Cognitive Biases Quotes

The faster you strip cultures down, the more you find contrariness and disputation, rather than a solid core, until eventually you reach the individual, a mammal shaped by evolution, material needs, cognitive biases and historical circumstances no doubt, but still a creature with a better right to state his opinions than kings and clerics have to silence them. ~ Nick Cohen

Human beings are not nearly as coolly rational as we like to think we are. Having set up comfortable planets of belief, we become resistant to altering them, and develop cognitive biases that prevent us from seeing the world with perfect clarity. We aspire to be perfect Bayesian abductors, impartially reasoning to the best explanation - but most often we take new data and squeeze it to fit with our preconceptions. ~ Sean Carroll

We make a number of reasoning errors due to cognitive biases. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

The narrative illusion introduces a "mind virus", which is a syntactical contagion that spreads through communicative vectors and colonizes the cognitive biases of the targeted individual's psychology, thus transforming the mental processes of that target. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, The Center For Cyber Influence Operations Studies

Our inherent cognitive biases make us ripe for manipulation and exploitation by those who have an agenda to push, especially if they can discredit all other sources of information. ~ Lee McIntyre

Ultimately, of course, you must decide for yourself whether the subjective psychological effects created by your evolved cognitive biases reflect an objective reality, perhaps as evidence that God designed your mind to be so receptive to Him. Or, just maybe, you will come to acknowledge that, like the rest of us, you are a hopeless pawn in one of natural selection's most successful hoaxes ever-and smile at the sheer ingenuity involved in pulling it off, at the very thought of such mindless cleverness. One can still enjoy the illusion of God, after all, without believing Him to be real. ~ Jesse Bering

We historians are increasingly using experimental psychology to understand the way we act. It is becoming very clear that our ability to evaluate risk is hedged by all sorts of cognitive biases. It's a miracle that we get anything right. ~ Niall Ferguson

All of us are not always smarter than one of us, leaders need to distinguish between the wisdom of crowds and the madness of crowds. ~ Paul Gibbons

Thanks to a plethora of cognitive biases, faulty heuristics, and common fallacies of thought, you are probably deluding yourself minute by minute just to cope with reality. ~ David McRaney

The problem is not lack of competence, it is confidence without competence. ~ Paul Gibbons

Language has to be partly innate, simply because human babies are born with the ability to learn the language of their parents. While this can justifiably be called a language instinct, there is no one gene compelling us to produce language. Instead, a set of genetic settings gives rise to a set of behaviors and perceptual and cognitive biases, some of which may be more general and others of which are more language specific. ~ Christine Kenneally

Companies trying to misrepresent the product they sell by playing with our cognitive biases, our unconscious associations, and that's sneaky. The latter is done by, say, showing a poetic picture of a sunset with a cowboy smoking and forcing an association between great romantic moments and some given product that, logically, has no possible connection to it. You seek a romantic moment and what you get is cancer. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If colorblindness seems to backfire, is there something that does help our children - and us - navigate the dangerous shoals of race? Yes: talking openly about racial differences and what they might mean. Psychological research shows that cognitive biases in social judgment "can be controlled only through subsequent, deliberate 'mental correction' that takes group status squarely into account. ~ Ian F. Haney-Lopez

The IYI subscribes to The New Yorker, a journal designed so philistines can learn to fake a conversation about evolution, neurosomething, cognitive biases, and quantum mechanics. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Reality is only a reflection of our own intentions, biases, knacks and desires. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Racism is not dead. Definitely, there are these biases. ~ John McWhorter

An audience that is unwilling to suspend its own presuppositions and biases while considering an opposed (or even unopposed) viewpoint not only frustrates the function of extended argument but effectively denies its own beliefs a rational basis. ~ Vincent E. Barry

Today's youth cannot escape the shadow of racism that has been passed down organically from parents and others who cling to a distorted image of American history, one informed by, and articulated from, a worldview permeated by white privilege. [sic], these biases are so hardwired that most of us have no idea how quickly and automatically they kick in and how enduring they can be. ~ Thomas Norman DeWolf

