Quotes About Bias

our understanding of human behavior can be improved by appreciating how people systematically go wrong.

One of the causes of status quo bias is a lack of attention. Many people adopt what we will call the "yeah, whatever" heuristic.

That does not mean something is wrong with us as humans, but it does mean that our understanding of human behavior can be improved by appreciating how people systematically go wrong.

quasi-hyperbolic discounting.

the planning fallacy—the systematic tendency toward unrealistic optimism about the time it takes to complete projects.

Hundreds of studies confirm that human forecasts are flawed and biased. Human decision making is not so great either. Again to take just one example, consider what is called the "status quo bias," a fancy name for inertia. For a host of reasons, which we shall explore, people have a strong tendency to go along with the status quo or default option.

it is thought to be somehow related to Adam Smith's invisible hand, the workings of which are both overstated and mysterious.

dumb principal" problems.

This confirmed my longheld suspicion that many people use spreadsheets as an alternative to thinking.

As for information and educational campaigns, one of the main lessons from psychology is that it is impossible for such programs to be "neutral," regardless of how scrupulously designers try to achieve that goal. So to put it simply, forcing people to choose is not always wise, and remaining neutral is not always possible.

Or consider this one: people's judgments about strangers are affected by whether they are drinking iced coffee or hot coffee! Those given iced coffee are more likely to see other people as more selfish, less sociable, and, well, colder than those who are given hot coffee.27 This, too, happens quite unconsciously.

Drawing on some well-established findings in social science, we show that in many cases, individuals make pretty bad decisions—decisions they would not have made if they had paid full attention and possessed complete information, unlimited cognitive abilities, and complete self-control.

Those given iced coffee are more likely to see other people as more selfish, less sociable, and, well, colder than those who are given hot coffee. 27 This, too, happens quite unconsciously.

There seems to be such a thing as the generically prejudiced mind. Studies

Humans carry around legacy behaviors and biases, jerry-rigged holdovers from earlier stages of evolution that follow their own obsolete rules. What seem like erratic, irrational choices are, in fact, strategies created long ago for solving other kinds of problems. We're all trapped in the bodies of sly, social-climbing opportunists shaped to survive the savanna by policing each other.

But confirmation bias will always beat out common sense.

He'll build a career on that theme: cuing, priming, framing, confirmation bias, and the conflation of correlation with causality—all these faults, built into the brain of the most problematic of large mammals.

Adam will preach the point to undergrad psych majors, when he's even older than his father is on the night they pick a tree for unborn Charles. He'll build a career on that theme: cuing, priming, framing, confirmation bias, and the conflation of correlation with causality—all these faults, built into the brain of the most problematic of large mammals.

Kids in my class think a black walnut looks just like a white ash. Are they blind?" "Plant-blind. Adam's curse. We only see things that look like us. Sad story, ain't it, kiddo?

Anti-Semitism had a long history in the West and pervaded European society.

if you believe Jesus's main purpose is to provide a means of personal, individual salvation, it is all too easy to think that he doesn't have anything to do with human history—with war or injustice, or destruction of nature, or anything that contradicts our egos' desires or our cultural biases.

researchers discovered that people who have just consumed caffeinated drinks were more likely to be swayed by arguments about various controversial topics.55 In short, good evidence that there really is no such thing as a free lunch or an innocent cup of coffee.

compared to individuals, groups tend to be more dogmatic, better able to justify irrational actions, more likely to see their actions as highly moral, and more apt to form stereotypical views of outsiders.

Then, first of all, let us admit that there is no such thing as objectivity, no such objective fact as objectivity. Objectivity is a fabricated concept, a synthetic intellectual construction...