with water whether you are aware of a hole or not. But by being aware of the holes you can devise methods to patch them up. The entire domain of the scientific method has largely been an effort to overcome the natural inclination towards bias in reasoning.
Biases hurt you in a number of areas:
- Decision making. A number of biases can distort decision making. The confirmation bias can lead you to discount information that opposes existing theories. Anchoring can throw off negotiations by forcing you to sit around an arbitrary value.
- Problem solving. Biases can impede your creativity when solving problems. A framing bias can cause you to look at a problem too narrowly. And the illusion of control can cause you to overestimate the amount your actions influence results.
- Learning. Thinking errors also impact how you learn. The Von Restorff effect can cause you to overemphasize some information compared to the whole. Clustering illusions can also trick you into thinking you’ve learned more than you actually have.
Here are some common thinking errors:
1) Confirmation Bias
The confirmation bias is a tendency to seek information to prove, rather than disprove our theories. The problem arises because often, one piece of false evidence can completely invalidate the otherwise supporting factors.
Consider a study conducted by Peter Cathcart Wason. In the study, Wason showed participants a triplet of numbers (2, 4, 6) and asked them to guess the rule for which the pattern followed. From that, participants could offer test triplets to see if their rule held.
From this starting point, most participants picked specific rules such as “goes up by 2“ or “1x, 2x, 3x.” By only guessing triplets that fit their rule, they didn’t realize the actual rule was “any three ascending numbers.” A simple test triplet of “3, 15, 317“ would have invalidated their theories.
2) Hindsight Bias
Known more commonly under “hindsight is 20/20“ this bias causes people to see past results as appearing more probable than they did initially. This was demonstrated in a study by Paul Lazarsfeld in which he gave participants statements that seemed like common sense. In reality, the opposite of the statements was true.
3) Clustering Illusion
This is the tendency to see patterns where none actually exist. A study conducted by Thomas Gilovich, showed people were easily misled to think patterns existed in random sequences. Although this may be a necessary by product of our ability to detect patterns, it can create problems.
The clustering illusion can result in superstitions and falling for pseudoscience when patterns seem to emerge from entirely random events.
4) Recency Effect
The recency effect is the tendency to give more weight to recent data. Studies have shown participants can more easily remember information at the end of a list than from the middle. The existence of this bias makes it important to gather enough long-term data, so daily up’s and down’s don’t lead to bad decisions.
5) Anchoring Bias
Anchoring is a well-known problem with negotiations. The first person to state a number will usually force the other person to give a new number based on the first. Anchoring happens even when the number is completely random. In one study, participants spun a wheel that either pointed to 15 or 65. They were then asked the number of countries in Africa that belonged to the UN. Even though the number was arbitrary, answers tended to cluster around either 15 or 65.
6) Overconfidence Effect
And you were worried about having too little confidence? Studies have shown that people tend to grossly overestimate their abilities and characteristics from where they should. More than 80% of drivers place themselves in the top 30%.
One study asked participants to answer a difficult question with a range of values to which they were 95% certain the actual answer lay. Despite the fact there was no penalty for extreme uncertainty, less than half of the answers lay within the original margin.
7) Fundamental Attribution Error
Mistaking personality and character traits for differences caused by situations. A classic study demonstrating this had participants rate speakers who were speaking for or against Fidel Castro. Even if the participants were told the position of the speaker was determined by a coin toss, they rated the attitudes of the speaker as being closer to the side they were forced to speak on.
Studies have shown that it is difficult to out-think these cognitive biases. Even when participants in different studies were warned about bias beforehand, this had little impact on their ability to see past them.
What an understanding of biases can do is allow you to design decision making methods and procedures so that biases can be circumvented. Researchers use double-blind studies to prevent bias from contaminating results. Making adjustments to your decision making, problem solving and learning patterns you can try to reduce their effects.
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Comments
Andrew Swihart says on September 11th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Interesting, but if I actually took the time to think about if I was making all these errors, I think I’d go nuts. At some point, you just have to trust your gut.
ThomasT says on September 11th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Sentence Fragment Bias:
“A field in psychology which studies these errors, known as biases.”
Jason says on September 12th, 2007 at 12:18 am
“Interesting, but if I actually took the time to think about if I was making all these errors, I think I’d go nuts. At some point, you just have to trust your gut.”
See that thing over there? Yeah, that’s the point. You seem to have missed it. And besides, if you’re going to simply “trust your gut”, then you’re not thinking anyway. So these biases wouldn’t come into play for you.
Ken says on September 12th, 2007 at 12:55 am
I think the most important thing to do before undertaking anything that requires you to be unbiased is to identify your biases to begin with so that you can take steps to mitigate that. What drove me nuts when I did journalism work was see bias in articles (and I can’t say I’m not guilty of it) where the author fails to see them and insists they’re being fair. It really is impossible to eliminate bias from ones decisions since your values dictate how you are biased and vice-versa. The only really unbiased way to do anything is to rely purely on objective mathematical decisions but even then you risk your biases coming forward in your evaluations as you select what parameters with which to compare options.
