Learn empathy in design with practical examples
Understand biases in product design with our comprehensive empathy library of 160+ well researched examples. Get tips on how to build better services with deep insights of human behaviour.
Availability Heuristic
- Cognitive Accessibility Shapes Perception
This heuristic influences us to overvalue information that is easily remembered, skewing decisions towards what's recent or memorable.
Attentional Bias
- Directed Focus Shapes Our World
Focuses our attention on certain details while ignoring others, influenced by current thoughts or emotions, affecting product usability and design.
Illusory Truth Effect
- Familiarity Breeds Belief
The tendency to believe information to be true if it's encountered repeatedly, affecting marketing and product messaging strategies.
Mere-Exposure Effect
- Preference Through Repeated Exposure
We tend to develop a preference for things merely because we are familiar with them, impacting product design and feature enhancements.
Context Effect
- Perception Shaped by Environment
Our perception and decision-making are influenced by the surrounding context, affecting how products are used in different environments.
Cue-Dependent Forgetting
- Memory Tied to Cues
Recall difficulty unless specific cues are present, impacting interface design and information retrieval systems.
Mood–congruent
- Emotions Influence Recall
Our current mood influences the recall of memories congruent with that mood, affecting user interaction with products.
Frequency Illusion
- Noticing Increases Perception
Once we notice something, we tend to see it everywhere, which can skew product design towards recent trends or feedback.
Empathy Gap
- Understanding Diverges Under Different States
Our ability to predict our own or others' desires or behaviors under different emotional states can be flawed, affecting product design that fails to consider user context.
Omission Bias
- The Inaction Influence
We tend to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions). This can affect decision-making processes in product development, leading users to prefer products that 'do no harm' by omission over those that take an active stance, potentially leading to passive product features.
Base Rate Fallacy
- Neglecting Base Rates
The tendency to ignore base rate information (generic, general information) and focus on specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case). This can lead to skewed perceptions of a product's usefulness or safety.
Bizarreness Effect
- Oddity Enhances Memory
Information that is bizarre or odd in some way is more likely to be remembered than typical, non-bizarre information. This can influence marketing and product design strategies to make use of unusual or unexpected features to grab attention.
Humor Effect
- Laughter Leads to Learning
We're more likely to remember information if it is presented in a humorous way. This can be leveraged in educational content within products to enhance retention and engagement.
Von Restorff Effect
- The Isolation Effect
Information that stands out in some way (e.g., through uniqueness or novelty) is more likely to be remembered than other information. This effect can be used in product design to highlight key features or information.
Picture Superiority Effect
- Images Beat Words
People are more likely to remember information presented as pictures rather than as words. This has implications for instructional design, user interfaces, and marketing.
Self-Reference Effect
- Personal Connection Enhances Memory
Information relating to oneself is more likely to be remembered than information that has no personal relevance. This can influence the personalization features of products to increase engagement and retention.
Negativity Bias
- The Power of Negative
We're more likely to remember and be affected by negative experiences than positive ones. This can impact user feedback and product reviews, where negative aspects of a product might be more prominently remembered and shared.
Anchoring
- First Impressions Last
The tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the 'anchor') when making decisions. This can affect how products are priced, how features are introduced, and how negotiations are framed.
Conservatism
- Resistance to Change
Conservatism in belief revision refers to the tendency to underweight new evidence and maintain prior beliefs or predictions. This can influence how users perceive updates or changes in a product, potentially leading to resistance against new versions or features.
Contrast Effect
- Comparison Alters Perception
The contrast effect occurs when the value of a proposition is changed by comparing it to a recently observed contrasting proposition. This can impact user decisions in a product's favor or disfavor, depending on the alternatives presented alongside.
Distinction Bias
- Enhanced Differentiation in Comparison
Distinction bias describes the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately. This can affect how users choose between product versions or features.
Framing Effect
- Influence of Presentation
The framing effect is the tendency of our decisions to be influenced by the way information is presented, rather than just the information itself. This can significantly affect user behavior and choices, such as the perceived usability of a product based on its description.
Money Illusion
- Nominal vs. Real Value Perception
The money illusion refers to the tendency of people to think of currency in nominal, rather than real, terms. In other words, they focus on the face value of money rather than its purchasing power. This can influence how pricing and salary adjustments are perceived by users or employees.
Weber–Fechner Law
- Sensory Perception's Logarithmic Scale
The Weber–Fechner law describes the logarithmic relationship between stimulus magnitude and perceived intensity. In product design, this affects how incremental changes in a product's features or services are perceived by users.
Confirmation Bias
- Seeking Confirming Evidence
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. This impacts how users interact with information or features within a product, potentially skewing their experience based on their expectations.
Congruence Bias
- Testing Hypotheses Narrowly
Congruence bias occurs when individuals rely solely on direct testing of a given hypothesis, rather than considering alternative hypotheses that could also explain the data. This can lead to narrow product testing and missed opportunities for innovation.
Choice-Supportive Bias
- Affection for Chosen Options
Choice-supportive bias is the tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were, affecting how users perceive and interact with chosen products or features over time.
