biasescognitive

Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from normative or rational judgment and decision making. They arise from the use of mental shortcuts, or heuristics, and from limitations in processing capacity, attention, and memory.

They reflect how people think rather than what is true; while often leading to errors, they can also be adaptive in providing quick judgments under uncertainty.

Common biases include anchoring (relying on the first piece of information), the availability heuristic (overestimating frequency based on salient memories), confirmation bias (favoring information that confirms preconceptions), representativeness, framing effects, hindsight bias, overconfidence, sunk cost, and the Dunning-Kruger effect.

In medicine, finance, public policy, and everyday life, biases influence judgments, risk assessment, evaluation of evidence, and collaboration. Understanding biases is central to behavioral science, economics, and decision support systems.

Mitigation approaches include awareness training, debiasing techniques, structured decision processes, checklists, preregistration, and decision-support systems that enforce evidence-based criteria. Ongoing research investigates how biases arise, how they interact with heuristics, and how to design environments that reduce harmful effects.