THE TRIUNE BRAIN

Are my thoughts useful?  Are they in accordance with reality?

Answer: “No. I’m talking to myself about the past and a situation that cannot be changed.” 

• Is it true?

• Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

• If it is true can you do anything about it?

 How do these thoughts want me to behave?

Answer: “Like a little frustrated child who needs a nap.” 

• How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

• Who would you be without the thought?

The Transformative Processes Of Cognitive Coherence

 The process of cognitive coherence is experiential rather than analytic, and in this  direct, emotional experience of the unconscious personal constructs which produce an unwanted symptom and to undergo a natural process of revising or dissolving these constructs, thereby eliminating the symptom.  

The four cognitive transformations for the individual from a lesser to greater self-reflective pattern.are:

• "From the language of complaint to the language of commitment"

• "From the language of blame to the language of personal responsibility"

• "From the language of resolution to the language of competing commitments"

• "From the language of assumptions that hold us to the language of assumptions we hold"

Three transformations that groups of people can make in their social behavior, again

• "From the language of prizes and praising to the language of ongoing regard"

• "From the language of rules and policies to the language of public agreement"

• "From the language of constructive criticism to the language of deconstructive criticism" 

Logical Hierarchical Orders Of Construction

As a tool for identifying all of a person's relevant schemas or constructions of reality, several logically hierarchical domains or orders of construction are thus defined:

1. The first order consists of a person's overt responses: thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

2. The second order consists of the person's specific meaning of the concrete situation to which they are responding.

3. The third order consists of the person's broad purposes and strategies for construing that specific meaning (teleology).

4. The fourth order consists of the person's general meaning of the nature of self, others, and the world (ontology and primal world beliefs).

5. The fifth order consists of the person's broad purposes and strategies for construing that general meaning.

6. Higher orders (beyond the fifth order) are rarely involved in psychotherapy.

A person's first-order symptoms of thought, mood, or behavior follow from a second-order construal of the situation, and that second-order construal is powerfully influenced by the person's third- and fourth-order constructions. Hence the third and higher orders constitute"the emotional truth of the symptom", which are the meanings and purposes that are intended to be discovered, integrated, and transformed in introspective meditation.

The Principle Of Symptom Coherence

The principle of symptom coherence maintains that an individual's seemingly irrational, out-of-control symptoms are actually sensible, cogent, orderly expressions of the person's existing constructions of self and world, rather than a disorder or pathology  Symptom coherence is defined  as follows: 

1. A person produces a particular symptom because, despite the suffering it entails, the symptom is compellingly necessary to have, according to at least one unconscious, nonverbal, emotionally potent schema or construction of reality.

2. Each symptom-requiring construction is cogent—a sensible, meaningful, well-knit, well-defined schema that was formed adaptively in response to earlier experiences and is still carried and applied in the present.

3. The person ceases producing the symptom as soon as there no longer exists any construction of reality in which the symptom is necessary to have.

Some symptoms are necessary because they serve a crucial function (such as depression that protects against feeling and expressing anger), while others have no function but are necessary in the sense of being an inevitable effect, or by-product, caused by some other adaptive, coherent but unconscious response (such as depression resulting from isolation, which itself is a strategy for feeling safe). Both functional and functionless symptoms are coherent. 

Early maladaptive schemas are self-defeating emotional and cognitive patterns established from childhood and repeated throughout life.[2] They may be made up of emotional memories of past hurt, tragedy, fear, abuse, neglect, unmet safety needs, abandonment, or lack of normal human affection in general. Early maladaptive schemas can also include bodily sensations associated with such emotional memories. Early maladaptive schemas can have different levels of severity and pervasiveness: the more severe the schema, the more intense the negative emotion when the schema is triggered and the longer it lasts; the more pervasive the schema, the greater the number of situations that trigger it.

