User:Sierra827/sandbox

Individual differences in cognitive biases[ edit]
People do appear to have stable individual differences in their susceptibility to decision biases such as overconfidence, temporal discounting, and bias blind spot. That said, these stable levels of bias within individuals are possible to change. Participants in experiments who watched training videos and played de-biasing games showed medium to large reductions both immediately and up to three months later in the extent to which they exhibited susceptibility to six cognitive biases: anchoring, bias blind spot, confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, projection bias, and representativeness.

'''Individual differences in cognitive bias have also been linked to varying levels of cognitive abilities and functions. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) has been used to help understand the connection between cognitive biases and cognitive ability. There have been inconclusive results when using the Cognitive Reflection Test to understand ability, but there does seem to be a correlation. This correlation shows that those who gain a higher score on the Cognitive Reflection Test have higher cognitive ability and ration-thinking skills. This in turn helps predict the performance on cognitive bias and heuristic tests. Those with higher CRT scores tend to be able to more correctly to different heuristic and cognitive bias tests and tasks .'''

'''Age is another individual difference that has an effect on one’s ability to be susceptible to cognitive bias. Older individuals tend to be more susceptible to cognitive biases and have less cognitive flexibility. However, older individuals were able to decrease their susceptibility to cognitive biases throughout trials. These experiments had both young and older adults complete a framing task. Younger adults had more cognitive flexibility than older adults. Cognitive flexibility is linked to helping overcome preexisting biases .'''

Criticisms[ edit]
There are criticisms against theories of cognitive biases based on the fact that both sides in a debate often claim each other's thoughts to be in human nature and the result of cognitive bias, while claiming their own viewpoints as being the correct way to "overcome" cognitive bias. This is not due simply to debate misconduct but is a more fundamental problem that stems from psychology's making up of multiple opposed cognitive bias theories that can be non-falsifiably used to explain away any viewpoint.[citation needed]

'''Gerd Gigerenzer is one of the main opponents to cognitive biases and heuristics. Gigerenzer wrote a book called Gut Feelings: Short Cuts to Better Decision Making that specifically discusses his beliefs about heuristics and cognitive biases. He explains that he believes that cognitive biases aren’t biases, but rules of thumb, or as he would put it “gut feelings” that can actually help us make accurate decisions in our lives. His view shines a much more positive light on cognitive biases than many other researchers .Many view cognitive biases and heuristics as irrational ways of making decisions and judgements. Gigerenzer argues that using heuristics and cognitive biases are rational and helpful .'''

Practical significance[ edit]
Further information: Confirmation bias § Consequences

Many social institutions rely on individuals to make rational judgments.

The securities regulation regime largely assumes that all investors act as perfectly rational persons. In truth, actual investors face cognitive limitations from biases, heuristics, and framing effects.

A fair jury trial, for example, requires that the jury ignore irrelevant features of the case, weigh the relevant features appropriately, consider different possibilities open-mindedness and resist fallacies such as appeal to emotion. The various biases demonstrated in these psychological experiments suggest that people will frequently fail to do all these things. However, they fail to do so in systematic, directional ways that are predictable.

Cognitive biases are also related to the persistence of theory-of-everything thinking, to large social issues such as prejudice, and they also work as a hindrance in the acceptance of scientific non-intuitive knowledge by the public.

However, in some academic disciplines, the study of bias is very popular. For instance, bias is a wide spread and well studied phenomenon because most decisions that concern the minds and hearts of entrepreneurs are computationally intractable.

'''Cognitive biases can create other issues that arise in everyday life. One study showed the connection between cognitive bias, specifically approach bias, and inhibitory control on how much unhealthy snack food a person would eat. They found that the participants who ate more of the unhealthy snack food, tended to have less inhibitory control and more reliance on approach bias .Others have also hypothesized that cognitive biases could be linked to various eating disorders and how people view their bodies .'''

'''It has also been argued that cognitive biases can be used in destructive ways. Some believe that there are people in authority who use cognitive biases and heuristics in order to manipulate others so that they can reach their end goal. Some medications and other health care treatments rely on cognitive biases in order to convince others to use their products. Many see this as taking advantage of one’s natural struggle of judgement and decision-making. They also believe that it is the governments responsibility to regulate these misleading ads .'''

'''Cognitive biases also seem to play a role in property sale price and value. Participants in the experiment were shown a residential property. Afterwards, they were shown another property that was completely unrelated to the first property. They were asked to say what they believed the value and the sale price of the second property would be. They found that showing the participants an unrelated property did have an effect on how they valued the second property .'''

Reducing[ edit]
Main articles: Cognitive bias mitigation and Cognitive bias modification

Because they cause systematic errors, cognitive biases cannot be compensated for using a wisdom of the crowd technique of averaging answers from several people. Debiasing is the reduction of biases in judgment and decision-making through incentives, nudges, and training. Cognitive bias mitigation and cognitive bias modification are forms of debiasing specifically applicable to cognitive biases and their effects. Reference class forecasting is a method for systematically debiasing estimates and decisions, based on what Daniel Kahneman has dubbed the outside view.

Similar to Gigerenzer (1996), Haselton et al. (2005) state the content and direction of cognitive biases are not "arbitrary" (p. 730). Moreover, cognitive biases can be controlled. One debiasing technique aims to decrease biases by encouraging individuals to use controlled processing compared to automatic processing. In relation to reducing the FAE, monetary incentives and informing participants they will be held accountable for their attributions have been linked to the increase of accurate attributions. Training has also shown to reduce cognitive bias. Carey K. Morewedge and colleagues (2015) found that research participants exposed to one-shot training interventions, such as educational videos and debiasing games that taught mitigating strategies, exhibited significant reductions in their commission of six cognitive biases immediately and up to 3 months later.

Cognitive bias modification refers to the process of modifying cognitive biases in healthy people and also refers to a growing area of psychological (non-pharmaceutical) therapies for anxiety, depression and addiction called cognitive bias modification therapy (CBMT). CBMT is sub-group of therapies within a growing area of psychological therapies based on modifying cognitive processes with or without accompanying medication and talk therapy, sometimes referred to as applied cognitive processing therapies (ACPT). Although cognitive bias modification can refer to modifying cognitive processes in healthy individuals, CBMT is a growing area of evidence-based psychological therapy, in which cognitive processes are modified to relieve suffering from serious depression, anxiety, and addiction. CBMT techniques are technology assisted therapies that are delivered via a computer with or without clinician support. CBM combines evidence and theory from the cognitive model of anxiety, cognitive neuroscience, and attentional models.

'''Cognitive bias modification has also been used to help those who are suffering with obsessive compulsive beliefs and obsessive compulsive disorder. This therapy has shown that it decreases the obsessive compulsive beliefs .'''