Too Much Information

We notice things already primed in  memory or repeated often

• Availability heuristic
• Attentional bias
• Illusory truth effect
• Mere exposure effect
• Context effect
• Cue-dependent forgetting
• Mood-congruent memory bias
• Frequency illusion
• Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
• Empathy gap
• Omission bias
• Base rate fallacy

Bizarre, funny, visually-striking, or anthropomorphic things stick out more than non-bizarre/unfunny things

• Bizarreness effect
• Humor effect Von Restorff effect
• Picture superiority effect
• Self-relevance effect
• Negativity bias

We notice when something has changed

• Anchoring
• Conservation
• Contrast effect
• Distinction effect
• Focusing effect
• Framing effect
• Money illusion
• Weber-Fechner law

We are drawn to details that confirm our own existing beliefs

• Confirmation bias
• Congruence bias
• Post-purchase rationalization
• Choice-support bias
• Selective perception
• Observer-expectancy effect
• Experimenter’s bias
• Observer effect
• Exception bias
• Ostrich effect
• Subjective validation
• Continued influence effect
• Semmelweis reflex

We notice flaws in others more easily than we notice flaws in ourselves

• Bias blind spot
• Naive cynicism
• Naive realism

Not Enough Meaning

We tend to find stories and data when looking at sparse data

• Confabulation
• Clustering illusion
• Insensitivity to sample size
• Neglect of Probability
• Anecdotal fallacy
• Illusion of validity
• Masked man fallacy
• Recency illusion
• Gambler’s fallacy
• Illusory correlation
• Pareidolia
• Anthropomorphism

We fill in characteristics from stereotypes, generalities, and prior histories

• Group attribution error
• Ultimate attribution error
• Stereotyping
• Essentialism
• Functional fixedness
• Moral credential effect
• Just-world hypothesis
• argument from fallacy
• Authority bias
• Automation bias
• Bandwagon effect
• Placebo effect

We imagine things and people we’re familiar with or fond of as better

• Out-group homogeneity bias
• Cross-race effect
• In-group bias
• Halo effect
• Cheerleader effect
• Positivity effect
• Not invented here
• Reactive devaluation
• Well-traveled road effect

We simplify probabilities and numbers to make them easier to think about

• Mental accounting
• Appeal to probability fallacy
• Normalcy bias
• Murphy’s Law
• Zero-sum bias
• Survivorship bias
• Subadditivity effect
• Denomination effect
• Magic number 7+-2

We think we know what other people are thinking

• Illusion of transparency
• Curse of knowledge
• Spotlight effect
• Extrinsic incentive error
• Illusion of external agency
• Illusion of asymmetric insight

We project our current mindset and assumptions onto the past and future

• Self-consistency bias
• Resistant bias
• projection bias
• Pro-innovation bias
• Time-saving bias
• Planning fallacy
• Pessimism bias
• Impact bias
• Declinism
• Moral luck
• Outcome bias
• Hindsight bias
• Rosy retrospection
• Telescoping effect

Need To Act Fast

We favor simple-looking options and complete information over complex, ambiguous options

• Less-is-better effect
• Occam’s razor
• Conjunction fallacy
• Delmore effect
• Law of Triviality
• Bike-shedding effect
• Rhyme as reason effect
• Belief bias
• Information bias
• Ambiguity bias

To avoid mistakes, we aim to preserve autonomy and group status and avoid irreversible decisions

• Status quo bias
• Social comparison bias
• Decoy effect
• Reactance
• Reverse psychology
• System justification

To get things done, we tend to complete things we’ve time & energy in

• Backfire effect
• Endowment effect
• Processing difficulty effect
• Pseudocertainty effect
• Disposition effect
• Zero-risk bias
• Unit bias
• IKEA effect
• Loss aversion
• Generation effect
• Escalation of commitment
• Irrational escalation
• Sunk cost fallacy

To stay focused, we favor the immediate, relatable thing in front of us

• Identifiable victim effect
• Appeal to novelty
• Hyperbolic discounting

To act, we must be confident we can make an impact and feel what we do is important

• Peltzman effect
• Risk compensation
• Effort Justification
• Trait ascription bias
• Defensive attribution hypothesis
• Fundamental attribution error
• Illusory superiority
• Illusion of control
• Actor-observer bias
• Self-serving bias
• Barnum effect
• Forer effect
• Optimism effect
• Egocentric effect
• Dunning-Kruger effect
• Lake Wobegone effect
• Hard-easy effect
• False consensus effect
• Third-person effect
• Social desirability bias
• Overconfidence effect

What Should We Remember?

We store memories differently based on how they are experienced

• Tip of the tongue phenomenon
• Google effect
• Next-in-line effect
• Testing effect
• Absent-mindedness
• Levels of processing effect

We reduce events and lists to their key elements

• Suffix effect
• Serial position effect
• Part-list cueing effect
• Recency effect
• Primary effect
• Memory inhibition
• Modality effect
• Duration neglect
• List-length effect
• Serial recall effect
• Misinformation effect
• leveling and sharpening
• Peak-end rule

We discard specifics to form generalities

• Fading affect bias
• Negativity bias
• Prejudice
• Stereotypical bias
• implicit stereotypes
• Implicit association

We edit and reinforce some memories after the fact

• Spacing effect
• Suggestibility
• False memory
• Cryptomnesia
• Source confusion
• Misattribution of memory

The Cognitive Bias Codex: A Visual Of 180+ Cognitive Biases