List of Maladaptive Schemas

This is a list of maladaptive schemas, often called early maladaptive schemas, in schema therapy, a theory and method of psychotherapy. An early maladaptive schema is a pervasive self-defeating or dysfunctional theme or pattern of memories, emotions, and physical sensations, developed during childhood or adolescence and elaborated throughout one's lifetime, that often has the form of a belief about the self or the world.[1] The headings under which the schemas are categorized below are known as schema domains

Schema Domains 

Schema domains are five broad categories of unmet needs into which are grouped 18 early maladaptive schemas:

1. Disconnection/Rejection includes 5 schemas:

   1. Abandonment/Instability

   2. Mistrust/Abuse

   3. Emotional Deprivation

   4. Defectiveness/Shame

   5. Social Isolation/Alienation

2. Impaired Autonomy and/or Performance includes 4 schemas:

   1. Dependence/Incompetence

   2. Vulnerability to Harm or Illness

   3. Enmeshment/Undeveloped Self

   4. Failure

3. Impaired Limits includes 2 schemas:

   1. Entitlement/Grandiosity

   2. Insufficient Self-Control and/or Self-Discipline

4. Other-Directedness includes 3 schemas:

   1. Subjugation

   2. Self-Sacrifice

   3. Approval-Seeking/Recognition-Seeking

5. Overvigilance/Inhibition includes 4 schemas:

   1. Negativity/Pessimism

   2. Emotional Inhibition

   3. Unrelenting Standards/Hypercriticalness

   4. Punitiveness

 The higher-order factor analysis indicated four schema domains—Emotional Dysregulation, Disconnection, Impaired Autonomy/Underdeveloped Self, and Excessive Responsibility/Overcontrol—that overlap with the five domains (listed above) 

Disconnection And Rejection

Abandonment/instability

The belief system involves the sense that significant others will not be able to continue providing support, connection, strength, or protection because they are unstable, unpredictable, unreliable; because they will eventually die; or because they found someone better.

Mistrust/abuse

The belief system involves the sense that others will intentionally hurt, abuse, humiliate, cheat, lie, manipulate, take advantage, or neglect.

Emotional deprivation

The belief that one's standard for emotional support will not be met by others.

Defectiveness/shame

The belief that one is defective, bad, unwanted, inferior, or unworthy. This includes the fear of insecurities being exposed to significant others, accompanied by hypersensitivity to criticism, rejection, and blame.

Social isolation/alienation

The belief that one is isolated from other people; the feeling of not being a part of any groups.

Impaired autonomy and performance

Dependence/incompetence

The belief that one cannot handle daily responsibilities without the help of others.

Vulnerability to harm or illness

The belief system involves the exaggeration of fear that catastrophe will strike at any time; the catastrophes may be medical, emotional, or external.

Enmeshment/underdeveloped self

The belief system that one must please others at the expense of self or social development.

Failure

The belief that one will fail in everything.

Impaired limits

Entitlement/grandiosity

The belief that one is superior to others, which allows one to have special rights and privileges.

Insufficient self-control/self-discipline

The conflict between life goals and low self control, perhaps seeking comfort instead of trying to perform daily responsibilities.

Other-directedness

Subjugation

The belief that one should surrender control to others, suppressing desires in order to avoid anger, retaliation, or abandonment.

Self-sacrifice

The belief system involves excessive selflessness, focused on meeting the needs of others at the expense of one's own desire.

Approval-seeking/recognition-seeking

The desire to gain approval, recognition, or attention from other people at the expense of developing a secure and true sense of self.

Overvigilance and Inhibition

Negativity/pessimism

The belief system involving the overemphasis on the negative aspects of life including pain, death, loss, disappointment, conflict, guilt, resentment, unsolved problems, potential mistakes, betrayal, or things that could go wrong; neglecting positive aspects of life.

Overcontrol/emotional inhibition

The belief system involving the inhibition of actions, feelings, or communications to avoid negative consequences.

Unrelenting standards/hypercriticalness

The belief that one must strive to meet very high personal standards, usually to avoid criticism, leading to hypercriticalness toward self and/or others.

Punitiveness

The belief that people should face consequences for their mistakes.

 Schema Modes 

Schema modes are momentary mind states which every human being experiences at one time or another.[8] A schema mode consists of a cluster of schemas and coping styles. Life situations that a person finds disturbing or offensive, or arouses bad memories, are referred to as "triggers" that tend to activate schema modes. In psychologically healthy persons, schema modes are mild, flexible mind states that are easily pacified by the rest of their personality. In patients with personality disorders, schema modes are more severe, rigid mind states that may seem split off from the rest of their personality.