Selective Perception
- Filtering Information Based on Beliefs
Selective perception is the tendency for expectations to affect perception, meaning that people are more likely to notice things that fit into their existing beliefs and ignore things that contradict them. This can influence how users interact with and perceive product features and information.
Observer-Expectancy Effect
- Expectations Influence Outcomes
The observer-expectancy effect occurs when a researcher's expectations or beliefs about the outcome of an experiment or study influence the results. This can affect user testing and research in product development, leading to biased data based on the expectations of the observer.
Ostrich Effect
- Ignoring Negative Information
The ostrich effect describes the tendency to avoid or ignore negative information or feedback. This can lead to a lack of responsiveness to critical user feedback in product development, impacting the product's improvement and user satisfaction.
Subjective Validation
- Personal Relevance Creates Belief
Subjective validation occurs when two unrelated or even random events are perceived to be related because a personal belief or hypothesis demands it. In product messaging and user experience, this can lead to users forming connections between their experiences and the product that may not be intentionally designed.
Continued Influence Effect
- Misinformation Persists
Part of the confirmation bias family, the continued influence effect refers to the tendency for misinformation to continue influencing people's thinking even after it's been corrected. This can impact how users perceive a product long after initial misconceptions are addressed.
Semmelweis Reflex
- Rejection of New Evidence
The Semmelweis reflex is the tendency to reject new evidence or knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs, or paradigms. This can hinder innovation and the acceptance of new ideas in product development and user experience design.
Bias Blind Spot
- Unseen Personal Bias
The bias blind spot is the cognitive bias of recognizing the impact of biases on the judgment of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one's own judgment. This can lead to overconfidence in personal objectivity and decision-making in product development.
Naïve Cynicism
- Expecting Selfishness in Others
Naïve cynicism is the expectation that others are more self-interested than they actually are. This bias can affect stakeholder negotiations, user feedback interpretation, and team collaboration, leading to mistrust and miscommunication.
Naïve Realism
- The Belief in Objective Perception
Naïve realism is the tendency to believe that we see the world objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased. This can affect user research and design thinking, leading to products that are less inclusive of diverse user perspectives.
Paradox of choice
- Overwhelmed by options
The phenomenon where having too many choices leads to anxiety and difficulty in making decisions. This can impact user satisfaction, as more options are not always better.
Confabulation
- The Invention of False Memories
Confabulation refers to the creation of false memories without the intention to deceive, often filling in gaps in one's memory with fabrications that they believe to be true. This can influence user feedback and testimonials, potentially leading to misleading insights about a product's impact.
Clustering Illusion
- Seeing Patterns in Randomness
The clustering illusion is the tendency to see patterns in random data. This can affect how data is interpreted in user behavior analytics, leading to incorrect conclusions about user preferences or behaviors.
Insensitivity to Sample Size
- Disregarding the Role of Scale
Insensitivity to sample size is the tendency to underweight or ignore the size of a sample when evaluating the reliability of data or evidence. This can lead to overconfidence in findings from small datasets or pilot studies in product development.
Neglect of Probability
- Ignoring Statistical Likelihood
The neglect of probability is the tendency to disregard probability and statistical likelihood in decision-making. This bias can lead to prioritizing features or initiatives based on anecdotal evidence rather than data-driven analysis.
Anecdotal Evidence
- The Misleading Impact of Stories
Anecdotal evidence refers to the use of personal stories or isolated examples instead of sound arguments or compelling evidence. This can influence product teams to make decisions based on compelling user stories rather than broad user data.
Illusion of Validity
- Overconfidence in Predictions
The illusion of validity is the belief that furtherly gathered information generates a more accurate view of the world, often leading to overconfidence in the predictive power of one's judgments. This can result in overestimating the success of products or features based on preliminary feedback.
Pareidolia
- Finding Patterns Where None Exist
Pareidolia is the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern. In product design, this can influence user interface decisions, where users might perceive unintended images or messages.
Anthropomorphism
- Attributing Human Traits to Non-Humans
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It affects how users interact with and perceive products, especially in technology with 'human-like' features.
Group Attribution Error
- Oversimplifying Group Behaviors
The group attribution error is the tendency to broadly attribute the behavior of an individual to the group to which they belong, rather than to individual or situational factors. This can influence user research and market segmentation, potentially leading to oversimplified assumptions about user groups.
Ultimate Attribution Error
- Biased Group Attribute Assignment
The ultimate attribution error involves making biased assumptions about the reasons behind group behaviors, attributing positive outcomes to internal characteristics and negative outcomes to external circumstances. This can impact user feedback interpretation and product strategy.
Stereotyping
- Simplified Perceptions of Others
Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about a group of people that do not consider individual differences. In product design, this can lead to features or marketing that does not resonate with or even offends target audiences.
Essentialism
- Overemphasizing Innate Attributes
Essentialism is the belief that certain categories of people or things have an underlying and unchangeable essence that dictates their nature. This bias can affect how products are marketed and developed, potentially neglecting the diversity of user needs and experiences.
Functional Fixedness
- Limiting Objects to Traditional Uses
Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. In product design, this can hinder innovation by restricting the exploration of new uses for existing products or features.
