Cognitive Biases of Action Pressure

The overconfidence effect is the tendency to overestimate one’s own abilities, accuracy of knowledge, or likelihood of success.

Social desirability bias is the tendency to present oneself in a favorable light, especially when responding to questions or evaluations.

The third–person effect is the belief that media messages affect others more than oneself.

The false consensus effect is the tendency to overestimate how widely one’s own beliefs or behaviors are shared by others.

The hard–easy effect is the tendency to be overconfident on difficult tasks and underconfident on easy ones.

The Lake Wobegone effect is the tendency for people to believe they are above average on positive traits.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a bias in which people with low ability overestimate their competence, while experts may underestimate theirs.

Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one’s own perspective and experiences when interpreting situations.

Optimism bias is the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes and underestimate negative ones.

The Forer effect is the tendency to accept vague, general statements as personally meaningful.

The Barnum effect is closely related to the Forer effect and refers to accepting broad, flattering statements as uniquely applicable.

Self–serving bias is the tendency to attribute successes to internal factors and failures to external ones.

The actor–observer bias is the tendency to attribute one’s own actions to situational factors and others’ actions to personal traits.

The illusion of control is a cognitive bias in which people overestimate their ability to influence outcomes that are largely determined by chance or external factors.

Illusory superiority is the tendency to overestimate one’s own qualities and abilities relative to others.

Fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overemphasize personal traits and underemphasize situational factors when explaining others’ behavior.

The defensive attribution hypothesis is the tendency to attribute more blame to others for accidents or misfortunes as a way to feel safer and less vulnerable.

Trait ascription bias is the tendency to view one’s own behavior as shaped by situations, while viewing others’ behavior as reflecting stable traits.

Effort justification is a bias in which people value outcomes more highly if they required significant effort to achieve.

Risk compensation is the tendency for people to adjust their behavior in response to perceived changes in risk.

The Peltzman effect is a specific form of risk compensation where safety regulations may lead to riskier behavior that offsets some of the intended safety benefits.

Hyperbolic discounting is a cognitive bias in which people disproportionately prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones.

Appeal to novelty is a fallacy in which something is assumed to be better or more correct simply because it is new.

The identifiable victim effect is a bias in which people are more motivated to help a single, identifiable person than a large, anonymous group.

The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to continue an endeavor because of past investments of time, money, or effort, rather than current value.

Irrational escalation is the tendency to increase commitment to a failing course of action despite mounting evidence it is ineffective.

Escalation of commitment is the pattern of continuing or increasing investment in a decision based on prior commitment rather than expected future value.

The generation effect is a memory bias in which information is better remembered when it is actively generated rather than passively received.

Loss aversion is the tendency to feel losses more strongly than equivalent gains.

The IKEA effect is a bias where people place higher value on things they partially created themselves.

Unit bias is the tendency to consume or treat a single unit as the appropriate amount, regardless of its actual size.

Zero–risk bias is the preference for eliminating a small risk entirely over reducing a larger risk by a greater amount.

The disposition effect is the tendency to sell winning investments too early and hold losing ones too long.

The pseudocertainty effect occurs when people focus on outcomes that appear certain while ignoring underlying uncertainty.

The processing difficulty effect is the tendency to judge information as less true, valuable, or reliable when it is harder to process.

The endowment effect is the tendency to value something more highly simply because one owns it.

The backfire effect is a bias where confronting people with evidence against their beliefs can strengthen those beliefs.

System justification is a bias in which people tend to defend, rationalize, and legitimize existing social, economic, or political systems, even when they disadvantage them.

Reverse psychology is a technique or effect where advocating the opposite of a desired outcome leads someone to choose the intended option.

Reactance is a psychological response where people experience motivation to regain freedom when they feel it is being restricted.

The decoy effect is a bias where the introduction of a third, inferior option influences preference between two original choices.

The social comparison effect is the tendency to evaluate oneself by comparing with others rather than using objective standards.

Status quo bias is the preference for keeping things the same by resisting change, even when alternatives may be better.

Ambiguity bias is the tendency to avoid options with unknown probabilities in favor of options with known risks.

Information bias is the tendency to seek more information even when it does not improve decision-making.

Belief bias is the tendency to judge arguments based on whether their conclusions align with existing beliefs rather than on logical validity.

The rhyme–as–reason effect is the tendency to judge rhyming statements as more truthful or persuasive than non-rhyming ones.

The bike–shedding effect is the tendency to spend disproportionate time on trivial issues while neglecting more important ones.

The Law of Triviality states that organizations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues while ignoring significant ones.

The conjunction fallacy occurs when people judge a combination of events as more probable than a single event.

Occam's razor is a principle stating that, among competing explanations, the one with the fewest assumptions should be preferred.

The less–is–better effect is a bias where people prefer a smaller option over a larger one when options are evaluated separately.