Human beings use methods of thought (heuristics) which give quick sometimes good answers but which also create systematic errors called biases.  Cognitive biases are psychological tendencies that cause the human brain to draw incorrect conclusions – first introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972.  There are four main groups: social, memory, decision making and probability/belief biases.  Cognitive biases are usually based on “rules of thumb” and include errors in memory, statistical judgement and social attribution.  They are a powerful force in decision making, especially in groups, and skew our perspectives of people and the world.  Below is a selection but keep researching because there are hundreds:

Wishful Thinking:  Believing something because you want it to be true.

Hindsight Bias: The inclination to see events that have occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place.

Halo Effect:   Where the perception of one trait (i.e. a characteristic of a person or object) is influenced by the perception of another trait (or several traits) of that person or object.

Illusory Superiority:  Causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others.

cognitive bias list / sing a song / answers / michael shermer