Self-Licensing
- Moral Credential Effect
Self-licensing is a cognitive bias that occurs when people allow themselves to indulge after doing something good, as if the good deed gave them a 'license' to act in a way that might be considered negative. This can impact user behavior in apps that track habits or goals, leading to counterproductive actions after positive achievements.
Just-World Hypothesis
- Belief in a Fair World
The just-world hypothesis is the cognitive bias that assumes that actions always yield fair and fitting consequences. This belief can influence user expectations from products or services, expecting fair outcomes from their actions or decisions.
Argument from Fallacy
- Fallacy Fallacy
The argument from fallacy is the assumption that if an argument for some conclusion is fallacious, then the conclusion itself is false. This can affect how user feedback and criticisms are handled, dismissing valuable insights because of flawed arguments.
Authority Bias
- Influence of Authority Figures
Authority bias is the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure, regardless of content. This can lead to overvaluing opinions of industry leaders or influencers in product development decisions.
Automation Bias
- Overreliance on Automated Systems
Automation bias occurs when individuals favor suggestions from automated decision-making systems over contradictory information without automation. This can affect how products are designed and used, potentially leading to overreliance on automation at the expense of human judgment.
Bandwagon Effect
- Conformity to Popular Opinion
The bandwagon effect is a psychological phenomenon whereby people do something primarily because other people are doing it, regardless of their own beliefs, which can influence user adoption and engagement with products. This can lead to products becoming popular primarily through social proof rather than inherent quality.
Placebo
- Power of Expectation
The placebo effect arises when a person's condition improves due to their expectation that an intervention will help, despite the intervention having no therapeutic effect. This can be relevant in user experience, where the belief in the efficacy of a product or feature can influence satisfaction and outcomes.
Out-group Homogeneity
- 'They Are All the Same'
The out-group homogeneity effect is the perception that members of an out-group are more similar to each other than they actually are, leading to stereotyping. This can affect how user groups are perceived and targeted in marketing and product design.
Cross-race Effect
- Recognition Bias Across Races
The cross-race effect, where individuals have a better ability to recognize faces of their own race than those of other races, can influence user interface design and content personalization in products. This has implications for facial recognition technology and content curation.
In-group Favoritism
- Preferential Treatment of 'Our Group'
In-group favoritism is the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to members of their own group. This can influence product development teams to prioritize features or designs that cater more to their own preferences than to the needs of a diverse user base.
Halo Effect
- Overall Impression Influences Specific Judgments
The halo effect is the tendency for an overall impression of a person, brand, or product to influence specific judgments about them. This can affect user perceptions and decisions about a product based on a single attribute.
Cheerleader Effect
- Group Attractiveness Bias
The cheerleader effect describes the phenomenon where individuals appear more attractive in a group than in isolation. This can influence social networking and dating apps, where user profiles are presented among others, potentially affecting user interactions and perceptions.
Positivity Effect
- Focus on Positive Information
The positivity effect is the tendency for older adults to focus more on positive information than negative information, affecting product design for elderly users, where interfaces and messages should emphasize positivity to enhance user experience and engagement.
Not Invented Here
- Disregard for External Innovations
Not Invented Here (NIH) is a bias that involves a disregard for products, research, standards, or knowledge developed outside of a group. In product development, this can limit innovation and the integration of external breakthroughs or best practices.
Reactive Devaluation
- Undervaluing Opposing Offers
Reactive devaluation is the tendency to devalue proposals or offers merely because they originate from a perceived adversary. This can affect negotiations and partnerships in business, where offers from competitors or opposing parties are undervalued without objective assessment.
Well-Travelled Road Effect
- Misjudgment of Familiar Routes
The well-travelled road effect is a cognitive bias where people underestimate the time taken to travel familiar routes and overestimate the time for less familiar routes. This can influence user experience in navigation apps, where estimated times and routes may be perceived inaccurately by users based on familiarity.
Mental Accounting
- Categorizing Spending Illogically
Mental accounting refers to the tendency for people to separate their money into different accounts based on a variety of subjective criteria, such as the source of the money or its intended use. This can influence how users perceive and interact with financial applications or e-commerce platforms, potentially affecting their spending behavior.
Appeal to Probability
- Misinterpreting Chance
The appeal to probability fallacy is when someone takes something for granted because it would probably happen. This can affect user expectations and decision-making in scenarios involving risk or chance, such as gambling apps or investment platforms.
Normalcy Bias
- Underestimating Disaster Likelihood
The normalcy bias is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings. Hence, individuals underestimate the likelihood of a disaster, when it might affect their personal decision-making. This can influence how users respond to warnings or emergency alerts in apps designed for disaster preparedness or crisis management.
Murphy's Law
- Expecting the Worst Outcome
Murphy's Law isn't strictly a cognitive bias but often cited humorously to express the idea that if something can go wrong, it will. In product design and user experience, considering Murphy's Law can help in anticipating and mitigating potential points of failure.
Zero-sum Thinking
- Assuming a Fixed Pie
Zero-sum thinking is the belief that a situation is like a zero-sum game, where one person's gain is equivalent to another's loss. This perspective can influence user engagement in competitive environments, like marketplaces or multiplayer games, shaping how users perceive interactions and transactions.
