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?