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

Deep Dive

All Biases

Overconfidence Effect

We have excessive confidence in our own answers, judgments, and abilities relative to our actual accuracy.

Social Desirability Bias

We present ourselves in a favorable light by over-reporting good behavior and under-reporting bad behavior.

Third-Person Effect

We believe that mass media messages have a greater effect on others than on ourselves.

False Consensus Effect

We overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs, values, and behaviors.

Hard-Easy Effect

We are overconfident on easy tasks and underconfident on difficult tasks.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

People with low ability overestimate their competence, while those with high ability underestimate theirs.

Egocentric Bias

We rely too heavily on our own perspective and overestimate our role in events.

Optimism Bias

We believe we are less likely to experience negative events and more likely to experience positive events than others.

Forer Effect (Barnum Effect)

We believe vague, general personality descriptions are highly accurate and specifically tailored to us.

Self-Serving Bias

We attribute successes to our own abilities and efforts, but attribute failures to external factors.

Actor-Observer Bias

We attribute our own actions to situational factors while attributing others' actions to their character.

Illusion of Control

We overestimate our ability to control events, especially random outcomes.

Illusory Superiority

We overestimate our own qualities and abilities relative to others (also called "Lake Wobegon effect").

Fundamental Attribution Error

We overemphasize personal characteristics and underemphasize situational factors when explaining others' behavior.

Defensive Attribution Hypothesis

We attribute more blame to a harm-doer as the severity of the outcome increases, to protect our belief in a controllable world.

Trait Ascription Bias

We view ourselves as more variable in personality across situations while viewing others as more predictable.

Effort Justification

We value outcomes more highly when we've had to put significant effort into achieving them.

Risk Compensation (Peltzman Effect)

We take more risks when we feel protected by safety measures, offsetting the benefits of those measures.

Action Bias

We prefer to "do something" rather than nothing, even when inaction would be the statistically better choice (common in investing and sports).

Courtesy Bias

We tend to give opinions that are socially acceptable to avoid offending others, rather than stating our true beliefs (often skews survey data).