Survivorship Bias
- Overlooking Failure
Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, often leading to false conclusions. In product development, this can result in focusing only on successful products or features and ignoring valuable lessons from failures.
Subadditivity Effect
- Underestimating the Whole
The subadditivity effect occurs when the probability of a whole is judged to be less than the probabilities of its parts. This can affect how users perceive the value or risk of bundled products or services, potentially underestimating their total value or impact.
Denomination Effect
- Spending Based on Currency Unit
The denomination effect is a form of cognitive bias where people are less likely to spend large denominations of money than their equivalent value in smaller denominations. This can influence purchasing behavior in physical and digital marketplaces.
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two
- Limit on Information Processing
This principle refers to the idea that the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory is about seven, plus or minus two. This affects user interface design and information presentation, ensuring that options and information are not overwhelming.
Illusion of Transparency
- Overestimating Others' Insight
The illusion of transparency is the tendency to overestimate how well others understand our mental states. This can affect communication in teams and with users, leading to misunderstandings about product use or feedback.
Curse of Knowledge
- Expertise Blinds Communication
The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand. For product teams, this can lead to overly complex products or features that are hard for users to understand or adopt.
Spotlight Effect
- Overestimating Observance
The spotlight effect is the tendency to think that more people notice something about one's appearance or behavior than they actually do. This can impact social media and online platforms where users might overestimate the attention their posts or actions receive.
Extrinsic Incentives Bias
- Misjudging Motivation
The extrinsic incentives bias is the tendency to overestimate the influence of extrinsic incentives on other people’s behavior and to underestimate the influence of intrinsic incentives. This can affect how products are designed to motivate user behavior, potentially neglecting the importance of intrinsic motivation.
Illusion of External Agency
- Attributing Success to External Forces
The illusion of external agency is the tendency to attribute events or outcomes to external forces rather than one’s own actions. In product use, this can lead to users attributing their successes or failures with the product to the product itself rather than their use of it.
Illusion of Asymmetric Insight
- Believing We Know Others Better
The illusion of asymmetric insight is the belief that we understand others better than they understand themselves (or us), leading to potential misunderstandings in user research and communication. This can impact how products are marketed and how user feedback is interpreted.
Telescoping Effect
- Temporal Distortion of Events
The telescoping effect refers to the temporal distortion that causes recent events to seem more remote and remote events to seem more recent than they actually are. This bias can impact how users recall their experiences with a product or service, affecting feedback and satisfaction surveys.
Rosy Retrospection
- Viewing the Past Favorably
Rosy retrospection is the tendency to rate past events more positively than at the time of the experience, affecting how products or services are remembered and evaluated over time.
Hindsight Bias
- 'I Knew It All Along' Effect
Hindsight bias is the inclination to see events that have already occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place. This can lead to misjudgments in evaluating decision-making processes and outcomes in product development.
Outcome Bias
- Judging Decisions by Results
Outcome bias involves judging a decision based on its outcome rather than how the decision was made in the moment. This can affect evaluations of product strategies or features, potentially penalizing good decision-making that led to unfavorable outcomes by chance.
Moral Luck
- Outcome Affects Moral Judgment
Moral luck occurs when an agent is assigned moral praise or blame for an action or its outcomes, even if the agent had no control over those outcomes. This bias can influence user feedback on product ethics or corporate responsibility, affecting brand perception based on outcomes beyond control.
Declinism
- Belief in the Decline of Society
Declinism is the belief that society is in decline, which can influence how users perceive the world and interact with products designed to solve societal problems. This bias can affect the marketing and adoption of products aimed at improvement or progress.
Impact Bias
- Overestimating Emotional Impact
Impact bias is the tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the future feeling states. This can influence how users anticipate their satisfaction with or the benefits of a product, potentially leading to unrealistic expectations.
Pessimism Bias
- Overestimating Risks
Conversely, pessimism bias is the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes. This can lead to excessive caution and missed opportunities in product development and market entry strategies.
Planning Fallacy
- Underestimating Task Completion Time
The planning fallacy is the tendency for people to underestimate how much time is needed to complete a task, leading to overly optimistic timelines in product development and project management.
Time-saving Bias
- Overvaluing Time Saved
The time-saving bias occurs when people overestimate the amount of time saved when increasing the speed of an activity. This can influence perceptions of productivity tools or features designed to save time, potentially leading to unrealistic expectations.
Pro-innovation Bias
- Favoring Innovations
Pro-innovation bias is the belief that an innovation should be adopted by whole society without the need of its adaptation to particular needs. It can lead to overlooking potential downsides or mismatches between the product and user needs, resulting in products that are innovative but not necessarily useful or accessible to all potential users.
Projection Bias
- Misjudging Future Preferences
Projection bias is the tendency to project current preferences onto a future event, underestimating how much one's taste will change over time. This can lead to designing products or features based on what users like now, without considering how trends or user preferences might evolve.
Restraint Bias
- Overestimating Self-control
Restraint bias is the overestimation of one's ability to control impulsive behavior, which can affect the design of products intended to help users manage their habits or behaviors, such as fitness trackers or productivity apps.