Hip Hop says on September 12th, 2007 at 1:10 am
I agree 100% with Andrew
Forex Trader says on September 12th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Very informative article.
Tom says on September 12th, 2007 at 4:03 am
With this level of explanation this is really not helpfull at all besides being a cheap ripoff anyway.
You could easily just point to a better resource like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....ive_biases
“Making adjustments to your decision making, problem solving and learning patterns you can try to reduce their effects.” Sure. Thats were you should have started IMHO.
agmon says on September 12th, 2007 at 5:01 am
very interesting
do you think it is importent to send this to outer space?
Upload a file to http://www.beinspace.com give it a name a and a link to your site
And this information will live for ever in outer space.
jack says on September 12th, 2007 at 5:59 am
”
“goes up by 2“ or “1x, 2x, 3x.” By only guessing triplets that fit their rule, they didn’t realize the actual rule was “any three ascending numbers.” A simple test triplet of “3, 15, 317“ would have invalidated their theories.
”
eh… nope.
“goes up by 2“ or “1x, 2x, 3x.” is a subset of “any three ascending numbers.” . So answers generated from their rule were correct (fit the official rule ) , just not complete .
unless they start out with the most general rule ( and that would be what ?… based on the set of natural numbers ? base 10 ? positive numbers ? ) or try to validate triplets of every possible rule they cannot come to the official rule without guessing .
Doug says on September 12th, 2007 at 8:05 am
I think that you should have included Nostalgia.
Bruce Smith says on September 12th, 2007 at 8:25 am
The reason the “goes up by 2“ or “1x, 2x, 3x.” answers were incomplete is because they were given limited data to begin with. Obviously misled from the start, it seems the whole test was biased based on incomplete data.
Marc says on September 12th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Wow, was this article ever wasted on you bunch.
Clay says on September 12th, 2007 at 8:46 am
“…
“goes up by 2“ or “1x, 2x, 3x.” is a subset of “any three ascending numbers.” . So answers generated from their rule were correct (fit the official rule ) , just not complete .
…”
While this is correct, I’d say you’ve misread the actual article.
“A simple test triplet of “3, 15, 317“ would have invalidated their theories.” This is still correct - ie. this data wouldn’t fit their theories (eg. increase by 2), and would show them that they they didn’t get the rule completely.
Francisco says on September 12th, 2007 at 9:15 am
“Studies have shown”??
Where’s the citation?
Someone says on September 12th, 2007 at 9:43 am
84 Stupid Thinking Errors You Probably Make:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....ive_biases
Stop recycling the internet.
John says on September 12th, 2007 at 9:52 am
”
“A simple test triplet of “3, 15, 317“ would have invalidated their theories.” This is still correct - ie. this data wouldn’t fit their theories (eg. increase by 2), and would show them that they they didn’t get the rule completely.
”
well , true … but just how do they get to the real answer within a reasonable time ?
I agree with the point that the article is trying to make but the illustrations are piss poor.
Frank says on September 12th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Anyone else think that trusting pop psychology articles you read on the internet probably counts as evidence of a ‘Clustering Illusion’ bias? LOL
Emerus Jute says on September 12th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Atrocious punctuation.
Please learn to write before authoring any more articles!
der says on September 12th, 2007 at 10:49 am
so fucking what?
numbers in the way they are shown here, dont prove anything.
it only proves that the article has examples of people who cannot focus on the issue, but instead throw out a bunch or art studies.
individual situations invalidate this whole stupid article AND all the tests involved.
its the individual situation and the persons abiity to MAYBE solve it or have prior similair experences that may or may not allow that person to solve the current problem.
and no we are not discussing people who devise derivative formulas and other financial voodoo.
we are taking about the average person.
3, 15, 317….
it is NOT RELEVANT in any WAY.
no get BACK to work!
Abe Froman says on September 12th, 2007 at 10:54 am
I think number 8 should be
Blog Narcissism:
The belief that coming up with a list can change the world.
Ryan says on September 12th, 2007 at 11:37 am
The 2, 4, 6 example is just silly.
You can come up with any number of answers that are ‘correct’.
This is also a problem found in many Mensa problems where the question actually has many answers, but the ‘official’ answer is only 1.
When there are many ‘answers’ that fit something, the ‘official’ answer means nothing more than “That wasn’t the answer *I* was thinking of.” Which is just purely insane garbage.
Enough with that.
Other problems above can easily be solved with some basic critical thinking - the kind taught in most 1st or 2nd year philosophy classes.
Perhaps one of the best books written on the topic is “The Art of Deception”. It’s simply brilliant as it teaches you how to commit logical fallacies properly when trying to crush your enemies.
ScottHYoung says on September 12th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I tried to cite as much as I could, but space limits and linking limits for lifehacker require the somewhat distasteful abbreviation of “Studies have shown…”
In any case, this isn’t a scientific paper, just ideas worth thinking about. (Maybe that’s a bias too!)
