Are You Really in Control of Your Decisions?
You may prefer to view yourself as a rational decision maker. You consider evidence, weigh pros and cons, and make decisions based on logic – or at least you think you do. But psychology has repeatedly demonstrated that our choices are shaped by cognitive biases – mental shortcuts that enable us to navigate the world but tend to warp reality in subtle, but influential, ways.
These biases aren’t idiosyncrasies of “irrational people.” They are fundamental in human thinking, developed to allow us to make quick judgments in messy, uncertain situations. But now, once-helpful heuristics can mislead us in everything from money to love. This post discusses what cognitive biases are, why we hardly ever realise they are happening, how they influence decision-making, and most importantly, how to outsmart them. We will also delve into 10 of the most prevalent cognitive biases that subtly dictate your thoughts, supported by psychological research and real-life examples.
What Are Cognitive Biases?
Cognitive biases are systematic mistakes in our cognitive processes. They happen when our brain attempts to make the information processing simpler. Rather than considering each detail objectively, we use heuristics—mental shortcuts that enable us to make quick judgments. Although these shortcuts are useful, they often lead to erroneous conclusions and irrational choices.
Cognitive bias was originally coined by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s while conducting their seminal research on judgment and decision-making. Their research built the basis for the discipline of behavioural economics, which illustrates that human decision-making tends to differ from the “rational actor” model of traditional economics. A few cognitive biases are the result of social pressure, memory lapses, emotional drives, or our finite attention span. Others result from the brain’s propensity to find patterns or keep a consistent worldview.
Why We Rarely Notice Our Own Biases
Biases are unconscious. That is, we’re not typically in the know when they’re driving our thinking. We may think we’re having rational, equitable judgments, but we’re usually operating in response to unrecognised mental scripts. This appearance of objectivity is compounded by what psychologists term the bias blind spot—we notice cognitive bias in others but refuse to believe it is present in us (Pronin et al., 2002). Even if we are aware of biases cognitively, we don’t apply that awareness in the situation.
Our brains are especially immune to self-diagnosing bias because it would undermine our self-image as being objective and capable decision-makers. This immunity keeps our cognitive comfort level intact, but at a price: bad decisions, judgments, and skewed perceptions of reality.
Why and How Do Cognitive Biases Infiltrate Our Lives?
Cognitive biases operate below the radar of consciousness. We don’t select them—they operate automatically. This is one of the things Daniel Kahneman refers to as “System 1” thinking: quick, intuitive, and unconscious. Although this system allows us to get on with daily life, it can mislead us where decisions need thoughtful judgment.
You may employ someone because they “feel” right (halo effect), not invest in a good stock due to a previous loss (loss aversion), or assume a product is superior because it’s costly (price bias). In each of these instances, you’re not responding based on fact alone—you’re responding to an unconscious script composed by your biases.
Thinking Errors vs. Cognitive Biases: What’s the Difference?
Though closely linked, thinking errors and cognitive biases are not the same. Cognitive biases have their origin in the brain’s natural information shortcuts. They are usually universal and non-pathological. Thought errors, however, are more typically invoked in clinical situations, particularly in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). These are patterns such as catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, and personalisation, which tend to be associated with mental health problems like anxiety or depression.
The commonality is that their consequences are the same: both result in false understandings of reality. Identifying and countering them is crucial to both clinical recovery and personal development.
How Cognitive Biases Affect Decision Making
Our everyday existence is a torrent of choices—what to eat, whom to trust, what job to accept, what risks to shun. Although we would like to think that we apply logic to make the choices, we tend to resort to System 1 thinking—a phenomenon in Kahneman’s (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow.
System 1 is automatic, efficient, and effective. It’s efficient but also susceptible to biases. System 2, on the other hand, is reflective and reasoning-based but at the cost of mental effort. Most of our decisions are based on System 1 unless we make a conscious effort to use System 2. Consequently, our brains automatically fall back on heuristics, particularly in stressful, tired, or pressured situations.
For example, when you’re investing money, you may automatically rely on a trusted expert (authority bias) or choose a bad option due to effort spent previously (sunk cost fallacy). These choices feel natural, but are frequently irrational.
Why Don’t We Notice These Biases?
One such reason is the blind spot for bias—the tendency to notice other people’s biases but not our own (Pronin et al., 2002). You may recognise your friend’s overconfidence but not your own. This is because our thinking usually sounds rational. When a choice feels emotional, we seldom question whether or not it’s skewed. One of the reasons is cognitive ease—we like easy-to-process, familiar information, even if it’s inaccurate. Our brains adore fluency, and biases facilitate that by making our thinking easier.