Consistency Bias
- Assuming Past Preferences Persist
Consistency bias is the erroneous belief that one's past viewpoints or behaviors will remain consistent over time, leading to potential misalignments in product design as user needs and preferences evolve.
Overconfidence Effect
- Excessive Confidence in Knowledge
The overconfidence effect is a well-established bias in which a person's subjective confidence in their judgments is reliably greater than their objective accuracy, especially when confidence is relatively high. This can lead to overly optimistic projections about product development timelines, feature implementations, and user adoption rates.
Social Desirability Bias
- Favoring Socially Acceptable Responses
Social desirability bias is the tendency of respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. This can significantly affect user feedback and survey responses, potentially skewing product research and user testing results.
Third-Person Effect
- Perceived Media Impact on Others
The third-person effect hypothesis suggests that people tend to believe that mass communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves. This can influence user perceptions of advertising and content within products, leading to underestimation of the effect such content has on their own behavior and attitudes.
False Consensus Effect
- Overestimating Agreement with Others
The false consensus effect is a cognitive bias whereby people tend to overestimate the extent to which their beliefs, opinions, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typical of those of others. This can lead to products being designed based on the assumption that what the creators prefer or believe is widely shared by the user base.
Hard–Easy Effect
- Misjudging Task Difficulty
The hard–easy effect occurs when people tend to overestimate their ability to perform difficult tasks, while underestimating their ability to perform easy tasks. This can impact project management and user interface design, where tasks may be misjudged in terms of their difficulty for users.
Lake Wobegon Effect
- Above Average Illusion
Named after the fictional town where 'all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average,' the Lake Wobegon effect is a natural human tendency to overestimate one's capabilities, often leading to unrealistic expectations about one’s performance in various tasks. This can influence how users perceive their skills or accomplishments in educational or gamified platforms.
Dunning–Kruger Effect
- Overestimating One's Ability
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. This can lead to challenges in team dynamics, user feedback interpretation, and personal development platforms, where users or team members might not accurately assess their skills or contributions.
Egocentric Bias
- Centering on One's Perspective
Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a higher regard for oneself than for others. This can influence product design and marketing, where assumptions are made based on the team's preferences rather than broad user needs.
Optimism Bias
- Overlooking Potential Risks
Optimism bias is the tendency to believe that we are less at risk of experiencing a negative event compared to others. This can impact risk management and future planning, leading to underpreparedness for potential challenges in projects and personal goals.
Barnum Effect
- Personal Validation from Vague Statements
The Barnum effect refers to the tendency for people to accept vague, general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves. This can influence user engagement in areas like personality tests, horoscopes, or marketing messages, where users feel a personal connection to the content.
Self-Serving Bias
- Attribution of Success and Failure
The self-serving bias is a common tendency to attribute positive outcomes to one's own character but attribute negative outcomes to external factors. This bias can influence how individuals perceive feedback and outcomes in both personal and professional settings, potentially hindering learning and growth.
Actor-Observer Bias
- Differing Perspectives on Actions and Motives
The actor-observer bias involves a tendency for people to attribute their own actions to situational factors, while attributing others’ actions to their personalities. This can affect team dynamics and user interactions, where misunderstandings and misattributions lead to conflict or frustration.
Illusion of Control
- Overestimating Personal Influence
The illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events, leading to an unrealistic sense of influence over outcomes that are largely determined by chance. This can impact user engagement with products, especially those involving elements of chance or risk.
Illusory Superiority
- Overestimating One's Abilities
Illusory superiority is a cognitive bias that causes individuals to overestimate their qualities and abilities relative to others. This can lead to overconfidence in skills or knowledge, impacting learning, development, and social interactions.
Fundamental Attribution Error
- Misattributing Behaviors
The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute others' behaviors to their character rather than to situational factors, while giving oneself a pass for similar behaviors due to external circumstances. This can lead to misunderstandings and misjudgments in social interactions, teamwork, and user feedback interpretation.
Defensive Attribution Hypothesis
- Rationalizing Harm to Feel Safe
The defensive attribution hypothesis suggests people tend to attribute causes of accidents or misfortunes to external factors or the actions of others, particularly when identifying with the victim, to feel safer themselves. This can influence how users perceive safety-related information or products, potentially skewing risk assessments.
Trait Ascription Bias
- Overattributing Traits to Others
Trait ascription bias is the tendency to view one's own behavior as variable but see others' behavior as indicative of stable personality traits. This can affect team dynamics and user interaction, where users or team members may quickly label others based on limited interactions.
Effort Justification
- Valuing What We Struggle For
Effort justification is a form of cognitive dissonance that occurs when people value an outcome more highly if they have put effort into achieving it. This can influence how users perceive the value of products or services that require significant effort to use or understand.
Risk Compensation
- Adjusting Behavior to Perceived Risk
Risk compensation involves people adjusting their behavior in response to the perceived level of risk, often becoming more cautious when they feel at risk and less cautious when they feel safe. This can impact how safety features in products are used or perceived, sometimes leading to riskier behavior if users feel overly secure.
