Sunday, October 22, 2006
Great Cognitive Biases Wikipedia Article
A friend says he prefers the newspaper in paper form because he's more likely to find serendipitous articles, i.e., to spot stuff he would not usually read, that way. I think this is more about scanning a large surface than it is about the availability of serendipitous information. (In the first place, the stuff in a newspaper is limited by the editorial filter.)
On the Internet, if you go searching for serendipity you'll find it. One of the fastest routes is by dipping into the awesome blogrolls of David Weinberger or Doc Searls. Click a link any link, round and round and round she goes . . . and today's lucky number is . . . Rebecca Blood's delightful blog. And the serendipitous morsel in her blog is Wikipedia's List of Cognitive Biases.
The list of biases may seem obvious to you, and if it does, you could have Hindsight Bias, or the 'I knew it all along' effect. [Right now, some joker has added the 'I forgot it all along effect' to the main list -- the link goes nowhere. Hopefully the Wikipedia Volunteers will clean this up.]
Maybe you think cognitive biasses are for other people, and you don't have them. If so, you might have a bias blind spot.
If you look for evidence confirming what you already believe, you've got a case of confirmation bias, and if you don't try to test other hypotheses, you've got congruence bias too.
Then there's the Von Restorff Effect [link].
The list is long, and most of the entries seem well-grounded in empirical and experimental cognitive psychological studies. What fun!
Don't forget the serial position effect.
On the Internet, if you go searching for serendipity you'll find it. One of the fastest routes is by dipping into the awesome blogrolls of David Weinberger or Doc Searls. Click a link any link, round and round and round she goes . . . and today's lucky number is . . . Rebecca Blood's delightful blog. And the serendipitous morsel in her blog is Wikipedia's List of Cognitive Biases.
The list of biases may seem obvious to you, and if it does, you could have Hindsight Bias, or the 'I knew it all along' effect. [Right now, some joker has added the 'I forgot it all along effect' to the main list -- the link goes nowhere. Hopefully the Wikipedia Volunteers will clean this up.]
Maybe you think cognitive biasses are for other people, and you don't have them. If so, you might have a bias blind spot.
If you look for evidence confirming what you already believe, you've got a case of confirmation bias, and if you don't try to test other hypotheses, you've got congruence bias too.
Then there's the Von Restorff Effect [link].
The list is long, and most of the entries seem well-grounded in empirical and experimental cognitive psychological studies. What fun!
Don't forget the serial position effect.
Technorati Tags: CognitivePsychology
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