We notice things already primed in memory or repeated often.
This is the simple rule that our brains are more likely to notice things that are related to stuff that’s recently been loaded in memory.
Attentional Bias
The tendency for people’s perception to be affected by their recurring thoughts at the time. Attentional biases may explain an individual’s failure to consider alternative possibilities, as specific thoughts guide the train of thought in a certain manner. For example, smokers tend to possess a bias for cigarettes and other smoking-related cues around them, due to the positive thoughts they’ve already attributed between smoking and the cues they were exposed to while smoking.
Availability Heuristic
A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently, under the availability heuristic, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news. Read More.
Base Rate Fallacy
If presented with related base rate information (i.e. generic, general information) and specific information (information pertaining only to a certain case), the mind tends to ignore the former and focus on the latter. In strictly mathematical predictions, it is failing to use Bayesian Mathematics to evaluate probabilities. Non-Mathematical Example. Students were asked to estimate the GPAs of hypothetical students. When given relevant statistics about GPA distribution, students tended to ignore them if given descriptive information about the particular student even if the new descriptive information was obviously of little or no relevance to GPA. Read More.
Related. Conservatism
Context Effect
An aspect of cognitive psychology that describes the influence of environmental factors on one’s perception of a stimulus. “THE CAT” is a classic example of context effect. We have little trouble reading “H” and “A” in their appropriate contexts, even though they take on the same form in each word.
Cue-Dependent Forgetting
The failure to recall information without memory cues. Information stored in the memory is retrieved by way of association with other memories. Some memories cannot be recalled by simply thinking about them. Rather, one must think about something associated with it.
Empathy Gap
A cognitive bias in which people underestimate the influences of visceral drives on their own attitudes, preferences, and behaviors.
A) Hot-to-cold: People under the influence of visceral factors (hot state) don’t fully grasp how much their behavior and preferences are being driven by their current state; they think instead that these short-term goals reflect their general and long-term preferences.
B) Cold-to-hot: People in a cold state have difficulty picturing themselves in hot states, minimizing the motivational strength of visceral impulses. This leads to unpreparedness when visceral forces inevitably arise.
Frequency Illusion
The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards.
Illusory Truth Effect
The tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure. When truth is assessed, people rely on whether the information is in line with their understanding or if it feels familiar. The first condition is logical as people compare new information with what they already know to be true. However, repetition makes statements easier to process relative to new, unrepeated, statements; leading people believe that the repeated conclusion is more truthful.
Mere Exposure Effect
A psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In studies of interpersonal attraction, the more often a person is seen by someone, the more pleasing and likeable that person appears to be.
Mood-Congruent Memory Bias
The improved recall of information congruent with one’s current mood.
Omission Bias
The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral than equally harmful omissions (inactions) because actions are more obvious than inactions. Read More.
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