57 Cognitive Biases That Screw Up How We Think

People aren't as rational as we would like to think. From attentional bias — where someone focuses on only one or two of several possible outcomes — to zero-risk bias — where we place too much value on reducing a small risk to zero — the sheer number of cognitive biases that affect us every day is staggering. Understanding these biases is key to suppressing them — and needless to say, it is good to try to be rational in most cases. How else can you have any sort of control over investments, purchases, and all other decisions that you make in your life? To convey the breadth of cognitive biases, we've picked out 57 of the most notable ones from a much longer list on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases Attentional bias When someone focuses on only one or two choices despite there being several possible outcomes. Availability heuristic Where people overestimate the importance of information that is available to them. One example would be a person who argues that smoking is not unhealthy on the basis that his grandfather lived to 100 and smoked three packs a day, an argument that ignores the possibility that his grandfather was an outlier. Backfire effect When you reject evidence that contradicts your point of view or statement, even if you know it's true. Bandwagon effect The probability of one person adopting a belief increases based on the number of people who hold that belief. This is a powerful form of groupthink. Belief bias A bias where people make faulty conclusions based on what they already believe or know. For instance, one might conclude that all tiger sharks are sharks, and all sharks are animals, and therefore all animals are tiger sharks. Bias blind spots If you fail to realize your own cognitive biases, you have a bias blind spot. Everyone thinks they're not as biased as people may think, which is a cognitive bias itself. Choice-supportive bias A bias in which you think positive things about a choice once you made it, even if that choice has flaws. You may say positive things about the dog you just bought and ignore that the dog bites people. Clustering illusion This is the tendency to see streaks or clusters in random events. A gambler after watching a red come up multiple times in a row on a roulette table may erroneously conclude that red is hot. In a related bias, known as cognitive bias, the gambler may conclude that black is particularly likely to come up since it hasn't come up in awhile. In fact, the results are always random. Confirmation bias A tendency people have to believe certain information that confirms what they think or believe in. Conservatism bias Where people believe prior evidence more than new evidence or information that has emerged. People were slow to accept the fact that the earth was round because they tended to believe earlier information that it was flat. Curse of knowledge When people who are smarter or more well informed can not understand the common man. For instance, in the TV show "The Big Bang Theory" it's difficult for scientist Sheldon Cooper to understand his waitress neighbor Penny. Decoy effect A phenomenon in marketing where consumers have a specific change in preference between two choices after being presented with a third choice. Denomination effect People are less likely to spend large bills than their equivalent value in small bills or coins. Duration neglect When the duration of an event doesn't factor enough into a valuation. For instance we may remember momentary displeasure as strongly as protracted displeasure. Empathy gap Where people in one state fail to understand people in another state. If you are happy you can't imagine why people would be unhappy. When you are not sexually aroused, you can't understand how you act when you are sexually aroused. Frequency illusion Where a word, name or thing you just learned about suddenly appears everywhere. Now that you know what that SAT word means, you see it in so many places! Galatea Effect Where people succeed because they think they should. Halo effect Where we take one positive attribute of someone and associate it with everything else about that person or thing. Hard-Easy bias Where everyone is overconfident on easy problems and not confident enough for hard problems. Herding People tend to flock together, especially in difficult or uncertain times. Hindsight bias The tendency to see past events as predictable. "I knew all along Philip Phillips would win American Idol." Sure you did... Hyperbolic discounting The tendency for people to want an immediate payoff rather than a larger gain later on. Most people would rather take $5 now than $7 in a week. Ideometer effect Where an idea causes you to have an unconscious physical reaction, like a sad thought that makes your eyes tear up. This is also how Ouija boards seem to have minds of their own. Illusion of control The tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events, like when a sports fan thinks his thoughts or actions had an effect on the game. Illusion of validity When weak but consistent data leads to confident predictions. Like one commenter noted on the MIT admissions blog: Why is MIT's admissions process better than random? Say you weeded out the un-qualified (the fewer-than-half of applicants insufficiently prepared to do the work at MIT) and then threw dice to stochastically select among the remaining candidates. Would this produce a lesser class? Information bias The tendency to seek information when it does not affect action. More information is not always better. Inter-group bias We view people in our group differently from how see we someone in another group. Irrational escalation Investing more money or resources into something based on prior investment, even if you know it's a bad one. "I already have 500 shares of Lehman Brothers, let's buy more even though the stock is tanking." Less-is-more effect With less knowledge, people can often make more accurate predictions. Negativity bias The tendency to put more emphasis on negative experiences rather than positive ones. People with this bias feel that "bad is stronger than good" and will perceive threats more than opportunities in a given situation. This leads toward loss aversion. Observer-expectancy effect Our expectations unconsciously influence how we perceive an outcome. Researchers, for example, looking for a certain result in an experiment, may inadvertently manipulate or interpret the results to reveal their expectations. That's why the "double-blind" experimental design was created for the field of scientific research. Omission bias The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions. For example, we consider it worse to crash a car while drunk than to let one's friend crash his car while drunk. Ostrich effect The decision to ignore dangerous or negative information by "burying" one's head in the sand, like an ostrich. Outcome bias Judging a decision based on the outcome over the quality of the decision when it was made. This is not accounting for the role luck plays in outcomes. Overconfidence We are too confident about our abilities, and this causes us to take greater risks in our daily lives. Overoptimism When we believe the world is a better place than it is, we aren't prepared for the danger and violence we may encounter. The inability to accept the full breadth of human nature leaves us vulnerable. Pessimism bias This is the opposite of the overoptimism bias. Pessimists over-weigh negative consequences with their own and others' actions. Placebo effect A self-fulfilling prophecy, where belief in something causes it to be effective. This is a basic principle of stock market cycles. Planning fallacy The tendency to underestimate how much time it will take to complete a task. Post-purchase rationalization Making ourselves believe that a purchase was worth the value after the fact. Pro-innovation bias When a proponent of an innovation tends to overvalue its usefulness and undervalue its limitations. Procrastination Deciding to act in favor of the present moment over investing in the future. Reactance The desire to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do, in order to prove your freedom of choice. Recency The tendency to weight the latest information more heavily than older data. Reciprocity The belief that fairness should trump other values, even when it's not in our economic and/or other interests. Regression bias People take action in response to extreme situations. Then when the situations become less extreme, they take credit for causing the change, when a more likely explanation is that the situation was reverting to the mean. Restraint bias Overestimating one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation. Salience Our tendency to focus on the most easily-recognizable features of a person or concept. Seersucker Illusion Over-reliance on expert advice. This has to do with the avoidance or responsibility. We call in "experts" to forecast, when in fact, they have no greater chance of predicting an outcome than the rest of the population. In other words, "for every seer there's a sucker." Selective perception Allowing our expectations to influence how we perceive the world. Self-enhancing transmission bias Everyone shares their successes more than their failures. This leads to a false perception of reality and inability to accurately assess situations. Status quo bias The tendency to prefer things to stay the same. This is similar to loss-aversion bias, where people prefer to avoid losses instead of acquiring gains. Stereotyping Expecting a group or person to have certain qualities without having real information about the individual. This explains the snap judgments Malcolm Gladwell refers to in "Blink." Survivorship bias An error that comes from focusing only on surviving examples, causing us to misjudge a situation. For instance, we might think that being an entrepreneur is easy because we haven't heard of all of the entrepreneurs who have failed. It can also cause us to assume that survivors are inordinately better than failures, without regard for the importance of luck or other factors. Tragedy of the commons We overuse common resources because it's not in any individual's interest to conserve them. This explains the overuse of natural resources, opportunism, and any acts of self-interest over collective interest. Unit bias We believe that there is an optimal unit size, or a universally-acknowledged amount of a given item that is perceived as appropriate. This explains why when served larger portions, we eat more. Zero-risk bias The preference to reduce a small risk to zero versus achieving a greater reduction in a greater risk. This plays to our desire to have complete control over a single, more minor outcome, over the desire for more — but not complete — control over a greater, more unpredictable outcome. Read more about zero-risk bias. That's just behavioral biases. There are all sorts of weird things in your head. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/cognitive-biases-2013-8

