Bias Check
Words for the shortcuts, blind spots, and habits that shape how we think.
Words are thoughts. Naming a bias does not make you immune to it. But having the right word can make a pattern easier to notice. Each entry includes a plain-English definition, an everyday example, and one question to help you check your own thinking.
The tendency to notice, seek out, or trust information that supports what you already believe.
Anchoring biasThe tendency to rely too heavily on the first number, idea, or piece of information you encounter.
Availability heuristicThe tendency to judge how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind.
Sunk-cost fallacyThe tendency to keep investing in something because of what you have already spent rather than because continuing is worthwhile.
Loss aversionThe tendency to feel losses more strongly than equivalent gains.
Hindsight biasThe tendency to see an outcome as obvious or predictable after it has already happened.
Survivorship biasThe tendency to focus on visible successes while overlooking the failures that disappeared from view.
Dunning–Kruger effectThe tendency for limited knowledge or skill in a domain to make it harder to recognize your own gaps.
Fundamental attribution errorThe tendency to explain other people’s behavior by their character while underweighting their circumstances.
Self-serving biasThe tendency to credit yourself for successes while blaming outside forces for failures.
Halo effectThe tendency for one positive trait to influence your judgment of unrelated traits.
Horn effectThe tendency for one negative trait or impression to color your judgment of a person or thing as a whole.
Framing effectThe tendency for equivalent information to produce different judgments depending on how it is worded or presented.
Status quo biasThe tendency to prefer the current state of affairs simply because it is familiar or already in place.
Bandwagon effectThe tendency to adopt a belief or behavior because many other people appear to have adopted it.
Recency biasThe tendency to give disproportionate weight to the most recent events or information.
Negativity biasThe tendency for negative events and information to command more attention than positive ones.
Optimism biasThe tendency to underestimate your own chances of experiencing negative outcomes.
Present biasThe tendency to favor immediate rewards over larger or more important future benefits.
Endowment effectThe tendency to value something more highly simply because you own it.
Choice-supportive biasThe tendency to remember your own choices as better than they really were.
Mere-exposure effectThe tendency to develop a preference for things partly because they are familiar.
False-consensus effectThe tendency to overestimate how many other people share your beliefs, preferences, or behavior.
Illusory correlationThe tendency to perceive a relationship between things even when the relationship is weak or nonexistent.
Gambler’s fallacyThe mistaken belief that independent random events must soon balance out previous results.
Planning fallacyThe tendency to underestimate how much time, effort, or cost a future task will require.
Peak-end ruleThe tendency to judge an experience mainly by its most intense moment and how it ended rather than by the whole experience.
ReactanceThe tendency to resist or desire the opposite when you feel your freedom of choice is being restricted.
In-group biasThe tendency to favor people you perceive as belonging to your own group.
Just-world hypothesisThe tendency to assume that people generally get what they deserve, even when chance and unfairness play major roles.