Peltzman Effect
- Safety Measures Leading to Riskier Behavior
The Peltzman Effect is a specific type of risk compensation that suggests the introduction of safety measures can lead to riskier behavior because people feel more protected. This effect can challenge the design of products and environments intended to enhance safety, as the perceived increase in safety can lead to a decrease in cautious behavior.
Hyperbolic Discounting
- Preferring Immediate Rewards
Hyperbolic discounting describes the tendency for people to prefer smaller, immediate rewards to larger, later rewards. This bias can influence user behavior in applications that offer delayed gratification, leading to challenges in motivating long-term engagement or investment.
Appeal to Novelty
- Bias Towards the New
The appeal to novelty is the tendency to prefer something solely because it is new or appears to be new. This can impact product marketing and development, where new features or products may be favored over existing ones without adequate justification.
Identifiable Victim Effect
- Empathy Towards Specific Individuals
The identifiable victim effect occurs when people are more moved to help individuals with known identities than a large, vaguely defined group with the same needs. This can influence user engagement with campaigns or features aimed at charitable causes or social issues.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
- Commitment to Past Decisions
The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made, leading to continued investment in a losing proposition rather than cutting losses. This can affect how users interact with products or services, particularly in cases where they've invested significant resources.
Escalation of Commitment
- Doubling Down on Decisions
Escalation of commitment refers to an increased commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative information. This is related to the sunk cost fallacy and can lead to further investment in failing projects, products, or strategies due to the commitment already made.
Escalation of Commitment
- Doubling Down on Past Decisions
Escalation of commitment is a pattern of behavior in which individuals or groups continue to invest in a decision based on cumulative prior investment (time, resources, or money) despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was wrong or the outcome will be negative. This bias can lead to persisting with failing projects or strategies due to the commitment already made, affecting both individual and organizational decision-making processes.
Generation Effect
- Enhanced Memory Through Self-Generation
The generation effect describes the phenomenon where information is better remembered if it's generated from one's own mind rather than simply read. This can be leveraged in educational content and user interfaces to enhance learning and retention by encouraging users to engage actively with the material.
Loss Aversion
- The Disproportionate Fear of Losses
Loss aversion refers to the tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: it's better to not lose $5 than to find $5. This bias can influence user behavior in financial decisions, risk assessment, and even in user interface design, where the fear of losing progress, data, or status can affect how users interact with a product.
IKEA Effect
- Valuing Self-Assembled Products More
The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created or assembled. This can be utilized in product design and customer engagement strategies to enhance value perception and loyalty by involving users in the creation or customization of products.
Zero-risk Bias
- Preferring Total Risk Elimination
Zero-risk bias describes the preference for completely eliminating a risk over reducing it, even when the reduction would result in a greater overall decrease in risk. This can lead to decisions that prioritize the elimination of minor risks at the expense of addressing more significant, but less absolute, risks. In product development, this might manifest in features or policies that offer complete safeguards against minor issues, potentially diverting resources from more effective, comprehensive risk management strategies.
Disposition Effect
- Holding Losers, Selling Winners
The disposition effect is a tendency in investing where investors are more likely to sell assets that have increased in value and hold assets that have decreased in value. This bias can lead to suboptimal investment strategies, affecting financial apps and platforms by influencing user behavior in ways that might not align with their long-term financial goals.
Pseudocertainty Effect
- False Sense of Security in Phases
The pseudocertainty effect occurs when people perceive an outcome as certain when it is actually subject to chance, particularly in multi-stage decisions. This bias can affect how users make decisions under risk, especially in staged processes like completing tasks in a productivity app or making purchasing decisions in stages.
Processing Difficulty Effect
- Challenge in Processing as Negative
The processing difficulty effect refers to the tendency of people to view information that is difficult to process as less favorable or true. This can impact user experience and perception of product usability, particularly in educational or information-dense applications where complex information might be presented.
Endowment Effect
- Valuing Owned Items More
The endowment effect is the tendency for people to ascribe more value to things merely because they own them, compared to if they did not. This bias can influence user behavior in marketplaces, trading platforms, or any situation where users are asked to evaluate or part with their possessions.
Backfire Effect
- Strengthening Beliefs Against Contrary Evidence
The backfire effect occurs when individuals are presented with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, yet instead of changing their views, they support their original stance even more strongly. This bias can significantly impact social media, news consumption, and any platform where users are exposed to differing opinions or facts.
System Justification
- Defending Status Quo
System justification is the tendency to defend and justify the status quo, even at the expense of personal interest or fairness. This bias can affect user interaction with platforms advocating for social change, making it challenging to engage users in actions or views that challenge existing systems.
Reverse Psychology
- Encouraging Behavior by Advocating Opposite
Reverse psychology involves advocating for the opposite of the desired behavior, with the expectation that the reverse suggestion will encourage the behavior. This can be a tricky strategy in marketing and parenting apps, where indirect encouragement might be used to prompt desired outcomes.
Reactance
- Pushback Against Perceived Restrictions
Reactance is a psychological reaction that occurs in response to perceived restrictions on personal freedoms and choices, leading to resistance against the restrictions and an increased drive to regain freedom. This bias can affect user responses to overly restrictive app features, content moderation policies, or marketing messages.
