Cognitive Bias Basics
🧠 Learn
Cognitive bias = a systematic error in thinking that affects the judgments and decisions people make.
Biases are not signs of stupidity — they are heuristics (mental shortcuts) that evolved to help us act quickly. They become problems when applied outside their useful domain.
Key biases to know:
- Confirmation bias — seeking information that confirms existing beliefs
- Availability heuristic — overweighting recent or vivid examples
- In-group bias — favoring members of your own group
- Dunning-Kruger effect — overestimating competence in areas of limited knowledge — specifically, a metacognitive deficit that prevents low performers from recognizing their own performance gaps. Note: subsequent large-scale replications have found the effect more modest and context-dependent than originally reported
- Anchoring — over-relying on the first piece of information encountered
🧘 Practice
Duration: 10–15 min
Instructions:
- Recall a recent decision or strong opinion you hold
- Ask: What evidence supports this?
- Ask: What evidence contradicts this?
- Identify which bias may be operating (use the list above)
- Write one sentence that steelmans the opposing view
🔍 Reflect
- What evidence did you ignore or downweight?
- Which bias felt most active in your thinking?
- How did it feel to steelman the opposing view?
- Where did this belief or assumption originate?
📊 Assess (Self + Structured)
| Level | Indicator |
|---|---|
| 1 | Aware that cognitive biases exist |
| 2 | Can name specific biases and give examples |
| 3 | Catches and corrects biases in own thinking in real time |
| 4 | Designs processes and environments that reduce systematic bias |
🔄 Integrate
Apply this in real life:
- Pause before forming conclusions and ask: Am I being systematic?
- Seek out one piece of disconfirming evidence before deciding
- Practice steelmanning: state the strongest version of an opposing view
Retrieval Practice — Cognitive Bias 101
Card 1 of 4
Q: What is a cognitive bias?