Cognitive Biases认知偏差.doc

As of 1/15/12Cognitive BiasesCognitive biases are flawed patterns of thinking, reasoning or judgment; they are kinds of mental mistakes. What distinguishes a cognitive bias from other errors is that a cognitive bias involves a particularly common human tendency or typical pattern. Some of these biases occur in decision-making, others involve beliefs and estimates of probability, and some involve memory. Often they involve tempting mental shortcuts. Some are more well-known than others, and some have multiple names. The distinction between them can be murky in some cases, but do not let this bother you. Even though strictly speaking, cognitive biases are matters of psychology as much as philosophy, since philosophers are always concerned with good reasoning, they too are interested in them. We want to eliminate cognitive biases from our thinking so far as possible, but the only way to do is by first becoming aware of them.1. Anchoring – Anchoring (or the “focusing effect”) is the common human tendency to rely too heavily – or to anchor - on a particular piece of information or aspect of the situation when making decisions. For example, it is common for people to over-estimate the importance of income when predicting others’ levels of happiness. Often, we judge people’s happiness by “anchoring” on their incomes and whether they are “successful” in terms of material wealth. Social psychologists have shown, however, that income tends to make only a relatively small difference in people’s levels of life satisfaction and their sense of well-being.Not all cases of “focusing” represent a bias. Sometimes there is only one factor of significance, and in these situations it is of course perfectly legitimate to anchor on it. The bias occurs when we focus only on one factor in situations where several factors are relevant.2. Belief bias – This is the error of confusing the quality of an argument with the believability of its conclusion. Researchers have shown that when given var