cognitive biases

Has Naive Cynicism Become A Literary Problem?

Naive cynicism is a cognitive bias, and a particularly tough one to argue against. It’s blamed for all kinds of trouble in the real world. Could it also be a problem when creating fictional worlds? Naive cynicism basically means we tend to think that other people suck far more than they actually do. It’s at…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Mar 18

How to manipulate people into choosing the worst option

When we are choosing which action to take, one of the most basic calculations which guide us is, “How likely is it to lead to one option or another.” We need to think of all possible outcomes, and the rough probability of each one occurring. There is a problem with this. We are not great…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Mar 6

Make people misjudge your attractiveness with the Cheerleader Effect

Want to appear more attractive to people? Only show pictures of yourself when you’re with your friends. Amazingly, this is not marketing — you don’t appear more attractive because you’re popular or loved, you actually trick people’s brains into considering your face more attractive. Cheerleaders are a kind of group hypnotism act. Their energy, their…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Mar 3

The principle of “near enough” proves anyone is psychic

So you’ve completed a psychic test. The test has turned up exactly zero psychics. How can you get a psychic data with no psychics? Use the law of “near enough” to expand the parameters of the test! It’s all about things that are almost coincidences — the sort of thing that inspire conspiracy theories the…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 24

Why Hipsters Are All the Same

Are you sick of so many bearded, flannel-shirted, thick-rimmed-eyeglass wearers slowing down the lines in your coffee shop before they crowd up your sidewalk as they scoot their way to their artisan butchery class? Are you tired of that quirkily homogeneous mass of humanity? We’ll tell you why it exists. There’s a reason why there’s…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 23

Why rhyming phrases are more persuasive

Want to convince someone of something? Make up a rhyme. They may think it’s cutesy, but they’ll still believe it more readily than if it were stated plainly. At least until they are asked to think about it a little. Rhymes are easy to remember because they contain their conclusion in their premise. “Red sky…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 18

Don’t worry, you’re not as below average as you think you are

People, no offense to those who might be reading, are conceited nitwits who think they’re far better at things than they actually are. But it also turns out there are certain situations in which they are convinced they’re way worse than they actually are. Here’s how low self-esteem strikes a blow against accuracy. In general,…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 17

What’s behind the IKEA Effect?

IKEA stores now populate the suburbs of America. They spring up wherever there is enough space to hold their gargantuan facilities. Why are they so popular? Price is one factor, but also there’s something called the IKEA Effect: You value something that you build more than something you buy ready-made. This is true, even if…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 4

Why what you do makes sense and what other people do is dumb

Why, oh why, do people do all those stupid things? The answer, according to psychologists, depends on whether you are the person doing the things — or the person watching and reeling at their idiocy. For instance, remember how you woke up this morning. What did you do, and why did you do it? Maybe…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jan 20

The night the Gambler’s Fallacy lost people millions

The Gambler’s Fallacy goes by a lot of names. It’s the Monte Carlo Fallacy, the Finite Supply Fallacy, or Fallacy of the Maturity of Chances. Whatever it’s called, it loses people a lot of money. One time, it lost people millions of dollars in one night. The Gambler’s Fallacy The Gambler’s Fallacy is the idea…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jan 8

This is why advertising works — even when you think it doesn’t

Are you unfazed by ads? Annoyed by them? Do you simply “edit them out”? It doesn’t matter what the answer is, because they probably work anyway. Advertising doesn’t have to be good, it has to rely on the “mere-exposure effect.” Does something have to be good for you to like it? No. It just has…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Dec 6

The congruence bias is why we all jump to conclusions and stay there

We like to think of ourselves as open-minded, but we’re not. The problem is not that, once we’ve found a solution to a problem, we refuse to think of alternatives. It’s that we don’t even realize that there are alternatives to consider. If you remember someone having a name “like Megan,” it’s going to be…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Nov 29

The experiment that led to the concept of “Thinking Outside the Box”

“Thinking outside the box,” has become the annoying phrase we hear in commercials and bad business meetings. It stems from an actual psychological concept called functional fixedness. Funnily enough, the classic experiment to demonstrate functional fixedness required people to think inside the box. If you’ve spent more than an hour watching television in the last…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Nov 17

How a cognitive bias made people think their neighbors were spies

We all have cognitive biases. Most often, these biases stick us with nothing more than bad cellphone service or a little gambling debt. Occasionally, though, they cause us to accuse our neighbors of espionage. The reason why is called the Clustering Illusion. Randomness isn’t obvious, and there’s a way to demonstrate that. An interesting exercise,…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Oct 30

You might hold the right beliefs for the wrong reasons

What’s the best way to get people to believe faulty logic is sound? Use that faulty logic to convince them of something that they already believe. People will tread any shoddy path if it gets them somewhere they already want to go. This is why politically slanted media is so common. People will consume media…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Oct 17

Is the Peak-End Rule responsible for overlong movies?

Most people think they judge a movie by its overall quality, but that might not be true. We might instead judge it by its best scene, and its spectacular ending. And this might explain a few things about movies. But first, let me tell you a tale. There once was an experiment! This experiment lived…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Sep 13

Hide your greater sins by listing your lesser ones

Have you screwed up a lot of different things? Do you want to hide the worst of your screw-ups? There’s an easy way — just tell people only your smallest mistakes. When people have to remember a long list of things, you can erase some of the items on their mental list by prompting them…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Sep 12

A Test to Measure How Rational You Really Are

Standard IQ tests are problematic on many levels — not least, because they do very little to tell us about the quality of our thinking. Looking to overcome this oversight, psychologist Keith Stanovich has started to work on the first-ever Rationality Quotient test. We spoke to him to learn more. Keith E. Stanovich is Professor…

io9 George Dvorsky Jun 28

The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational

The human brain is capable of 1016 processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn’t mean our brains don’t have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus,…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 9

Has Naive Cynicism Become A Literary Problem?

How to manipulate people into choosing the worst option

Make people misjudge your attractiveness with the Cheerleader Effect

The principle of “near enough” proves anyone is psychic

Why Hipsters Are All the Same

Why rhyming phrases are more persuasive

Don’t worry, you’re not as below average as you think you are

What’s behind the IKEA Effect?

Why what you do makes sense and what other people do is dumb

The night the Gambler’s Fallacy lost people millions

This is why advertising works — even when you think it doesn’t

The congruence bias is why we all jump to conclusions and stay there

The experiment that led to the concept of “Thinking Outside the Box”

How a cognitive bias made people think their neighbors were spies

You might hold the right beliefs for the wrong reasons

Is the Peak-End Rule responsible for overlong movies?

Hide your greater sins by listing your lesser ones

A Test to Measure How Rational You Really Are

The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational

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