10 Modes, 4 categories

10 schema modes are grouped into four categories. The four categories are: Child modes, Dysfunctional Coping modes, Dysfunctional Parent modes, and the Healthy Adult mode. The four Child modes are: Vulnerable Child, Angry Child, Impulsive/Undisciplined Child, and Happy Child. The three Dysfunctional Coping modes are: Compliant Surrenderer, Detached Protector, and Overcompensator. The two Dysfunctional Parent modes are: Punitive Parent and Demanding Parent.

• Vulnerable Child is the mode in which a patient may feel defective in some way, thrown aside, unloved, obviously alone, or may be in a "me against the world" mindset. The patient may feel as though peers, friends, family, and even the entire world have abandoned them. Behaviors of patients in Vulnerable Child mode may include (but are not limited to) falling into major depression, pessimism, feeling unwanted, feeling unworthy of love, and perceiving personality traits as irredeemable flaws. Rarely, a patient's self-perceived flaws may be intentionally withheld on the inside; when this occurs, instead of showing one's true self, the patient may appear to others as "egotistical", "attention-seeking", selfish, distant, and may exhibit behaviors unlike their true nature. The patient might create a narcissistic alter-ego/persona in order to escape or hide the insecurity from others. Due to fear of rejection, of feeling disconnected from their true self and poor self-image, these patients, who truly desire companionship/affection, may instead end up pushing others away.

• Angry Child is fueled mainly by feelings of victimization or bitterness, leading towards negativity, pessimism, jealousy, and rage. While experiencing this schema mode, a patient may have urges to yell, scream, throw/break things, or possibly even injure themself or harm others. The Angry Child schema mode is enraged, anxious, frustrated, self-doubting, feels unsupported in ideas and vulnerable.

• Impulsive Child is the mode where anything goes. Behaviors of the Impulsive Child schema mode may include reckless driving, substance abuse, cutting oneself, suicidal thoughts, gambling, or fits of rage, such as punching a wall when "triggered" or laying blame of circumstantial difficulties upon innocent people. Unsafe sex, rash decisions to run away from a situation without resolution, tantrums perceived by peers as infantile, and so forth are a mere few of the behaviors which a patient in this schema mode might display. Impulsive Child is the rebellious and careless schema mode.

• Detached Protector is based in escape. Patients in Detached Protector schema mode withdraw, dissociate, alienate, or hide in some way. This may be triggered by numerous stress factors or feelings of being overwhelmed. When a patient with insufficient skills is in a situation involving excessive demands, it can trigger a Detached Protector response mode. Stated simply, patients become numb in order to protect themselves from the harm or stress of what they fear is to come, or to protect themselves from fear of the unknown in general.

• Punitive Parent is identified by beliefs of a patient that they should be harshly punished, perhaps due to feeling "defective", or making a simple mistake. The patient may feel that they should be punished for even existing. Sadness, anger, impatience, and judgment are directed to the patient and from the patient. The Punitive Parent has great difficulty in forgiving themself even under average circumstances in which anyone could fall short of their standards. The Punitive Parent does not wish to allow for human error or imperfection, thus punishment is what this mode seeks.

• Healthy Adult is the mode that schema therapy aims to help a patient achieve as the long-lasting state of well-being. The Healthy Adult is comfortable making decisions, is a problem-solver, thinks before acting, is appropriately ambitious, sets limits and boundaries, nurtures self and others, forms healthy relationships, takes on all responsibility, sees things through, and enjoys/partakes in enjoyable adult activities and interests with boundaries enforced, takes care of their physical health, and values themself. In this schema mode the patient focuses on the present day with hope and strives toward the best tomorrow possible. The Healthy Adult forgives the past, no longer sees themself as a victim (but as a survivor), and expresses all emotions in ways which are healthy and cause no harm.

These biases affect belief formation, reasoning processes, business and economic decisions, and human behavior in general.

The Mind Projection Fallacy

The mind projection fallacy is an informal fallacy first described by physicist and Bayesian philosopher E. T. Jaynes. In a first, "positive" form, it occurs when someone thinks that the way they see the world reflects the way the world really is, going as far as assuming the real existence of imagined objects.  That is, someone's subjective judgments are "projected" to be inherent properties of an object, rather than being related to personal perception. One consequence is that others may be assumed to share the same perception, or that they are irrational or misinformed if they do not. In a second "negative" form of the fallacy, as described by Jaynes, occurs when someone assumes that their own lack of knowledge about a phenomenon (a fact about their state of mind) means that the phenomenon is not or cannot be understood (a fact about reality; see also Map and territory.)

