The list of biases that sound very familiar to many of us:
- Representative bias leads to a snap judgment on a question based on its apparent similarity to an earlier matter.
- Cognitive dissonance leads to an avoidance of uncomfortable facts that contradict one’s convictions.
- Home country bias and familiarity bias lead to an avoidance of anything outside one’s comfort zone.
- Mood bias, optimism (or pessimism) bias and overconfidence bias all add a note of irrationality and emotion to the decision-making process.
- The endowment effect causes people to over-value the things they own just because they own them.
- Status quo bias is resistance to change.
- Reference point bias and anchoring bias are tendencies to value a thing in comparison to another thing rather than independently.
- The law of small numbers is the reliance on a too-small sample size to make a decision.
- Attachment bias is a blurring of judgment when one’s own interests or a related person’s interests are involved.
- Media bias and Internet information bias represent uncritical acceptance of widely-reported opinions and assumptions.
It’s not that easy to overcome them, I think the only thing to do is to constantly review all the possible data (positive, negative, or lack of it), make a decision, and move on.