Decoy Effect
- Altered Preferences with Additional Options
The decoy effect occurs when consumers change their preference between two options when presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated. This can be used in pricing strategies, product features selection, and more, subtly guiding users toward a preferred choice.
Social Comparison Bias
- Comparing with Others
Social comparison bias is the tendency to dislike or feel competitive towards others who may possess abilities or qualities that individuals wish to have, affecting personal and professional relationships. This can influence user engagement on social platforms, professional networks, and any environment where comparison between users is facilitated or unavoidable.
Status Quo Bias
- Preference for the Current State
Status quo bias is the preference to keep things the same by doing nothing or sticking with a decision made previously. This bias can affect user decisions in settings requiring change or adaptation, such as software updates, switching services, or adopting new technologies.
Ambiguity Effect
- Avoidance of Uncertain Options
The ambiguity effect is the tendency to avoid options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown. This can lead users to prefer familiar but less beneficial options over unfamiliar, potentially more advantageous choices in products, services, and information seeking.
Information Bias
- Seeking Irrelevant Information
Information bias is the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action. This bias can lead to overloading users with unnecessary data, complicating decision-making processes or distracting from important actions.
Belief Bias
- Logic Subordinated to Beliefs
Belief bias is the tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the believability of their conclusion rather than on whether the arguments are logically sound. This can impact user perceptions and decisions, especially in areas involving complex information or controversial topics.
Rhyme-as-Reason Effect
- Rhyming Increases Perceived Truth
The rhyme-as-reason effect is a cognitive bias where statements that rhyme are perceived as more truthful or persuasive than non-rhyming statements. This can influence marketing strategies, political campaigns, or any area where catchy slogans are used to sway opinions or behaviors.
Law of Triviality
- Focusing on the Inconsequential
Also known as 'bikeshedding,' the law of triviality describes the tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues, often while significant ones are ignored. This can lead to inefficiencies in meetings, project management, and prioritization in product development.
Conjunction Fallacy
- Overestimating Specific Conditions
The conjunction fallacy occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one. This bias can affect decision-making and risk assessment, where more detailed scenarios are incorrectly believed to be more likely than broader ones.
Occam's Razor
- Simplicity as a Heuristic
Occam's razor is the problem-solving principle that, when presented with competing hypothetical answers to a problem, one should select the one that makes the fewest assumptions. While not a cognitive bias itself, it's a heuristic that can help counteract biases by favoring simpler explanations over more complex ones. It can guide product development and problem-solving processes.
Less-is-Better Effect
- Lesser Quantity Preferred Over More
The less-is-better effect is a cognitive bias where a lesser quantity is preferred over a greater one when evaluated separately. This can impact consumer behavior and product valuation, leading to scenarios where individuals value smaller packages or services more highly than larger ones, even if the larger option offers a better value per unit.
Misattribution of Memory
- Incorrect Source Attribution
Misattribution of memory involves incorrectly attributing a memory to the wrong source, affecting how individuals recall and trust their memories. This can influence user interactions with content, branding, and experiences, where users may attribute their feelings or knowledge about a product to incorrect experiences.
Source Confusion
- Confusing Memory Source
Source confusion, a specific form of misattribution of memory, occurs when the source of a memory is incorrectly remembered. This can lead to issues in legal settings, eyewitness testimony, and even in everyday situations where individuals may confuse advertisement claims as personal experiences or vice versa.
Cryptomnesia
- Unconscious Plagiarism
Cryptomnesia occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. This can impact creative work, research, and idea generation, leading to unintentional plagiarism or the belief that a rediscovered idea is new.
False Memory
- Recalling Events That Never Happened
False memory refers to the phenomenon of confidently recalling a memory that never actually occurred. This can significantly affect legal proceedings, therapeutic settings, and personal relationships, as well as consumer perceptions of products and brands, where individuals may form detailed memories of experiences or features that they never actually encountered.
Suggestibility
- Susceptibility to External Influences
Suggestibility refers to the tendency to accept and incorporate information from external sources into one's memories, beliefs, or attitudes, often without critical assessment. This bias can significantly impact user perceptions and behaviors, especially in contexts where information is presented persuasively or authoritatively, such as in advertising, news media, or social networks.
Spacing Effect
- Enhanced Learning Through Spaced Repetition
The spacing effect describes how learning is more effective when study sessions are spaced out over time rather than conducted in a single, concentrated effort. This can influence the design of educational content, productivity tools, and any platform that supports skill development or knowledge acquisition.
Implicit Stereotype
- Unconscious Association and Beliefs
Implicit stereotypes are unconscious associations and beliefs that can affect perceptions, actions, and decisions, without the individual being aware of their influence. This bias can impact user interaction with products and services, especially in areas where stereotypes about certain groups may affect the user experience or inclusivity.
Prejudice
- Preconceived Opinion Not Based on Reason
Prejudice involves forming a preconceived opinion or judgment about something or someone without adequate information or experience. This bias can significantly impact social interactions, hiring practices, and customer service, leading to unfair treatment or discrimination based on unfounded beliefs.
