Cognitive Bias Catalog

Doing something feels safer than doing nothing — even when nothing wins.

Feelings act as shortcuts for facts.

We prefer known risks to unknown ones, even when the unknown is better.

Over-reliance on the first number that hits the table.

Perceiving meaningful connections in unrelated things.

We overweight whoever has the bigger title in the room.

A story repeats until it becomes obviously true.

We judge frequency by how easily examples come to mind.

Contradictory evidence sometimes deepens the original belief.

Adopting beliefs because the room already did.

We ignore underlying probabilities in favor of vivid specifics.

Beliefs survive the evidence that should have killed them.

We see bias in others more easily than in ourselves.

Spending disproportionate energy on trivial decisions.

Diffused responsibility means nothing happens.

People look better in groups than as individuals.

We remember our past choices as better than they were.

Seeing patterns in random data.

Once we say it publicly, we'll defend it past the data.

We hunt for evidence that we were right all along.

Believing a specific scenario is more likely than its more general one.

Updating beliefs too slowly when new evidence arrives.

Forgetting what it's like not to know what you know.

Adding a clearly worse option steers people toward the option you wanted.

Whatever is pre-selected wins more often than it should.

Low ability paired with high confidence.

Prior solutions block better new ones.

Cold-state decisions don't survive hot-state moments.

We value things more once they're ours.

Assuming everyone secretly agrees with us.

The same information lands differently depending on how it's wrapped.

Seeing things only in their conventional use.

Their failure: character. Our failure: situation.

Believing past random events influence future independent ones.

Low expectations produce low performance.

One strong trait colors judgment of unrelated traits.

Believing past events were obviously predictable once we know how they ended.

Believing streaks predict future streaks.

We disproportionately prefer rewards now over rewards later.

We overvalue things we built ourselves.

Believing we influence outcomes that are largely random.

Confidence in predictions outruns their actual accuracy.

Most of us think we're above average. Statistically, we can't be.

We extend more trust, benefit of the doubt, and rope to 'our people.'

Believing more information leads to better decisions, regardless of relevance.

Believing people get what they deserve.

When trivial metrics become the target, the trivial becomes the strategy.

We're more persuaded by people we like.

Losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good.

We treat money differently depending on which bucket it's in.

Familiarity breeds approval.

Bad lands harder than good.

We judge harm by action more harshly than the same harm by inaction.

Underestimating the probability of bad outcomes — especially to us.

Avoiding information that might be unpleasant.

We see 'them' as more uniform than 'us.'

Confidence routinely outruns calibration.

Work expands to fill the time available for it.

We judge experiences by their peak moment and how they ended.

Overestimating the probability of bad outcomes.

Worst-cases assumed as base-cases because they 'feel responsible.'

We underestimate time and cost; we overestimate benefit.

Today's discomfort outweighs tomorrow's reward.

Assuming new technology will be adopted faster and more usefully than it will.

We assume our current state will persist into the future.

High expectations produce higher performance.

Tell someone they must, and they'd often rather not.

Overweighting whatever just happened.

When someone does us a favor, we feel pressure to return it.

Overestimating our ability to control future impulses.

We remember the past as better than it was.

Rare things feel more valuable, regardless of actual value.

Wins are ours; losses are circumstantial.

Reflexively rejecting evidence that contradicts established norms.

We look to others to decide what's correct.

We assume others notice us more than they do.

Preference for what already exists, simply because it exists.

Throwing more in because we already threw a lot in.

Studying winners while ignoring identical losers.

We defend existing systems even when they harm us.

We prefer eliminating a small risk completely over reducing a larger one partially.