These 10 Everyday Activities Are Slowly Killing You

We all want to live longer, healthier lives but there are hidden dangers all around us. Here are just a few of the tons of things we do every day that can shorten your lifespan without you knowing it. 1. Sitting Bad news for office workers. Even if you regularly exercise, long periods of inactivity are unhealthy. A study published in 2012 in the journal BMJ Open estimated that individuals who reduced excessive sitting to less than three hours a day could add two years to their life expectancy. 2. Sleeping too much Sleeping too little is of course bad for your health (and makes you gain weight), but sleeping too much can be equally harmful. A review of sleep studies showed that people who slept more than nine hours a night were at a 41% higher risk for heart disease than those who slept seven to eight hours a night. 3. Staring at a screen Research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggests that spending more than four hours a day in front of a screen, like watching TV or surfing the Internet, can increase risk of heart attack and stroke by as much as 113%. Another study published in BMJ Open estimated that reducing screen time to less than two hours a day, individuals could add almost 1.4 years to their life expectancy. 4. Taking medication for non life-threatening illnesses Taking medication for things like insomnia or anxiety could lower some people's life expectancy. In a 12-year study, published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, scientists found that individuals not taking such medications had about a 5% lower mortality rate than those taking medication. 5. Lacking a sense of humor Laughter has a long list of health benefits according to the Mayo Clinic — it helps boost the immune system, reduces stress, and provides an emotional release. Laughing also burns calories. 6. A long commute Not only does commuting take up lots of time on a daily basis, it may also be taking time away from your total life span. Unpublished work presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers suggested that people with commutes longer than 30 minutes die earlier than others. Long commutes mean less time for exercise and sleep — both of which contribute to a longer and healthier life. 7. Stressing out We've all heard that stress can be harmful to our health and immune system, but research published in the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences suggests it can actually damage our very DNA. Compared to non-stressed people, study participants with chronic stress had shorter telomeres — the regions responsible for protecting and connecting the ends of DNA strands, so our genes don't degrade over time. 8. Not having sex Having sex not only relieves stress, it burns calories and may even increase your life span. A Duke University study found that women with enjoyable sex lives lived almost eight years longer. Another study, in the journal BMJ, suggests that men who reported a higher frequency of orgasms had a 50% reduction in mortality. 9. Eating Poorly Things like processed foods, too much red meat, and not enough fresh fruit and vegetables all can contribute to serious health problems. Excessive red meat consumption contributed to higher cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality, according to a study in the journal Internal Medicine. 10. Being anti-social Isolation and loneliness can take a toll on your body in the same way excessive stress does. The MacArthur Study of Successful Aging demonstrated that people who rated themselves highly valuable in their friends' and family's lives were more likely to live longer than those who rated themselves lower. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/activities-that-could-be-killing-you-2013-9

