I just read about these different cognitive biases during my lunch break. Geesh, because I don’t have enough flies on the windscreen, as it is. All I need is something else causing me to third and fourth or even fifth guess at every moment in parenting (“Is that my tendency to fall back on the Von Restorff Effect or does it really matter that his socks don’t match this morning?”). Here are some of my favorites (decision making and behavioral biases);
Deformation professionnelle - the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
Post-purchase rationalization – the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
Mere exposure effect – the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
Von Restorff effect – the tendency for an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
And of course, Biases of probability and belief;
Telescoping effect - the effect that recent events appear to have occurred more remotely and remote events appear to have occurred more recently.
Texas sharpshooter fallacy – the fallacy of selecting or adjusting a hypothesis after the data are collected, making it impossible to test the hypothesis fairly.
And of course;
Overconfidence effect – the tendency to overestimate one’s own abilities. (“I don’t need to read the directions to put this grill together, how hard could it be?”)
Ahh, and my favorite Social Biases;
Halo effect – the tendency for a person’s positive or negative traits to “spill over” from one area of their personality to another in others’ perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype).
Forer effect (aka Barnum Effect) – the tendency to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. For example, horoscopes.
Gee, this will certainly help me sort out those problems when my kids get into fights and I need to play the part of Judge and Jury. Actually, I think this slows the whole process for me – either that or I’ll just forget all about this stuff and go back to business as usual – but then again that’s the very definition of the Bias blind spot.
Tags:
better dad,
educational