How to Catch Cognitive Biases in the Act
The first step to fighting bias is to become aware of your thought processes. The following are indicators that a bias could be coming into play:
- You’re exceptionally sure of your judgment.
- You’re avoiding or searching for specific information selectively.
- You strongly emotionally react to a decision.
- You’ve made a quick decision without considering the implications.
Writing out your thinking for significant decisions or talking through with someone non-emotional can enable you to recognize biased tendencies over time.
10 Cognitive Biases That Secretly Shape Your Thinking
Let’s take a look at ten of the strongest cognitive biases, along with examples and techniques for outsmarting each one.
1. Confirmation Bias
We prefer and look for information that supports what we already know and dismiss or ignore evidence to the contrary. Example: If you think climate change is not real, you will be more likely to watch or read material that suggests so and question sources that contradict you.
How to Outsmart It: Actively look for disconfirming evidence. Ask: “What would I need to see to prove myself wrong?”
2. Anchoring Bias
We rely too heavily on the first piece of information encountered when making decisions. Example: A $50 shirt marked down from $100 seems like a bargain, even if $50 is overpriced.
How to Outsmart It: Delay judgment. Compare multiple sources and look beyond initial data points.
3. Availability Heuristic
Events that are easier to recall seem more common or likely, even if they’re statistically rare. Example: Following a viewing of plane crashes on the news, you might irrationally fear flying more than driving, yet car accidents are significantly more prevalent.
How to Outsmart It: Apply objective facts, rather than emotion or memory, to measure risks.
4. Hindsight Bias
We feel like we “knew it all along” following an event. Example: After a breakup, you might feel that you could have said, “I always knew it wasn’t going to work,” when in reality, you were once hopeful.
How to Outsmart It: Keep a record of your predictions. Reflect honestly on past uncertainties.
5. Sunk Cost Fallacy
We continue investing in something because of what we’ve already put into it, rather than its current value. Example: Staying in a bad relationship because “we’ve already been together for five years.”
How to Outsmart It: Focus on future outcomes. Past investment should not determine future commitment.
6. Dunning-Kruger Effect
Low-skilled individuals overestimate their competence, while highly competent individuals might underestimate theirs. Example: A novice chess player believes they would be able to beat an expert, but the expert is unsure about their capability.
How to Outsmart It: Open yourself to feedback. Check your skill level from time to time.
7. Framing Effect
Information presentation influences our choice. Example: A “90% survival rate” operation sounds safer than a “10% mortality rate” procedure, even though they’re the same statistically.
How to Outsmart It: Redo the information several times before concluding.
8. Self-Serving Bias
You take credit for your successes and blame external circumstances for your failures. Example: You do well on an exam because you’re intelligent; you do poorly because the test was biased.
How to Outsmart It: Draw a balanced conclusion. Take credit where credit is due.
9. Optimism Bias
We assume we’re less likely than others to suffer from bad things. Example: Thinking you’ll never get sick if you don’t get the flu shot.
How to Outsmart It: Meet hope halfway with reality. Prepare for failure, even if you’re optimistic.
10. Groupthink
In groups, we usually go along with the crowd to keep the peace, even at the expense of making bad choices. Example: A group made an ill business decision because no one wanted to be the dissenting voice within the group
How to Beat It: Be the devil’s advocate, and further obtain unbiased opinions.
How Cognitive Biases Impact Professional and Personal Life
Cognitive biases are not simply ideas. They creep into practical uses:
In medicine, anchoring bias causes misdiagnosis due to sticking to a first impression.
At the workplace, confirmation bias may lead interviewers to favour those who fit their preconceived view.
In personal relationships, self-serving bias may prevent partners from resolving differences positively.
Knowing biases makes us effective collaborators, leaders, clinicians, and partners.
How to Escape Cognitive Biases: Strategies That Work
Even though biases cannot be avoided, there are a few tactics that can minimise their impact:
- Metacognition: Practice reflecting on your thinking. Take a step back and examine how you concluded.
- Mindfulness: The Presence of mind reduces knee-jerk reactions and increases control over emotions.
- Structured Decision-Making: Use checklists, lists of pros and cons, and decision trees to examine alternatives logically.
- Feedback Loops: Seek criticism from peers, mentors, and others you admire.
- Delay Judgment: Wait on big decisions. Sleep on it. Time dilutes emotional influence.
