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Cognitive biases
Cognitive biases
You may be able to detect the influence of existing meaning schemas on your perception and memory by actively looking for examples of common cognitive biases.
Anchoring — are you evaluating experiences relative to your first encounter which may have set your expectations too high or too low?
Apophenia — are you seeing connections or patterns that don't actually exist just because you want them to?
Availability heuristic — are you making associations with other experiences just because they are fresh in your memory or have strong emotional triggers?
Confirmation bias — were you looking for information to justify your beliefs and ignoring information that contradicted them?
Egocentric bias — are you assuming that your perception of the phenomenon is more valid than anyone else's?
Fundamental attribution error — are you explaining someone else's behaviour in terms of internal factors (personality, motivations) and ignoring external factors (circumstances)?
Hindsight bias — are you projecting your knowledge of the outcome into your memories of your thinking at the time of the event?
Hot-cold empathy gap — are you failing to account for the effect of your physical state (e.g. hunger, tiredness, arousal) on your decisions and behaviour?
Levelling and sharpening — are you adding details to the bits of your memory that you consider significant and losing details from the bits you consider irrelevant?
Normalcy bias — did you ignore things because you were expecting things to be as they usually are?
Self-serving bias — are you giving yourself too much credit for your successes and explaining away your failures?
Social desirability bias — are you explaining your actions and motivations in ways which make you look good to yourself and others?
These are ways of thinking that can lead to unreliable evaluations of our experiences (e.g. habitual pessimism) and can even warp our perceptions of the world, of other people and of ourselves.
All-or-nothing thinking (also known as splitting or black-and-white thinking). This follows the basic formula 'If it's not completely X then it is the opposite of X." (See semiotic square and both-and thinking.)
Mind reading. This involves making unjustified and unconfirmed assumptions about the attitudes and opinions of other people based on minimal information and then acting on these assumptions as if they are verified facts. (See VITAE.)
Fortune telling. This involves assuming that particular (usually negative) outcomes are inevitable and acting in a way that turns them into self-fulfilling prophecies. (See cause-and-effect mapping and scenario planning.)
Labelling. This involves characterising complex people or events in an over-generalised, simplistic way and then only paying attention to evidence that supports your labelling (confirmation bias). (See socio-linguistic analysis and the dangers of naming.)
Emotional reasoning. This involves believing that the way you feel about something reflects the whole reality (e.g. 'I feel like I'm being victimised and so I must be being victimised'). (See emotional reappraisal.)
Personalisation and blaming. This is a form of all-or-nothing thinking in relation to locus of control — everything is either totally your responsibility (100% internal) or totally not your responsibility (100% external). (See cause-and-effect mapping and counterfactual thinking.)
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