Cognitive bias - Definition and Overview

Cognitive bias is any of a wide range of observer effects identified in cognitive science, including very basic statistical and memory errors that are common to all human beings (first identified by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman) and drastically skew the reliability of anecdotal and legal evidence. They also significantly affect the scientific method which is deliberately designed to minimize such bias from any one observer.

Bias arises from various life, loyalty and local risk and attention concerns that are difficult to separate or codify. Tversky and Kahneman claim that they are at least partially the result of problem-solving using heuristics, including the availability heuristic and the representativeness heuristic.

See also

• list of cognitive biases
• cognitive distortion
• cognitive dissonance
• philosophy of mathematics
• epistemology

External links

• The Roots of Consciousness: To Err is human (http://www.williamjames.com/Science/ERR.htm)