An ever-growing list of the cognitive biases I've encountered.
Dunning Kruger Effect - the less you know, less you know you don’t know; thinking you’re better at something than you actually are (illusory expertise)
Curse of Knowledge - once you understand something you assume it’s obvious to everyone
Black & White Thinking - seeing things in absolutes without recognizing details or middle grounds; missing alternative pathways
Narrow Framing - using too narrow of an approach / description of an issue
Anecdotal Reasoning - relying on personal experiences / isolated examples rather than sound arguments
Focusing on the Wrong Variable - not accurately identifying the variables that are most impactful on a decision (80/20 rule)
Circular Reasoning - beginning with the assumption that what you are trying to prove is already true
Straw Man - addressing a different argument than the one at hand
Labeling (Grouping) - tendency to apply general labels and describe oneself / others through such labels
Clustering Illusion - tendency to see patterns in random events
Hasty Generalization - tendency to overgeneralize from small samples (overgeneralizing)
Gambler’s Fallacy - witnessing a small sample of a probability causes you to erroneously predict the chances of the next occurrence
Slippery Slope - erroneously assuming additional outcomes are likely after an initial outcome (however, considering second and third-order outcomes is generally wise)
Plausible / Likely - believing that if something is possible, it’s likely to happen
False Cause - erroneously linking causality between two phenomena when such causality does not exist
Conjunction Fallacy - "Linda has an economic degree and was managing editor of her university's feminist paper. Is Linda more likely to be a lawyer or a lawyer who is involved with women's rights?"
Barnum Effect - tendency to see personal specifics in vague statements (OMG that fortune teller was so right about me!)
Personalizing - believing events relate to you when they actually do not
Information Bias - tendency to seek information when it doesn’t affect action
Tendency to Act - sometimes, action is not immediately needed—there are cases where it's best to suspend decision-making
Mind-Reading - jumping to conclusions about another person’s thoughts, feelings, or intentions by assuming "that's how I would feel"
Groupthink / Bandwagon Effect - thinking that when more people believe something, it's more likely to be true (ad populum)
Stereotyping - expecting individuals from a group to have particular qualities
In-Group Bias - unfairly favoring those who belong to your group
Tendency to Seek Harmony - changing one's stance / beliefs to avoid the discomfort of discord
Relative Satisfaction / Misery - judge oneself in relation to one's peers
Influence of Authority - assuming that judgements from those with authority are more likely to be true
Spotlight Effect - overestimating how much people notice how you look or act
Bystander Effect - presuming someone else will do something in an emergency situation
Outcome Bias - judge a past decision based on the outcome rather than how the decision was made in the moment
Hindsight Bias - using information after the event to reason the decisions made prior to the event
Survivorship Bias - focusing only on surviving examples, thus misjudging a situation
Just World Hypothesis - one's preference for a just world causes one to presume that it exist
Selective Perception - allowing expectations / personal perspectives to influence how one perceives the world
Should / Must Thinking - focusing on how the world “should” be rather than how it actually is
Optimism Bias - overestimating the likelihood of positive outcomes; thinking one is personally less at risk of something bad happening compared to others
Pro-Innovation Bias - over-weighting “innovation” when considering the value of something
Novelty Bias - the desire to believe novel / awe-inspiring things (made this up)
Present Bias - tendency to undervalue the future in relation to the present
Ostrich Effect - ignoring dangerous or negative information by “burying one’s head in the sand”
Negativity Bias - letting negative things disproportionally influence one's thinking (pain hurts!)
Negative Filtering - seeing only the negative in a situation
Pessimism Bias - overestimating the likelihood of negative outcomes
Catastrophizing - overblowing the negative aspects of a situation
Declinism - remember the past as better; expecting the future to be worse than it will be
Anchoring - the first thing you hear influences the rest (priming)
Framing Effect - being influenced by context and delivery
Availability Heuristic - overweighting what most easily springs to mind (recency)
Halo Effect / Affect Heuristic - how much you like someone influences your judgements of them (rose-colored glasses)
Ad Hominem - discrediting information by discrediting the source
Endowment Effect - weighting something more than its actual value because you own it
Placebo Effect - if you’re told something will work, it just might
Choice-Supportive Bias - once you've chosen something, you tend to feel positive about it, even if the choice has flaws (this is actually beneficial at times)
Confirmation Bias - tendency to seek out information that confirms one's initial belief (and ignore information that disconfirms it)
Belief Bias - similarly, if a conclusion supports your existing belief, you’ll rationalize things to supports it; how heavily you “believe” something to be true influences how you judge it
Sunk Cost Fallacy - the more you've invested in a decision, the less likely you'll change your mind; continuing with something you've invested in despite the rational incentives of not continuing
Backfire Effect - when your core beliefs are challenged, you believe them more strongly
Reactance - doing opposite of what someone is trying to make you do
Fundamental Attribution Error - judge others' actions based on their character, but your own actions based on the situation
Self-Serving Bias - similarly, your failures are due to external factors but you’re personally responsible for your successes
Relying on Intuition / Gut - romanticizing or erroneously giving weight to “gut feelings” (in most situation, gut feelings are accurately tied to the situation at hand)
Emotional Reasoning - misinterpreting emotions as signals of something's value
Tendency to Envy - desiring what others have due to them having it
Sensitivity to Fairness - overvaluing fairness in relation to positive outcomes
Tendency to Believe What Makes You Feel Good - even if it's untrue or non-actionable
Denial / Self-Delusions - not accepting a situation due to how uncomfortable it is
Need for Control - control as a defense mechanism
Intolerance of Uncertainty - uncertainty is uncomfortable; willingness to exchange value for certainty
Influence of Stress - measurable detrimental to thinking ability—avoid making decisions when under duress
Influence of Tiredness - same as above