During World War II, early studies of damage inflicted on US bombers focused on the damage sustained by planes that made it back to their bases. The decision was made to reinforce the areas most often damaged by enemy fire.
It was soon realized, however, that this was excluding the most important sources of data—the planes that never made it back to base. It became apparent that the most important places to reinforce the craft were where they had not been hit. Because the planes that were hit there hadn’t returned.
This is an excellent historical example of survivorship bias because the planes were literally the survivors, but they lacked the most important data.
Continue reading: What is a historical example of survivorship bias?
There are many types of selection bias, including:
- Attrition bias
- Sampling bias
- Survivorship bias
- Self-selection bias
- Undercoverage bias
- Non-response bias
Continue reading: What are some examples of selection bias?
The priming effect describes the way our brains use already-received information to help understand subsequent information. It should not be confused with the primacy effect, or primacy bias.
A common example is that when primed with the word “yellow,” we process the word “banana” more quickly than the word “television,” because we associate bananas with their color.
Teachers are often told to structure their lessons into three stages: tell the students what the lesson will be (the priming effect), teach the lesson, and then finally tell the students what they have just been taught (see the recency bias).
Continue reading: What is the priming effect?
Primacy bias, or the primacy effect, is a cognitive bias (a type of mental shortcut) that gives undue prominence to information we receive early in a process (e.g., we are more likely to remember information from the beginning of a presentation than from the middle).
These mental shortcuts (also called “heuristics”) make it possible for our brains to function despite the possibly overwhelming volume of data and stimuli they have to process.
Most of the time, these heuristics work well and allow us to function. At times, though, they can introduce biases that then affect our decision-making negatively.
Continue reading: What is primacy bias?
Anchoring bias can occur, for example, in salary negotiations or bargaining for goods such as a used car. Seeing vehicles that are out of our price range might provide a high anchor point that makes cheaper cars seem like good value, even if they are overpriced.
Anchoring bias is seen in marketing all the time with products stated as being “worth hundreds of dollars” but being offered for “only” a much cheaper price. The initial anchor of “hundreds of dollars” makes $39.99 seem like good value.
Continue reading: When does anchoring bias occur?
Anchoring and adjustment bias is a heuristic (mental shortcut) we use to estimate the answer to a general knowledge question. The anchor element is an initial educated guess, and it tends to limit how much we adjust our answers.
For example, if asked to estimate how long one billion seconds is, most people will underestimate the difference between one million and one billion (even though we know a billion is one thousand million).
So even if we know that a million seconds is equal to 12 days, few will correctly estimate a billion seconds correctly at 31 years.
Continue reading: What is anchoring and adjustment bias?
The difference between anchoring bias and availability bias is that the former is a response to external or internal anchors that work as a starting point for estimates we form, whereas the latter favors the most recently available data.
Availability bias describes when a recent event (e.g., a plane crash) affects our assessment of how safe air travel is, because it is recent and well-publicized.
Anchoring bias can be seen in situations like purchasing a car. When we are offered, for example, a car for $20,000 that we can’t afford, that figure becomes an anchor, and a subsequent car priced at $15,000 seems cheap (even if it is objectively overpriced).
Continue reading: Is there a difference between anchoring bias and availability bias?
Self-serving bias is a problem for us because it hampers improvement and growth. Instead of an honest reflection and appraisal of why things have gone well or badly, we blame outside forces for our own shortcomings.
Continue reading: Is self-serving bias a problem?
Self-serving bias is quite easily observed in real life. For example, if I am late for work, I might easily blame the traffic, a slow driver I was stuck behind, or having to wait for a passenger. If I am on time, I might congratulate myself for planning ahead and taking account of possible hold-ups. In both cases, my self-esteem is preserved.
The old saying “a bad workman always blames his tools” is another way of stating at least part of the self-serving bias. The other part is taking credit when things go well.
Continue reading: What are some examples of self-serving bias in real life?
Both actor-observer bias and self-serving bias are types of cognitive bias. Although they both help to explain our behavior, they are quite distinct.
Self-serving bias explains how we analyze the way we have behaved, depending on whether the outcome is positive or negative. For example, if we perform well in an examination, we are likely to credit ourselves, whereas if we perform badly, we will criticize the questions, our health, or other external factors.
Actor-observer bias describes how we attribute the cause of undesirable behavior in others to their own characteristics and our own undesirable behavior to external factors. If we (the actor) are late for a meeting, we might blame the traffic or other drivers, but if someone else is late, we (the observer) blame their lack of planning or foresight.
Continue reading: What is the difference between actor-observer bias and self-serving bias?