Simply put, a woman's brain is not her friend when it comes to confidence. We think too much and we think about the wrong things. Thinking harder and harder and harder won't solve our issues, though, it won't make us more confident, and it most certainly freezes decision making, not to mention action. Remember, the female brain works differently from the male brain; we really do have more going on, we are more keenly aware of everything happening around us, and that all becomes part of our cognitive stew. Ruminating drains the confidence from us. Those negative thoughts, and nightmare scenarios masquerading as problem solving, spin on an endless loop. We render ourselves unable to be in the moment or to trust our instincts because we are captive to those distracting, destructive thoughts, which gradually squeeze all the spontaneity out of life and work. We have got to stop ruminating. ~ Katty Kay

some linguists have also concluded that, while the innatist perspective provides a plausible explanation for first language acquisition, something else is required for second language acquisition, since it so often falls short of full success. From the cognitive psychology perspective, however, first and second language acquisition are seen as drawing on the same processes of perception, memory, categorization, and generalization. The difference lies in the circumstances of learning as well as in what the learners already know about language and how that prior knowledge shapes their perception of the new language. ~ Patsy M. Lightbown

The idea is that readers don't come blank to books. Consciously and not, we bring all the biases that come with our nationality, gender, race, class, age. They you layer onto that the status of our health, employment, relationships, not to mention our particular relationship to each book--who gave it to us, where we read it, what books we've already read--and as my professor put it, 'That massive array of spices has as much to do with the flavor of the soup as whatever the cook intended ~ Kelly Corrigan

A visit to Israel is always an experience in cognitive dissonance. The Israel you personally see and hear is so completely different from the Israel you read and hear about in the media. ~ Alan Dershowitz

We don't widely accept the idea that bad things happen for uncontrollable reasons because of fear. How could that be? If that is true, we can't make sense of it with our cognitive brains. And that is scary. If that is true, there is no way for us to control those things while in human form. And that is scary. So we search for meaning, a less scary understanding. And we usually end up assuming the victim is to blame. ~ Elisabeth Corey

There are really only two standards of appellate review: plenary and deferential. Conventionally there are four basic standards (with many variants), which in ascending order of deference to the trial court or administrative agency are de novo, clearly erroneous, substantial evidence, and abuse of discretion. But the last three are, in practice, the same, because finer distinctions are beyond judges' cognitive capacity. The multiplication of unusual distinctions is a familiar judicial pathology. ~ Richard A. Posner

Many cognitive psychologists see the brain as a computer. But every single brain is absolutely individual, both in its development and in the way it encounters the world. ~ Gerald Edelman

Starting with the Renaissance and running through the Enlightenment, there occurred what we might call "the great reversal." Suddenly, very suddenly, the Ascenders were out, the Descenders were in - and the transition was bloody, arguably the bloodiest cognitive transformation in European history. ~ Ken Wilber

Rest assured, dear friend, that many noteworthy and great sciences and arts have been discovered through the understanding and subtlety of women, both in cognitive speculation, demonstrated in writing, and in the arts, manifested in manual works of labor. I will give you plenty of examples. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies 1405 ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Bruce Miller, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, studies elderly patients with a relatively common form of brain disease called frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. He's found that in some cases where the FTD is localized on the left side of the brain, people who had never picked up a paintbrush or an instrument can develop extraordinary artistic and musical abilities at the very end of their lives. As their other cognitive skills fade away, they become narrow savants. ~ Joshua Foer

While you judge me by my outward appearance I am silently doing the same to you, even though there's a ninety-percent chance that in both cases our assumptions are wrong. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

You may note the irony. In the context of the cab problem, the neglect of base-rate information is a cognitive flaw, a failure of Bayesian reasoning, and the reliance on causal base rates is desirable. Stereotyping the Green drivers improves the accuracy of judgment. In other contexts, however, such as hiring or profiling, there is a strong social norm against stereotyping, which is also embedded in the law. This is as it should be. In sensitive social contexts, we do not want to draw possibly erroneous conclusions about the individual from the statistics of the group. We consider it morally desirable for base rates to be treated as statistical facts about the group rather than as presumptive facts about individuals. In other words, we reject causal base rates. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Experiment: To replace negative character labels, try the following steps:

1. Pick a new, positive character label that you would prefer. For example, if your old belief is "I'm incompetent," you would likely pick "I'm competent."

2. Rate how much you currently believe the old negative character label on a scale of 0 (= I don't believe it at all) to 100 (= I believe it completely). Do the same for the new positive belief. For example, you might say you believe "I'm incompetent" at level 95 and believe "I'm competent" at level 10 (the numbers don't need to add up to 100).

3. Create a Positive Data Log and a Historical Data Log. Strengthening your new, positive character label is often a more helpful approach than attempting to hack away at the old, negative one. I'm going to give you two experiments that will help you do this.

