Reliability of cognitive processes

🧠 Biases in Thinking and Decision-Making

📌Definition Table

Term	Definition
Cognitive bias	A systematic error in thinking that affects judgments and decisions due to heuristics or emotional influences.
Heuristic	A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that simplifies decision-making but can lead to bias.
Confirmation bias	The tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs.
Anchoring bias	The tendency to rely too heavily on an initial piece of information (the “anchor”) when making judgments.
Framing effect	Decisions are influenced by the way choices are presented (positive or negative framing).
Availability heuristic	Judging the likelihood of events based on how easily examples come to mind.
Representative heuristic	Judging probability based on similarity to a prototype rather than actual statistics.

📌Core Concepts

Human decision-making is often irrational and influenced by cognitive biases.Rather than using logic or probability, individuals use heuristics — mental shortcuts — to make quick judgments.While useful in daily life, heuristics can lead to systematic errors, affecting reliability in cognitive processing.

📌Key Studies

📄 Tversky & Kahneman (1974) – Anchoring Bias

Aim:
To investigate how an initial anchor influences numerical estimates.

Procedure:

• Participants spun a wheel rigged to land on 10 or 65.
• Then asked whether the percentage of African nations in the UN was higher or lower than the number on the wheel, and to estimate the true value.

Findings:

• Group 10 → median estimate 25%.
• Group 65 → median estimate 45%.
  Conclusion:
• Anchors bias judgments even when clearly irrelevant.

Evaluation:
✅ Strong experimental control, replicable.
⚠️ Artificial — lacks ecological validity.
✅ Foundational in demonstrating heuristic-driven errors.

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📄 Englich & Mussweiler (2001) – Judicial Decision-Making Bias

Aim:
To determine if anchoring bias affects professional judgments (court sentencing).
Procedure:

• 44 German judges read a rape case summary and were given a sentencing suggestion of 34 or 12 months from a “prosecutor.”
  Findings:
• Higher anchor (34 months) led to significantly higher sentences.
  Conclusion:
• Even experts are influenced by anchors; cognitive biases affect professional decisions.

Evaluation:
✅ High ecological validity (real judges).
⚠️ Small sample; cultural bias (German judiciary).
✅ Strong real-world relevance.

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📄 Wason (1960) – Confirmation Bias

Aim:
To examine reasoning patterns when testing hypotheses.
Procedure:

• Participants shown number triplets (2-4-6) and asked to determine the rule.
• Most tested confirming examples (8-10-12) instead of falsifying ones.
  Findings:
• Participants sought confirmation, not disconfirmation.
  Conclusion:
• People tend to favor evidence supporting their beliefs — a key source of error in logical reasoning.

Evaluation:
✅ Simple and replicable.
⚠️ Low ecological validity.
✅ Demonstrates human preference for belief-consistent data.

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📄 Tversky & Kahneman (1981) – Framing Effect

Aim:
To study how problem framing influences decisions under risk.
Procedure:

• Participants read a hypothetical disease outbreak scenario.
• Group A: “200 people will be saved.”
• Group B: “400 people will die.”
  Findings:
• Group A (gain frame) preferred the sure option.
• Group B (loss frame) preferred the risky option.
  Conclusion:
• Decision-making is influenced by framing — people avoid losses more strongly than they seek gains (prospect theory).

Evaluation:
✅ Robust demonstration of framing bias.
⚠️ Hypothetical scenario — low emotional realism.
✅ Supported by real-world applications (marketing, politics).