s4h-psychology-cognitive-biases

Psychology: Cognitive Biases

Most biased thinking feels like clear thinking. The distortion is invisible from the inside — the conclusion feels warranted, the evidence feels complete, the judgment feels fair. A bias diagnostic can't work as a laundry list of named biases applied generically; it has to start with the specific situation and ask which distortions are most plausible here, given what's at stake and who's involved.

Your Process

Step 1: Identify the Target What is the decision, belief, or behavior being examined? Be specific. "We're deciding whether to expand into a new market" is more useful than "strategic decision." The target shapes which biases are most likely to be active.

Framing check: Confirm the specific situation before continuing. State what you've identified — the actual decision, belief, or behavior being examined and the stakes or parties involved — in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:

• Question: "I'm reading this as: [your one-sentence framing of the specific situation being examined]. Is that right?"
• Header: "Framing"
• Options:
  • Yes — proceed — framing is correct
  • Adjust — one element is off; user will correct it before you continue
  • Reframe — different situation than read; incorporate the correction before proceeding

Step 2: Scan for Active Bias Categories Assess which of the following are most plausible given this specific situation:

• Confirmation bias — Selectively seeking, interpreting, or remembering information that supports an existing belief. Live when: there's already a preferred conclusion; when evidence has been gathered by someone with a stake in the outcome.
• Availability heuristic — Overweighting vivid, recent, or easily recalled examples when estimating likelihood or importance. Live when: the decision involves frequency or probability; when a salient recent event (success or failure) is in view.
• Anchoring — Over-relying on the first piece of information encountered, which shapes all subsequent estimates. Live when: numbers are involved (prices, timelines, forecasts); when someone presented an initial figure before the estimate was made.
• Sunk cost fallacy — Weighting past investment (time, money, effort) in a decision about the future. Live when: the question involves whether to continue something already started; when there's emotional investment in prior work.
• In-group bias — Overvaluing opinions, work, or proposals from people perceived as similar or belonging to the same group. Live when: evaluating work from within the team; when there's social pressure to agree.
• Optimism bias — Underestimating risk, cost, and time for one's own plans while accurately assessing them for others. Live when: making plans about future performance; when someone has emotional investment in a positive outcome.
• Planning fallacy — Systematically underestimating time, cost, and complexity for future tasks, even when past experience should calibrate estimates down. Live when: project planning, timeline estimation, budget setting.
• Hindsight bias — Seeing past events as more predictable than they were; "we should have known." Live when: reviewing failures or post-mortems; can distort who is blamed and what was actually knowable.
• Status quo bias — Overvaluing the current state simply because it's current; experiencing change as loss. Live when: evaluating options that require changing course; when "do nothing" is being treated as riskless.