Bias 1: Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency Incentive-caused bias Self-interest and rewards drive behavior Behaviors are conditioned by prompt rewards given after an action. Once a behavior is conditioned, random distribution of rewards keeps the reflexive behavior most established. — Incentives cause bias, consciously or subconsciously. Man tends to game all human systems. Common incentives are money, friendship, sex, advancement in status. Punishments also inhibit bad behavior

10

32

25 Cognitive Biases that Ruin Your Life

In prehistoric days when we had to avoid getting devoured by lions, these fast heuristics worked pretty well. Now that life is more complex, the decisions you need to make are more complex, and your cognitive biases trick you into making bad decisions. By learning these biases, you’ll guard yourself against people trying to exploit you. Even better, you’ll guard against your worst enemy: your own

Bias

Self Help

Get

Explore more quotes

Man is a “’social animal,’ greatly and automatically influenced by behavior he observed in men around him. I also knew that man lived, like barnyard animals and monkeys, in limited size dominance hierarchies, wherein he tended to respect authority and to like and cooperate with his own hierarchy distrusting others.

David Heath

“Extreme success of the ants also fascinated me— how a few behavioral algorithms caused such extreme evolutionary success grounded in extremes of cooperation within the breeding colony and, almost always, extremes of lethal hostility toward ants outside the breeding colony, even ants of the same species.”

David Heath

“In the ant’s case, the behavioral algorithms are few in number and almost entirely genetic in origin. The ant learns a little behavior from experiences, but mostly it merely responds to ten or so stimuli with a few simple responses programmed into its nervous system by its genes.”

David Heath

It seems obvious, to me at least, that the human brain must often operate counterproductively just like the ant’s, from unavoidable oversimplicity in its mental process.”

David Heath

“Man is easily fooled, either by the cleverly thought out manipulation of man, by circumstances occurring by accident, or by very effective manipulation practices that man has stumbled into during “practice evolution” and kept in place because they work so well.”

David Heath

Put one hand in hot water, one in cold water, then put both in the same temperature warm water. “Now one hand feels as if it has just been put in cold water and the other hand feels as if it has just been placed in hot water. When one thus sees perception so easily fooled by mere contrast,

David Heath

Being aware of biases is not a perfect defense. Charlie loves checklists.

David Heath

Poorly designed incentives will cause bad behaviors. In pursuit of his own self-interest, man will rationalize bad behavior. excised normal gallbladders. Did this surgeon think, ‘I can get some easy cash by fraudulently excising gallbladders?’ No, “he thought the gallbladder was the source of all evil.

David Heath

Bad behaviors become intensely habit-forming when they are rewarded

David Heath

Antidotes Don’t reward behaviors you don’t want. Don’t design terrible incentive structures. Fear professional advice, especially when it is good for the advisor. Learn and use the basic elements of your advisor’s trade as you deal with your advisor. Double check,

David Heath

“If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.” – Ben Franklin

David Heath

Bias 2: Liking/Loving Tendency Association fallacy Humans tend to like and love things and people, especially mothers, much like goslings attach to whatever is there at birth. People like and love being liked and loved. You ignore fault of and comply with wishes of the object of your affection.

David Heath

Bias 2: Liking/Loving Tendency Why it evolved Attachment to parents promotes learning and safety for child Reciprocal liking between people allows social cohesion

David Heath

Liking/Loving tendency How it can be harmful You can ignore the real faults of the object of your affection. In extreme cases, affection can be so strong you self-harm to attain what is loved. Because you like being loved, you pursue paths that make other people admire you, rather than the optimal choice for yourself.

David Heath

Liking/Loving tendency Antidotes Put good admirable people in situations where people are prone to like/love, like teaching. Explicitly recognize your desire to be liked/loved, and control for that in decision making.Invert,always invert – what do you dislike most about an object of your affection? How can it go wrong

David Heath

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency What it is:

David Heath

Liking/Loving tendency Examples Like making popular but wrong decisions as a manager, or pursuing a respectable but dull career path. Advertising associating products with popular figures Warren and Charlie both liked Warren’s uncle, Fred Buffett, the grocery store owner,

David Heath

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency Antidote Invert, always invert – what can you find to like about an object of your hatred? How can you come to accept this object? What does the best case scenario look like? Respect your adversaries as people who are highly competent with many virtues, whom we will respect.

David Heath

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency Why it evolved

David Heath

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency How it can be harmful Ignoring virtues can further intensify dislike, causing feedback loops Rifts can progressively widen until there is no common ground, and agreements are harder to achieve. Judgments can be made without consideration of full facts

David Heath

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency Examples Negative political advertising, and treatment of opposing political candidates. When World Trade Center was destroyed, many Pakistanis concluded the Hindus did it, many Muslims concluded the Jews did it.Really, pick anything you strongly dislike, and see

David Heath

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency What it is:

David Heath

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency why it evolved:

David Heath

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency How it can harmful

David Heath

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency Example

David Heath

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency Antidotes:

David Heath

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency What is it?

David Heath

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency Why it evolved?

David Heath

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency How it can be harmful:

David Heath

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency Examples:

David Heath

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency Atidotes

David Heath

The 9/11 Commission recently released their report, citing important changes which need to be made to improve our nation's homeland security. I voiced my disappointment with the House leadership when this report was left until after the August recess for action.

Leonard Boswell

I'm very grounded - that's how I would put it. If you met my mother, you'd probably say the same thing about her. I had a very sane upbringing, though some very insane things happened.

Tracy Pollan

A corporation essentially is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.

Wendell Berry

People don't want to go back to the days, pre-referendum, when the Westminster establishment sidelined and ignored Scotland. They want Scotland's voice to be heard.

Nicola Sturgeon

It gets quite difficult for me when I listen to pop music. I don't often understand the words, but when someone translates them to me, I think, 'What is this song representing? That women are just there to be treated like objects?'

Malala Yousafzai

Night tennis began at the United States Open in 1975 with certain stars trying to beg out and certain patrons trying to dump unwanted tickets on scalpers.

George Vecsey

Now about those ghosts. I'm sure they're here and I'm not half so alarmed at meeting up with any of them as I am at having to meet the live nuts I have to see every day.

Bess Truman

It's not love at first sight, it's having the sight, to distinguish true love, from just mere beauty.

Anthony Liccione

An old fox understands the trap.

Anonymous

Well I think all I would say on that is, when we were in opposition in Britain and Hawke and then Keating were in power here, Labor was in power here, we learnt a huge amount from the ALP's experience here.

Patricia Hewitt

It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

J. K Rowling

If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.

Eugene H. Peterson

I actually feel, when I get to about page 200, that it's going to be a book after all! It never gets easier - when you conquer one problem, another one rises up to take its place.

Marcia Muller

Sometimes you're a little too close for comfort, and I think anybody can relate to that, whether you're in college or just moving out on your own.

Leighton Meester

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bombs have kill radiuses churches should have love radiuses anyone within twenty miles of a church should know it.

Tyler Edwards

To those out there who are suffering from cancer, facing adversity, I want you to know that your will to live can make all the difference in the world.

Craig Sager