
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from
norm or rationality in judgment.
Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the
objective input, may dictate their
behavior
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...
in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called
irrationality.
Although it may seem like such misperceptions would be aberrations, biases can help humans find commonalities and shortcuts to assist in the navigation of common situations in life.
Some cognitive
biases are presumably adaptive. Cognitive biases may lead to more effective actions in a given context. Furthermore, allowing cognitive biases enables faster decisions which can be desirable when timeliness is more valuable than accuracy, as illustrated in
heuristics.
Other cognitive biases are a "by-product" of human processing limitations,
resulting from a lack of appropriate mental mechanisms (
bounded rationality
Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisfactory rather than optimal.
Limitations include the difficulty of ...
), the impact of an individual's constitution and biological state (see
embodied cognition
Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cognit ...
), or simply from a limited capacity for information processing.
A continually evolving
list of cognitive biases
Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment. They are often studied in psychology, sociology and behavioral economics.
Although the reality of most of these biases is confirmed by reproducible ...
has been identified over the last six decades of research on human judgment and decision-making in <