The Importance of Cognitive Biases (Yes, Sometimes They Do Come in Handy) Surprisingly enough, not all biases are necessarily bad. In some situations, they are even advantageous. Availability heuristic enables us to respond quickly to threats. Optimism bias will be a motivator. Heuristics in general work well when speed is more critical than precision. The key is the environment. What is effective in one environment can not be effective in another. Knowledge enables you to alternate between fast intuition and slow thinking as appropriate.
How does Cognitive Bias influence our Decision-making?
Cognitive bias has the potential to influence our decision-making from mundane ones of what cereal to purchase to life-or-death ones and even who to trust. In Kahneman’s two-process model:
System 1 is automatic, rapid, affective, and prone to bias.
System 2 is slow, controlled, reasoning, and more difficult to employ.
We all employ System 1 virtually all the time unless we consciously enter into a thinking process. When we are under pressure, stressed, or mentally overloaded, biases abound. Even professionals such as judges, doctors, and CEOs can fall victim to it, frequently even more so since they tend to overestimate the power of their judgment.
Cognitive Biases in Everyday Life
Cognitive biases are not mere theoretical classroom ideas—they have real consequences for important decisions:
- Legal and Justice system: Eyewitness accounts are contaminated with confirmation and misattribution, causing miscarriages of justice. Anchoring bias prejudices judges during sentencing.
- In Educational settings: Teachers unwittingly bias in favour of those who validate their expectations (the Pygmalion effect), with a role in shaping academic achievement.
- In Medical settings: Physicians become stuck in premature diagnoses and overlook important alternative explanations. Availability bias causes overdiagnosis of uncommon but observable conditions.
- In Marketing and Advertising contexts: Marketers play on framing effects, loss aversion, and social proof to influence consumer behaviour. A “limited time only” product creates scarcity bias.
- In Therapy and Mental Health contexts: Depression- and anxiety-informed cognitive distortions are generally caused by covert biases such as negativity bias or catastrophizing and need to be treated with specific CBT approaches.
Most organisations spend money on workshops and web modules addressing unconscious bias, yet research demonstrates that they are ineffective. While being aware of a bias won’t keep it from affecting us, particularly when we’re stressed and using our quick, automatic thinking, short, single-shot sessions don’t bring about lasting results because, without routine practice and evaluation, the awareness dissipates.
Another challenge is responsibility: if there’s no system to challenge or hold accountable biased choices, such as anonymous feedback mechanisms or transparent reviewing procedures, training is theoretical. And when such sessions have a didactic rather than open tone, people close up or get defensive, instead of being curious and reflective.
So how do you cut down on bias in everyday life? Begin by introducing space between reaction and action. Pausing before deciding engages your more rational, reflective mind. Experiment with keeping a simple “bias journal” and recording your thought process leading up to and after big decisions, it increases awareness over time.
Try to use data and evidence more than instinct, particularly in high-stakes decisions. Get around people with different opinions and actively seek out opinions that disagree with your own. If you’re not sure, ask yourself:
What would an objective outside observer conclude about this? For difficult decisions, systematic tools such as checklists can anchor you in reason rather than memory. And lastly, don’t be perfect. Biases are thought habits—breaking them takes drills, introspection, and patience.
Conclusion
It’s not just curiosity about cognitive biases; it’s a survival tool. Biases are hardwired into our brains, but they don’t necessarily have to be. With knowledge, education, and ongoing self-reflection, we can transcend these errors in thinking and make sounder judgments. Begin small. Catch one bias this week. Pause before you respond. Question your “obvious” assumptions. That single dose of self-awareness can flip the direction of your choices—and your life.
FAQs
Q1: Can we eliminate cognitive biases?
Not exactly. They’re a product of how our brain developed. But we can reduce their influence with awareness, consideration, and repetition.
Q2: Are cognitive biases ever extreme?
Not always. In time-stressed or life-or-death situations, heuristics can serve us well. But in complicated or highly emotional decisions, they can lead us astray.
Q3: How do I know which biases I am most susceptible to?
Begin by monitoring your choices. Ask yourself: What did I know? Was I objective? Was I experiencing an emotion? Patterns will be familiar ultimately. You might also have normative tests, such as the Cognitive Reflection Test for insight.
References +
- Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4157.1124
- Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(3), 369–381. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-10937-008
- Haselton, M. G., Nettle, D., & Andrews, P. W. (2005). The evolution of cognitive bias. The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, 724–746. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-08200-026
- Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. Harper.