Fading Affect Bias
- Diminishing Emotional Impact Over Time
The fading affect bias describes the phenomenon where the emotional impact of negative memories fades faster than that of positive memories. This can influence how users remember their experiences with a product or service, potentially affecting long-term customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Peak–End Rule
- Memory Biased by Peaks and Ends
The peak–end rule is a psychological heuristic where people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its most intense point (the peak) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. This can affect how products and services are designed and evaluated, emphasizing the importance of creating memorable positive peaks and satisfying conclusions.
Leveling and Sharpening
- Memory Distortion Over Time
Leveling and sharpening refer to the ways memories are distorted over time: leveling involves the loss of details, while sharpening involves emphasizing certain details, often at the expense of others. This can influence how users recall their experiences with a product or service, affecting brand perception and loyalty.
Misinformation Effect
- Memory Distortion by Misleading Information
The misinformation effect occurs when a person's recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate because of post-event information. This can significantly impact areas such as eyewitness testimony, consumer reviews, and historical accounts, where subsequent information can alter an individual's recollection of events.
Serial Recall
- Order Affects Memory Recall
Serial recall involves recalling items or events in the order they were experienced, with accuracy often declining for items in the middle of a sequence. This can influence how users remember sequences of events or instructions, affecting learning and task completion.
Duration Neglect
- Ignoring Length of Experience
Duration neglect is the phenomenon where the duration of an experience does not affect individuals' overall evaluation of the emotional peak (or trough) of the experience. This can impact user satisfaction with long-term projects or services, where the length of the experience is less influential than the intensity of specific moments.
Modality Effect
- Impact of Presentation Modality on Memory
The modality effect refers to how information retention is influenced by the mode of presentation, with auditory information often remembered better than visual information, especially in the context of immediate recall tasks. This can affect educational content delivery, user interface design, and instructional material.
Memory Inhibition
- Suppressing Unwanted Memories
Memory inhibition is the ability to block out memories or information that are irrelevant or distracting from a task at hand. This process is crucial for maintaining cognitive focus but can be challenging in environments with constant information influx or distractions, such as in digital platforms or workplaces.
Primacy Effect
- First Items Remembered Better
The primacy effect is part of the serial-position effect, where individuals tend to remember items at the beginning of a list better than those in the middle or end. This can influence how information is consumed and recalled in educational materials, presentations, and user interfaces, impacting the effectiveness of communication and learning.
Recency Effect
- Last Items Remembered Better
The recency effect, also part of the serial-position effect, describes the tendency for individuals to remember the last items in a series more effectively than those appearing in the middle. This bias can impact user experiences in areas such as advertising, list-based tasks, and information retrieval, influencing memory and decision-making processes.
Part-set Cuing Effect
- Cueing Hinders Recall
The part-set cuing effect occurs when providing part of a set of items as cues hinders the recall of the remaining items. This can affect learning and memory tasks, especially in educational settings or in user interfaces where users must recall information from a partially visible set.
Suffix Effect
- Impairment of Recall by a Final Item
The suffix effect is a phenomenon where the recall of the final items in a list is impaired by a subsequent, irrelevant item (the 'suffix'). This can impact the effectiveness of auditory information delivery, such as in voice-assisted interfaces, instructions, or any scenario where a series of items or instructions are conveyed verbally.
Levels-of-Processing Effect
- Depth of Processing Influences Memory
The levels-of-processing effect posits that memory retention is directly related to the depth at which information is processed. Deeper, more meaningful processing of information leads to better retention compared to shallow, superficial processing. This principle impacts educational strategies, user interface design, and content creation, where engaging users in meaningful interaction with information can enhance learning and recall.
Absent-mindedness
- Inattention to Details Leads to Memory Lapses
Absent-mindedness refers to lapses in memory and attention that occur when one's focus is divided or when one is paying attention to the wrong aspects of an environment. This can influence user experiences with digital products, where distractions or poorly designed interfaces can lead to errors or reduced comprehension.
Testing Effect
- Enhanced Memory After Retrieving Information
The testing effect, also known as retrieval practice effect, suggests that long-term memory is enhanced when some of the learning period is devoted to retrieving the to-be-remembered information through testing. This has implications for educational applications and any system designed to improve knowledge or skills, indicating that practice tests or quizzes can significantly boost retention.
Next-in-Line Effect
- Reduced Recall for Information Just Before One's Turn
The next-in-line effect describes the phenomenon where people have poorer recall for events and information right before it is their turn to perform in a sequence. This can affect learning and retention in group settings or any situation where individuals await their turn to speak or act, as preoccupation with one's own performance can detract from information processing.
Google Effect
- Digital Dependence Reduces Memory Effort
The Google effect, or digital amnesia, refers to the tendency to forget information that can be easily found using internet search engines, leading to a reduced effort to remember information. This affects how users remember facts, instructions, or even personal information, relying instead on digital devices for retrieval.
Tip of the Tongue
- Inability to Retrieve Known Information
The 'tip of the tongue' phenomenon is a common cognitive experience where an individual is unable to retrieve a known word, name, or piece of information, despite feeling that it is just out of reach. This can impact communication, learning, and social interactions, as it temporarily hinders the ability to convey thoughts or recall specific details.
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