Cognitive BiasesHow does your brain hate you? Let us count the ways…
SO WHAT’S A COGNITIVE BIAS?
¬(𝐶𝑜𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝐵𝑖𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑠≔𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝐹𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑠)
Sensory Input Behavior
WHY SHOULD I CARE?
171
WHY DO WE HAVE THEM?
IS THERE ANY SORT OF LOGIC TO THEM?
Groups Individuals
Desirability Probability & Causation Memory
Motivation (“Hot”)
Function (“Cold”)
GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE.
PAREIDOLIA AND APOPHENIA
Definition
Pareidolia“The tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful, image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.”
Apophenia“The tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas).”
(Definitions via Merriam-Webster)
NOT JUST FACES
NOT JUST HUMANS
NOT JUST VISUAL
NOT JUST AUDIO OR VISUAL
Why Does It Exist?
Here’s a partial hypothesis:1. Knowing who someone is and how they
feel is very important to survival2. We get a lot of that data from faces,
subconsciously3. Therefore, finding and parsing faces
quickly is an adaptive trait
Why Does It Exist?
Other hypotheses:•Your pattern-matching is greedy•You find what you look for• You want to find patterns
What Can I Do About It?
•Be skeptical•Don’t attach meaning to the phenomenon•Don’t rely on manual analysis to find patterns in potentially random data
Thanks! Questions?