Positive Data Log. For two weeks, commit to writing down evidence that supports your new, positive character belief. For example, if you are trying to boost your belief in the thought "I'm competent" and you show up to an appointment on time, you can write that down as evidence.

Don't fall into the cognitive trap of discounting some of the evidence. For example, if you make a mistake and then sort it out, it's evidence of competence, not incompetence, so you could put that in your Positive Data Log.

Historical Data Log. This log looks back at periods of your life and finds evidence from t ~ Alice Boyes

Because of my bipolar disorder, I tend to these mixed states, which are depressed but loud and agitated. So I can be terribly irritable. I go to cognitive behavioral therapy in order not to yell at my children. ~ Ayelet Waldman

There is the experience of enlightenment, to be very aware of what lies beyond the boundaries of cognitive perception, reflection and self-awareness as seen by the personality. ~ Frederick Lenz

To read someone else's work is good, to have them read yours is amazing! ~ Rishi Barua

Adding to our understanding of why the brain seems undisturbed by disconnections was not only the notion that it was, in a sense, sending half its decisions into the realm of the unconscious; it was also the discovery of the "interpreter." This special left brain system kept note of all the behaviors that resulted from the many mental systems. It appeared to be the surveillance camera on our behavior, which, of course, was the evidence that a mental or cognitive act had occurred. The interpreter not only took note; it tried to make "sense" out of the behavior by keeping a running narrative going on about why a string of behaviors was occurring. It is a precious device and most likely uniquely human. It is working in us all the time as we try to explain why we like something or have a particular opinion, or rationalize something we have done. It is the interpreter device that takes the inputs from the massively modularized and automatic brain of ours and creates order from chaos. It comes up with the "makes sense" explanation that leads us to believe in a certain form of essentialism, that is, that we are a unified conscious agent. Nice try, interpreter! ~ Michael S. Gazzaniga

Collection Methods in Qualitative Studies Where was the setting of the study? What was the rationale for choosing the setting? Who were the participants and what were their roles and characteristics? Why were they chosen? What data collection methods were used? What role did the researcher adopt within the setting? Who collected the data and were they qualified for their roles? How were data collectors trained? Was the training adequate? Was the process of the fieldwork adequately reported? How did the event unfold? Was data collection continued until saturation was achieved? Were the researchers' assumptions or biases acknowledged? ~ Nola A. Schmidt

Kant is sometimes considered to be an advocate of reason. Kant was in favor of science, it is argued. He emphasized the importance of rational consistency in ethics. He posited regulative principles of reason to guide our thinking, even our thinking about religion. And he resisted the ravings of Johann Hamann and the relativism of Johann Herder. Thus, the argument runs, Kant should be placed in the pantheon of Enlightenment greats. That is a mistake. The fundamental question of reason is its relationship to reality. Is reason capable of knowing reality - or is it not? Is our rational faculty a cognitive function, taking its material form reality, understanding the significance of that material, and using that understanding to guide our actions in reality - or is it not? This is the question that divides philosophers into pro- and anti-reason camps, this is the question that divides the rational gnostics and the skeptics, and this was Kant's question in his Critique of Pure Reason. Kant was crystal clear about his answer. Reality - real, noumenal reality - is forever closed off to reason, and reason is limited to awareness and understanding of its own subjective products… Kant was the decisive break with the Enlightenment and the first major step toward postmodernism. Contrary to the Enlightenment account of reason, Kant held that the mind is not a response mechanism but a constitute mechanism. He held that the mind - and not reality - sets the terms for knowledge. And he held ~ Stephen R.C. Hicks

Cognitive flexibility is an important executive function that reflects our ability to shift thinking and to produce a steady flow of creative thoughts and answers as opposed to a regurgitation of the usual responses. The trait correlates with high-performance levels in intellectually demanding jobs. So if you have an important afternoon brainstorming session scheduled, going for a short, intense run during lunchtime is a smart idea. ~ John J. Ratey

[Patricia Greenfield] concluded that "every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others." Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies has led to the "widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills." We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to. But our "new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence" go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of "deep processing" that underpins "mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection. ~ Nicholas Carr

Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform, that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning, carry'd one step further, will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes, from which they are deriv'd, must also be resembling. When any hypothesis, therefore, is advanc'd to explain a mental operation, which is common to men and beasts, we must apply the same hypothesis to both. ~ David Hume

