Cognitive Bias | Ethics Defined

Cognitive Bias People generally believe that they  are mostly rational in their thinking, decisions, and actions. But even the smartest and best-educated  people often commit cognitive errors as they make financial, medical,  personal, and ethical decisions. These errors in thinking also called cognitive bias affect all  people and virtually every situation.

For example, physicians must be aware  of the error of overconfidence bias as they make diagnoses which could cause them to  insufficiently value other doctors' opinions. Likewise, physicians and everyone else  must watch out for confirmation bias which is the tendency people  have to process new information in a way that is heavily influenced  by their existing beliefs. The anchoring effect is another bias in thinking whereby people's initial focus  on a particular factor number means that they fail to properly adjust their  judgments as new and different information arises.

There is also the cognitive  error of over-generalization which is the tendency to jump to a broad  conclusion based on a single piece of evidence People are influenced in differing degrees  by these and many other cognitive biases. Studies show that some errors in  thinking can be moderated with education. For example, physicians can learn  to recognize cognitive biases and so reduce their diagnostic mistakes.

But even with effort, none of us will  escape cognitive errors altogether. Knowing your brain is biased is critical to making  it work better for you and everyone around you.