-Scott
Jim J says on September 12th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Mistakes #1 and #5 were were clearly explained through the use of examples. The other mistakes need the same clear treatment.
M.V.Sankaran says on September 13th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Excellent piece of article, even if it is digested from other studies. There is no pretension to greater wisdom than what the original sources provide by way of input information. Not to be construed as authoritarian or the final say on the matter as some stupid remarks show. Keep hacking on and we shall continue to benefit by your efforts to bring some understanding in area where there was utter ignorance before. MVSKaran
The quiet guy says on September 13th, 2007 at 6:22 am
why the frig do you guys all think you’re geniuses
jeez, read the freaking article you selected and move on without bitching you highly intelligent NASA workers and University 10 year graduates… LOL! as if you’re on life hack for darn sake.
David says on September 15th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
How Bias Helps You
You can use other people’s bias to your own advantage by manipulating them to achieve your own ends.
AL says on September 18th, 2007 at 7:22 am
In usability class, we were taught about two kinds of biases: recency bias (which you mentioned) and primacy bias. In short, primacy bias happens when, given a list of items to remember, we will tend to remember the first few things more than those things in the middle.
Recency bias occurs most often in telephone surveys, while Primacy bias occurs in written surveys.
More info on primacy bias or effect can be found here:
http://changingminds.org/expla.....effect.htm
bruce says on September 28th, 2007 at 12:59 am
wut the… i’m totally surprised that there are so many biases, so to speak, in our every day thoughts and communication. Honestly, i was a Psych grad 3 years ago, and i have given back all the shrink stuff back to my prof long time ago. I’d say, go with your gut instincts and do wut ever the fuck pleases you. There’s too many god damn things to do in life, so why bother too much on ‘biases’ and ‘fundamental attribution’?
Lukaro says on October 2nd, 2007 at 9:16 am
Can’t the rule in the first example be “any three numbers” instead of “any three ascending numbers”? Pointless.
All in all, the article seems interesting but turns out to be quite superfluous
jimmy says on October 14th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
good job you took an intro to psych course
Alex says on December 11th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Why is comment 42 missing?
Advice Network says on December 11th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
What a badly written article. It is vauge and useless really. A good article would have had real life examples of how these effect out thinking, beyond what the researchers did. For example, confirmation bias is used all the time when people say things like “whenever I think of a friend, they call me.” They are discounting all of the times they think of a friend and the friend doesn’t call, AND all of the times a friend they did not think of calls, and coming up with a story of how “intuitive” they are. See, that wasn’t hard, but it something I think everyone can relate to.
Richard says on December 11th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Confirmation bias as stated here is incorrect. Numerical symbology, like language, is specific. While it is true that the pattern of 2 - 4 -6 might imply 9 - 31 - 77, a mere succession of ascending numbers, it is also true that the relationship between the numbers 2 - 4 -6 is part of the message. If the message was, “Any three ascending numbers,” then three ascending numbers without a discernible relationship would have been used. 2 - 4 -6 is therefore specific and exclusionary.
Charles Grahm says on December 11th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
When empirical psychology is being scientific it does a really great with what any science is supposed to do, which is to uncover reproducible and quantifiable phenomena. We have cognitive psychology to thank for a lot of great research into language, for instance.
When it is being extremely moronic, however, it tries to say far more about what it uncovers than the simplified methodologies and philosophical bankruptcy of this particular branch of science give it any right to.
Boris Smus says on December 11th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Interesting study about the number of African UN countries, especially considering that 65 exceeds the total number of countries in Africa!
Jason says on December 12th, 2007 at 4:31 am
I’m not sure that people are understanding the point of the task wrt the confirmation bias…
The participant is supposed to guess the correct ‘rule’ for the number pattern, by first proposing a set of numbers, then using the answer to that proposed set (”conforms with the rule” or “doesn’t conform with the rule”) to see whether they’ve got the right rule in mind (and no, it doesn’t matter that the rule is arbitrary - the task is essentially to find the rule that the numbers follow; nowhere is it required that only one rule be able to describe the set of numbers) they must either accept or reject their hypothesis. What the study shows is that rather than try and propse a set of numbers that would disconfirm their hypothesis (the logical way of going about this task) in order to narrow down to the correct rule, they are seeking to confirm their rule, which will ultimately tell them less about the veracity of their hypothesis than a disconfirmation would. After all, as alluded to in the article, one piece of disconfirming evidence can get rid of a seemingly good, but false, theory very quickly.
hollow says on December 12th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I find it lovely how people are talking in the comments about removing bias and being unbiased.
It’s impossible, you silly people– can’t you see it’s what makes us human?!
But it’s all about trying to be as aware as possible. Unchecked bias is the worst, because after it becomes routine we associate our personality with it.
hot layouts says on May 28th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Thanks for the list.