Jaynes used this concept to argue against Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. He described the fallacy as follows.

[I]n studying probability theory, it was vaguely troubling to see reference to "gaussian random variables", or "stochastic processes", or "stationary time series", or "disorder", as if the property of being gaussian, random, stochastic, stationary, or disorderly is a real property, like the property of possessing mass or length, existing in Nature. Indeed, some seek to develop statistical tests to determine the presence of these properties in their data...

Once one has grasped the idea, one sees the Mind Projection Fallacy everywhere; what we have been taught as deep wisdom, is stripped of its pretensions and seen to be instead a foolish non sequitur. The error occurs in two complementary forms, which we might indicate thus: (A) (My own imagination) → (Real property of Nature), [or] (B) (My own ignorance) → (Nature is indeterminate)

Anchoring bias 

The anchoring bias, or focalism, is the tendency to rely too heavily—to "anchor"—on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject). Anchoring bias includes or involves the following:

• Common source bias, the tendency to combine or compare research studies from the same source, or from sources that use the same methodologies or data.

• Conservatism bias, the tendency to insufficiently revise one's belief when presented with new evidence.

• Functional fixedness, a tendency limiting a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.

• Law of the instrument, an over-reliance on a familiar tool or methods, ignoring or under-valuing alternative approaches. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Apophenia  

The tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.  The following are types of apophenia:

• Clustering illusion, the tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).

• Illusory correlation, a tendency to inaccurately perceive a relationship between two unrelated events.

• Pareidolia, a tendency to perceive a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the Moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse.

Pareidolia 

Pareidolia (/ˌpærɪˈdoʊliə, ˌpɛər-/;[1] also US: /ˌpɛəraɪ-/)[2] is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none.Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, seeing faces in inanimate objects, or lunar pareidolia like the Man in the Moon or the Moon rabbit. The concept of pareidolia may extend to include hidden messages in recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds, and hearing voices (mainly indistinct) or music in random noise, such as that produced by air conditioners or fans.

Related phenomena 

A shadow person (also known as a shadow figure, shadow being or black mass) is often attributed to pareidolia. It is the perception of a patch of shadow as a living, humanoid figure, particularly as interpreted by believers in the paranormal or supernatural as the presence of a spirit or other entity. 

Pareidolia is also what some skeptics believe causes people to believe that they have seen ghosts.

The Availability Heuristic

The availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. This heuristic, operating on the notion that, if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions not as readily recalled,  is inherently biased toward recently acquired information.

The mental availability of an action's consequences is positively related to those consequences' perceived magnitude. In other words, the easier it is to recall the consequences of something, the greater those consequences are often perceived to be. Most notably, people often rely on the content of their recall if its implications are not called into question by the difficulty they have in recalling it.The availability heuristic includes or involves the following:

• Anthropocentric thinking, the tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena.

• Anthropomorphism or personification, the tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions.] The opposite bias, of not attributing feelings or thoughts to another person, is dehumanized perception. a type of objectification.

• Attentional bias, the tendency of perception to be affected by recurring thoughts.

• Frequency illusion or Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. The frequency illusion is that once something has been noticed then every instance of that thing is noticed, leading to the belief it has a high frequency of occurrence (a form of selection bias). The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon is the illusion where something that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards.  It was named after an incidence of frequency illusion in which the Baader–Meinhof Group was mentioned.

• Implicit association, where the speed with which people can match words depends on how closely they are associated.

• Salience bias, the tendency to focus on items that are more prominent or emotionally striking and ignore those that are unremarkable, even though this difference is often irrelevant by objective standards. See also von Restorff effect.

• Selection bias, which happens when the members of a statistical sample are not chosen completely at random, which leads to the sample not being representative of the population.

• Survivorship bias, which is concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility.

• Well travelled road effect, the tendency to underestimate the duration taken to traverse oft-travelled routes and overestimate the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes.

