Examples Of Cognitive Bias

While people deal with everyday life, a plethora of events is occurring throughout the day. Most people usually do a multitude of actions to resolve these events without thinking as well. This can be anything from trying to get to class as soon as possible, talking to someone that recently was introduced, or doing a kind of tradition at a football game. Cognitive Biases is defined as a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. This article will talk about a small sample of these situations and clarify what the meaning behind them. It shall discuss Negativity Bias, Confirmation Bias, Gamblers Fallacy, and Illusion of Control

with examples of prior situations of my life.
As I look back into my past, the main memories that are projected out are unpleasant and unwanted. This is the definition of negativity bias. Continuing, focusing on the erroneous of a situation or characteristic. This is seen in my past semester with the business communication class. We were asked to review other student’s presentation and give well-placed feedback as well as critiques on their performance. Hence, most people disregard the positive remarks and indulge themselves in the negative. This has also been seen when looking over past performance recordings, like a with e-sports players, athletes, debaters, and speakers.
When meeting people for the first time, everyone says that the first impression is the most important one to put oneself in a good light; this is so because of Confirmation Bias.

It is defined as the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions meaning that the first time an individual is exposed to a new subject, that being an individual, place, or activity, their initial thoughts towards it will stay. This happened when I first tried ranch dressing on a salad and had a horrible experience with it. The bad event corresponding to eating with ranch left me with a bad memory. Ever since then, that dressing has been of pure disgust, though others approve of consumption especially if something within the food tasted

subpar.
Continuing, as people play games of chance and gamble away money that could have been used to make less risky decisions. When people try to deal with future probability while thinking that past events will alter the chance of a certain outcome occurring is called the Gamblers Fallacy. This can be seen with people dumping massive amounts of money into a game, thinking that the past probability will change the outcome of the next slots, roll, card pack pulls, or lottery number scratch. I have experienced this with buying Magic the Gathering cards at my local game shop, I tried to pull a specific card from a set of over 300 cards in a 15 card pack, and spent over $100 trying to get claim some cards that were unlikely to be attained. I have also seen this happen to people who buy cases or $1,200 worth of booster boxes trying to complete a set of cards from the current expansion. While the probability of gaining the desired outcome is higher compared to a casino, past results of probability should not be considered when looking into new chances.
Finally, as people go to sporting events, they will see people doing certain traditions to promote, at least within themselves, a sense of control to an external factor that they have no power towards; this is known as Illusion of control.

Many examples of this are seen, with octopuses deciding the “winner” of the next Super bowl, to a tradition of watching a game get a desired outcome for the Stanley Cup. Areas, where people see this, are mainly in sporting events but are not limited to that area. I have dealt with this when going to any football game, hockey match, or Magic the Gathering tournament. It seems everyone thinks that their own ritual will change any situation.
This essay touched on the topics of Negativity Bias, Confirmation Bias, and Gamblers Fallacy, and Illusion of control. Each is just a few samples of a massive plethora of biases and theories based upon humanity. Most people have certain biases that govern their subconscious and will trigger if certain scenarios are met. It is hard to change some effects, like confirmation bias, after it has occurred because it easier to go along with preconceived notion rather than put the effort in reshaping thought

patterns.