What makes some cognitive operations more demanding and effortful than others? What outcomes must we purchase in the currency of attention? What can System 2 do that System 1 cannot? We now have tentative answers to these questions. ~ Daniel Kahneman

To understand those who are culturally and historically different from us – rather than resorting to such labels as 'evil empire', 'fundamentalist' and 'terrorist' to mask our ignorance – is a matter of urgency. The greatest hubris is to ask why 'they' are not like 'us', to accept our cultural biases lazily and without question, and to frame the problem in terms of 'what went wrong? ~ Caroline Finkel

Increased physical activity during the school day can help children's attention, classroom behavior, and achievement test scores. Meanwhile, the decline of play is closely linked to ADHD; behavioral problems; and stunted social, cognitive, and creative development. ~ Darell Hammond

Man is the artificer of his own happiness. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter. ~ Catherynne M Valente

There is nothing innate, immutable or inevitable about boys or girls doing particularly well or badly in different subjects. Girls in Shanghai outperform western boys in math, the same boys that outshine the girls in the US. The variable factor is the educational system, the society and the parents. ~ Jamie Le Fay

Instincts are effective tools of survival, but when it comes to finding true answers to real questions, your rational thinking is the person to do the job. That is why seeking truth requires keeping your innate instincts and biases in check. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The cognitive science's challenge is to link our consensus reality to our internal reality, but physics' challenge is to link our consensus reality to our external reality. ~ Max Tegmark

One of the things anxiety educates you in is how deeply physical thought can be, how concrete. In anxiety, there is no time to luxuriate in abstractions. It's just you and your mind, which has fists and is using them. It may be dualistic and logically untenable to posit the situation as You v. Head; it may not make sense philosophically. But in the throes of anxiety? In the cognitive shit? There's really no other way to think about what's going on. ~ Daniel Smith

These two ways to incorporate mindfulness sit well with art therapy: first, by incorporating meditative or contemplative methods to facilitate relaxation and deepen the inward turn for connecting with deeper consciousness in all phases of the art task; second, by introducing cognitive skills to bring clients into the present moment with what they are feeling. Not how (guilt, anger, shame), but what (I feel helpless, unworthy, agitated). Cognitive mindfulness also provides a skillful means for dialoguing with art, where remaining open and image-centered may result in deeper insights. ~ Barbara Jean Davis

The similarity between space and time is limpid enough that we routinely use space to represent time in calendars, hourglasses, and other time-keeping devices. And the cognitive similarity also shows up in everyday metaphors where spatial terms are borrowed to refer to time. ~ Steven Pinker

Dallas Willard explains: The world has succeeded in opposing intelligence to goodness. . . . And today any attempt to combine spirituality or moral purity with great intelligence causes widespread pangs of "cognitive dissonance." [As with Jesus,] Mother Teresa . . . is thought of as . . . nice, of course, but not really smart. "Smart" means good at managing how life "really" is. ~ Jared C. Wilson

Needless to say, that meant that the Braekbills student body was quite the psychological menagerie. Carrying that much onboard cognitive processing power had a way of distorting your personality. And to actually want to work that hard, you had to be at least a little bit screwed up. ~ Lev Grossman

Compartmentalization is an unconscious psychological defense mechanism employed to avoid cognitive dissonance. ~ Zack Love

I battle between my body's desperate need for him and my mind's strong need to talk. I want to clear the air before I'm dragged back onto Central Jesse Cloud Nine where I lose all cognitive reasoning. ~ Jodi Ellen Malpas

This story... blasts to pieces our biases and labels with a declaration that God is on everyone's side, extending grace and compassion to everyone, especially those we have most strongly decided are not on God's side. ~ Rob Bell

Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times. Hyper attention is characterized by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom. ~ N. Katherine Hayles

Business schools tend to focus on topics that are suitable to blackboards, so they overemphasize organization and finance. Until very recently, they virtually ignored manufacturing. I think of lot of the troubles of the 1970s and 1980s, and now more recently the 2000s can be traced pretty directly to the biases of the business schools. ~ Charles R. Morris

Politically progressive black people on the Left who are not nationalist, like myself, share a perspective that promotes the eradication of white supremacy, the de-centering of the West, redressing of biases, and commitment to affirming black self-determination. Yet we add to the critique of white Western imperialism a repudiation of patriarchy, a critique of capitalism, and a concern for interracial coalition building. ~ Bell Hooks