External Attribution Bias

External attribution, also called situational attribution, refers to interpreting someone's behavior as being caused by the individual's environment.] For example, if one's car tire is punctured, it may be attributed to a hole in the road; by making attributions to the poor condition of the highway, one can make sense of the event without any discomfort that it may in reality have been the result of their own bad driving.[14] Individuals are more likely to associate unfortunate events with external factors than with internal factors.[15]

A person is using external attributions as a way not to use hearing aids. Examples of this are: A patient does not have the money to afford hearing aids, so they do not purchase them. A person believes using hearing aids would make them a burden to people they are around, so they do not wear them. A person does not trust the doctor that is prescribing them hearing aids. Lastly, a person believes that other health conditions, either about themselves or someone else in their life, take priority over their need for hearing aids.

Internal Attribution Bias

Internal attribution, or dispositional attribution, refers to the process of assigning the cause of behavior to some internal characteristic, likeability and motivation, rather than to outside forces.[17] This concept has overlap with the Locus of control, in which individuals feel they are personally responsible for everything that happens to them.

A person uses internal attributions to justify not wearing their prescribed hearing aids. Examples of this are: A patient believes the hearing aids not to be necessary, so they choose not to wear them. A patient fears being stigmatized for having a disability and requiring hearing aids to hear correctly, so they decide not to wear them. A patient is struggling with adding hearing aids into their everyday life and believes it to be easier not to wear them. Lastly, a patient does not fully understand the benefits that hearing aids will give them, so they choose not to wear them despite the benefits hearing aids would grant them.

Attribution bias includes:

• Actor-observer bias, the tendency for explanations of other individuals' behaviors to overemphasize the influence of their personality and underemphasize the influence of their situation (see also Fundamental attribution error), and for explanations of one's own behaviors to do the opposite (that is, to overemphasize the influence of our situation and underemphasize the influence of our own personality).

• Defensive attribution hypothesis, a tendency to attribute more blame to a harm-doer as the outcome becomes more severe or as personal or situational similarity to the victim increases.

• Extrinsic incentives bias, an exception to the fundamental attribution error, where people view others as having (situational) extrinsic motivations and (dispositional) intrinsic motivations for oneself

• Fundamental attribution error, the tendency for people to overemphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behaviour see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).

• Group attribution error, the biased belief that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole or the tendency to assume that group decision outcomes reflect the preferences of group members, even when information is available that clearly suggests otherwise.

• Hostile attribution bias, the tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign.

• Intentionality bias, the tendency to judge human action to be intentional rather than accidental.[128]

• Just-world hypothesis, the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just, causing them to rationalize an otherwise inexplicable injustice as deserved by the victim(s).

• Moral luck, the tendency for people to ascribe greater or lesser moral standing based on the outcome of an event.

• Puritanical bias, the tendency to attribute cause of an undesirable outcome or wrongdoing by an individual to a moral deficiency or lack of self-control rather than taking into account the impact of broader societal determinants.

• Self-serving bias, the tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests (see also group-serving bias).

• Ultimate attribution error, similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.

Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. There are multiple other cognitive biases which involve or are types of confirmation bias:

• Backfire effect, a tendency to react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one's previous beliefs.

• Congruence bias, the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.

• Experimenter's or expectation bias, the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.

• Observer-expectancy effect, when a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect).

• Selective perception, the tendency for expectations to affect perception.

• Semmelweis reflex, the tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm.

Egocentric bias

Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a different perception of oneself relative to others. The following are forms of egocentric bias:

• Bias blind spot, the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.

• False consensus effect, the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.[36]

• False uniqueness bias, the tendency of people to see their projects and themselves as more singular than they actually are.

• Forer effect or Barnum effect, the tendency for individuals 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. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests.

• Illusion of asymmetric insight, where people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them.

• Illusion of control, the tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.[40]

• Illusion of transparency, the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which their personal mental state is known by others, and to overestimate how well they understand others' personal mental states.

• Illusion of validity, the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one's judgments, especially when available information is consistent or inter-correlated.

• Illusory superiority, the tendency to overestimate one's desirable qualities, and underestimate undesirable qualities, relative to other people. (Also known as "Lake Wobegon effect", "better-than-average effect", or "superiority bias".)

• Naïve cynicism, expecting more egocentric bias in others than in oneself.

• Naïve realism, the belief that we see reality as it really is—objectively and without bias; that the facts are plain for all to see; that rational people will agree with us; and that those who do not are either uninformed, lazy, irrational, or biased.

• Overconfidence effect, a tendency to have excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.

• Planning fallacy, the tendency for people to underestimate the time it will take them to complete a given task.

• Restraint bias, the tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.

• Trait ascription bias, the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior, and mood while viewing others as much more predictable.

• Third-person effect, a tendency to believe that mass-communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves.

Extension neglect

The following are forms of extension neglect:

• Base rate fallacy or base rate neglect, the tendency to ignore general information and focus on information only pertaining to the specific case, even when the general information is more important.

• Compassion fade, the tendency to behave more compassionately towards a small number of identifiable victims than to a large number of anonymous ones.

• Conjunction fallacy, the tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than a more general version of those same conditions.

• Duration neglect, the neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value.

• Hyperbolic discounting, where discounting is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. Hyperbolic discounting leads to choices that are inconsistent over time—people make choices today that their future selves would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning.[51] Also known as current moment bias or present bias, and related to Dynamic inconsistency. A good example of this is a study showed that when making food choices for the coming week, 74% of participants chose fruit, whereas when the food choice was for the current day, 70% chose chocolate.

• Insensitivity to sample size, the tendency to under-expect variation in small samples.

• Less-is-better effect, the tendency to prefer a smaller set to a larger set judged separately, but not jointly.

• Neglect of probability, the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.[52]

• Scope neglect or scope insensitivity, the tendency to be insensitive to the size of a problem when evaluating it. For example, being willing to pay as much to save 2,000 children or 20,000 children.

• Zero-risk bias, the preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

False priors

False priors are initial beliefs and knowledge which interfere with the unbiased evaluation of factual evidence and lead to incorrect conclusions. Biases based on false priors include:

• Agent detection bias, the inclination to presume the purposeful intervention of a sentient or intelligent agent.

• Automation bias, the tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions.

• Gender bias, a widespread set of implicit biases that discriminate against a gender. For example, the assumption that women are less suited to jobs requiring high intellectual ability. Or the assumption that people or animals are male in the absence of any indicators of gender.

• Sexual overperception bias, the tendency to overestimate sexual interest of another person in oneself, and Sexual underperception bias, the tendency to underestimate it.

• Stereotyping, expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.

Framing effect

The framing effect is the tendency to draw different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented. Forms of the framing effect include:

• Contrast effect, the enhancement or reduction of a certain stimulus's perception when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.

• Decoy effect, where preferences for either option A or B change in favor of option B when option C is presented, which is completely dominated by option B (inferior in all respects) and partially dominated by option A.

• Default effect, the tendency to favor the default option when given a choice between several options.

• Denomination effect, the tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g., coins) rather than large amounts (e.g., bills).

• Distinction bias, the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.

• Domain neglect bias, the tendency to neglect relevant domain knowledge while solving interdisciplinary problems.

Logical fallacy

Logical fallacy biases include:

• Berkson's paradox, the tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities.

• Escalation of commitment, irrational escalation, or sunk cost fallacy, where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong.

• G.I. Joe fallacy, the tendency to think that knowing about cognitive bias is enough to overcome it.

• Gambler's fallacy, the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads..”

• Hot-hand fallacy (also known as "hot hand phenomenon" or "hot hand"), the belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts.

• Plan continuation bias, failure to recognize that the original plan of action is no longer appropriate for a changing situation or for a situation that is different from anticipated.[66]

• Subadditivity effect, the tendency to judge the probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.

• Time-saving bias, a tendency to underestimate the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively low speed, and to overestimate the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively high speed.

• Zero-sum bias, where a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another).

Prospect theory

The following relate to prospect theory:

• Ambiguity effect, the tendency to avoid options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.

• Disposition effect, the tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.

• Dread aversion, just as losses yield double the emotional impact of gains, dread yields double the emotional impact of savouring.

• Endowment effect, the tendency for people to demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.

• Loss aversion, where the perceived disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it, (see also Sunk cost fallacy)

• Pseudocertainty effect, the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.

• Status quo bias, the tendency to prefer things to stay relatively the same.

• System justification, the tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest.

Self-assessment

• Dunning–Kruger effect, the tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.

• Hot-cold empathy gap, the tendency to underestimate the influence of visceral drives on one's attitudes, preferences, and behaviors.

• Hard–easy effect, the tendency to overestimate one's ability to accomplish hard tasks, and underestimate one's ability to accomplish easy tasks.

• Illusion of explanatory depth, the tendency to believe that one understands a topic much better than one actually does. The effect is strongest for explanatory knowledge, whereas people tend to be better at self-assessments for procedural, narrative, or factual knowledge.

• Impostor Syndrome, a psychological occurrence in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Also known as impostor phenomenon.

• Objectivity illusion, the phenomena where people tend to believe that they are more objective and unbiased than others. This bias can apply to itself - where people are able to see when others are affected by the objectivity illusion, but unable to see it in themselves. See also bias blind spot.

Truthiness

• Belief bias, an effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.

• Illusory truth effect, the tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity. These are specific cases of truthiness.

• Rhyme as reason effect, where rhyming statements are perceived as more truthful.

• Subjective validation, where statements are perceived as true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences. (Compare confirmation bias.)

Other bias

Action bias

The tendency for someone to act when faced with a problem even when inaction would be more effective, or to act when no evident problem exists.

Additive bias

The tendency to solve problems through addition, even when subtraction is a better approach.

Attribute substitution

Occurs when a judgment has to be made (of a target attribute) that is computationally complex, and instead a more easily calculated heuristic attribute is substituted. This substitution is thought of as taking place in the automatic intuitive judgment system, rather than the more self-aware reflective system.

Curse of knowledge

When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.

Declinism

The predisposition to view the past favorably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.

End-of-history illusion

The age-independent belief that one will change less in the future than one has in the pas.

Exaggerated expectation

The tendency to expect or predict more extreme outcomes than those outcomes that actually happen.

Form function attribution bias

In human–robot interaction, the tendency of people to make systematic errors when interacting with a robot. People may base their expectations and perceptions of a robot on its appearance (form) and attribute functions which do not necessarily mirror the true functions of the robot.

Fundamental pain bias

The tendency for people to believe they accurately report their own pain levels while holding the paradoxical belief that others exaggerate it.

Hindsight bias

Sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable before they happened.

Impact bias

The tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.

Information bias

The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

Interoceptive bias or Hungry judge effect

The tendency for sensory input about the body itself to affect one's judgement about external, unrelated circumstances. (As for example, in parole judges who are more lenient when fed and rested.)[98][99][100][101]

Money illusion

The tendency to concentrate on the nominal value (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power.]

Moral credential effect

Occurs when someone who does something good gives themselves permission to be less good in the future.

Non-adaptive choice switching

After experiencing a bad outcome with a decision problem, the tendency to avoid the choice previously made when faced with the same decision problem again, even though the choice was optimal. Also known as "once bitten, twice shy" or "hot stove effect".

Mere exposure effect or

familiarity principle (in social psychology)

The tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.

Omission bias

The tendency to judge harmful actions (commissions) as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful inactions (omissions).

Optimism bias

The tendency to be over-optimistic, underestimating greatly the probability of undesirable outcomes and overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes (see also wishful thinking, valence effect, positive outcome bias, and compare pessimism bias.

Ostrich effect

Ignoring an obvious negative situation.

Outcome bias

The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Pessimism bias

The tendency for some people, especially those with depression, to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening to them. (compare optimism bias)

Present bias

The tendency of people to give stronger weight to payoffs that are closer to the present time when considering trade-offs between two future moments.

Plant blindness

The tendency to ignore plants in their environment and a failure to recognize and appreciate the utility of plants to life on earth.

Prevention bias

When investing money to protect against risks, decision makers perceive that a dollar spent on prevention buys more security than a dollar spent on timely detection and response, even when investing in either option is equally effective.

Probability matching

Sub-optimal matching of the probability of choices with the probability of reward in a stochastic context.

Pro-innovation bias

The tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation's usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses.

Projection bias

The tendency to overestimate how much our future selves share one's current preferences, thoughts and values, thus leading to sub-optimal choices.

Proportionality bias

Our innate tendency to assume that big events have big causes, may also explain our tendency to accept conspiracy theories.

Recency illusion

The illusion that a phenomenon one has noticed only recently is itself recent. Often used to refer to linguistic phenomena; the illusion that a word or language usage that one has noticed only recently is an innovation when it is, in fact, long-established (see also frequency illusion). Also recency bias is a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones. A memory bias, recency bias gives "greater importance to the most recent event". such as the final lawyer's closing argument a jury hears before being dismissed to deliberate.

Systematic bias

Judgement that arises when targets of differentiating judgement become subject to effects of regression that are not equivalent.

Risk compensation or Peltzman effect

The tendency to take greater risks when perceived safety increases.

Surrogation

Losing sight of the strategic construct that a measure is intended to represent, and subsequently acting as though the measure is the construct of interest.

Turkey illusion

Absence of expectation of sudden trend breaks in continuous developments

Parkinson's law of triviality

The tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Also known as bikeshedding, this bias explains why an organization may avoid specialized or complex subjects, such as the design of a nuclear reactor, and instead focus on something easy to grasp or rewarding to the average participant, such as the design of an adjacent bike shed.

Unconscious bias or implicit bias

The underlying attitudes and stereotypes that people unconsciously attribute to another person or group of people that affect how they understand and engage with them. Many researchers suggest that unconscious bias occurs automatically as the brain makes quick judgments based on past experiences and background.

Unit bias

The standard suggested amount of consumption (e.g., food serving size) is perceived to be appropriate, and a person would consume it all even if it is too much for this particular person.

Value selection bias

The tendency to rely on numerical information in a problem when reasoning in unfamiliar contexts, even if calculations or numerical manipulation is required.

Weber–Fechner law

Difficulty in comparing small differences in large quantities.

Women are wonderful effect

A tendency to associate more positive attributes with women than with men.

Association fallacy

Association fallacies include:

• Authority bias, the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion.

• Cheerleader effect, the tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.[124]

• Halo effect, the tendency for a person's positive or negative traits to "spill over" from one personality area to another in others' perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype)

On the physical dimension (Umwelt), individuals relate to their environment and the givens of the natural world around them. This includes their attitude to the body they have, to the concrete surroundings they find themselves in, to the climate and the weather, to objects and material possessions, to the bodies of other people, their own bodily needs, to health and illness and their mortality. The struggle on this dimension is, in general terms, between the search for domination over the elements and natural law (as in technology, or in sports) and the need to accept the limitations of natural boundaries (as in ecology or old age). While people generally aim for security on this dimension (through health and wealth), much of life brings a gradual disillusionment and realization that such security can only be temporary. Recognizing limitations can deliver a significant release of tension. 

On the social dimension (Mitwelt), individuals relate to others as they interact with the public world around them. This dimension includes their response to the culture they live in, as well as to the class and race they belong to (and also those they do not belong to). Attitudes here range from love to hate and from cooperation to competition. The dynamic contradictions can be understood concerning acceptance versus rejection or belonging versus isolation. Some people prefer to withdraw from the world of others as much as possible. Others blindly chase public acceptance by going along with the rules and fashions of the moment. Otherwise, they try to rise above these by becoming trendsetters themselves. By acquiring fame or other forms of power, individuals can attain dominance over others temporarily. Sooner or later, however, everyone is confronted with both failure and aloneness.

On the psychological dimension (Eigenwelt), individuals relate to themselves and in this way create a personal world. This dimension includes views about their character, their past experience and their future possibilities. Contradictions here are often experienced regarding personal strengths and weaknesses. People search for a sense of identity, a feeling of being substantial and having a self.

But inevitably many events will confront them with evidence to the contrary and plunge them into a state of confusion or disintegration. Activity and passivity are an important polarity here. Self-affirmation and resolution go with the former and surrender and yielding with the latter. Facing the final dissolution of self that comes with personal loss and the facing of death might bring anxiety and confusion to many who have not yet given up their sense of self-importance.

On the spiritual dimension (Überwelt) (van Deurzen, 1984), individuals relate to the unknown and thus create a sense of an ideal world, an ideology, and a philosophical outlook. It is there that they find meaning by putting all the pieces of the puzzle together for themselves. For some people, this is done by adhering to a religion or other prescriptive worldview; for others, it is about discovering or attributing meaning in a more secular or personal way. The contradictions that must be faced on this dimension are often related to the tension between purpose and absurdity, hope and despair. People create their values in search of something that matters enough to live or die for, something that may even have ultimate and universal validity. Usually, the aim is the conquest of a soul or something that will substantially surpass mortality (as in having contributed something valuable to humankind). Facing the void and the possibility of nothingness are the indispensable counterparts of this quest for the eternal.