22 Things Happy People Do Differently

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. – Dalai Lama There are two types of people in the world: those who choose to be happy, and those who choose to be unhappy. Contrary to popular belief, happiness doesn’t come from fame, fortune, other people, or material possessions. Rather, it comes from within. The richest person in the world could be miserable while a homeless person could be right outside, walking around with a spring in every step. Happy people are happy because they make themselves happy. They maintain a positive outlook on life and remain at peace with themselves. The question is: how do they do that? It’s quite simple. Happy people have good habits that enhance their lives. They do things differently. Ask any happy person, and they will tell you that they … 1. Don’t hold grudges. Happy people understand that it’s better to forgive and forget than to let their negative feelings crowd out their positive feelings. Holding a grudge has a lot of detrimental effects on your wellbeing, including increased depression, anxiety, and stress. Why let anyone who has wronged you have power over you? If you let go of all your grudges, you’ll gain a clear conscience and enough energy to enjoy the good things in life. 2. Treat everyone with kindness. Did you know that it has been scientifically proven that being kind makes you happier? Every time you perform a selfless act, your brain produces serotonin, a hormone that eases tension and lifts your spirits. Not only that, but treating people with love, dignity, and respect also allows you to build stronger relationships. 3. See problems as challenges. The word “problem” is never part of a happy person’s vocabulary. A problem is viewed as a drawback, a struggle, or an unstable situation while a challenge is viewed as something positive like an opportunity, a task, or a dare. Whenever you face an obstacle, try looking at it as a challenge. 4. Express gratitude for what they already have. There’s a popular saying that goes something like this: “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything they have.” You will have a deeper sense of contentment if you count your blessings instead of yearning for what you don’t have. 5. Dream big. People who get into the habit of dreaming big are more likely to accomplish their goals than those who don’t. If you dare to dream big, your mind will put itself in a focused and positive state. 6. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Happy people ask themselves, “Will this problem matter a year from now?” They understand that life’s too short to get worked up over trivial situations. Letting things roll off your back will definitely put you at ease to enjoy the more important things in life. 7. Speak well of others. Being nice feels better than being mean. As fun as gossiping is, it usually leaves you feeling guilty and resentful. Saying nice things about other people encourages you to think positive, non-judgmental thoughts. 8. Never make excuses. Benjamin Franklin once said, “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” Happy people don’t make excuses or blame others for their own failures in life. Instead, they own up to their mistakes and, by doing so, they proactively try to change for the better. 9. Get absorbed into the present. Happy people don’t dwell on the past or worry about the future. They savor the present. They let themselves get immersed in whatever they’re doing at the moment. Stop and smell the roses. 10. Wake up at the same time every morning. Have you noticed that a lot of successful people tend to be early risers? Waking up at the same time every morning stabilizes your circadian rhythm, increases productivity, and puts you in a calm and centered state. 11. Avoid social comparison. Everyone works at his own pace, so why compare yourself to others? If you think you’re better than someone else, you gain an unhealthy sense of superiority. If you think someone else is better than you, you end up feeling bad about yourself. You’ll be happier if you focus on your own progress and praise others on theirs. 12. Choose friends wisely. Misery loves company. That’s why it’s important to surround yourself with optimistic people who will encourage you to achieve your goals. The more positive energy you have around you, the better you will feel about yourself. 13. Never seek approval from others. Happy people don’t care what others think of them. They follow their own hearts without letting naysayers discourage them. They understand that it’s impossible to please everyone. Listen to what people have to say, but never seek anyone’s approval but your own. 14. Take the time to listen. Talk less; listen more. Listening keeps your mind open to others’ wisdoms and outlooks on the world. The more intensely you listen, the quieter your mind gets, and the more content you feel. 15. Nurture social relationships. A lonely person is a miserable person. Happy people understand how important it is to have strong, healthy relationships. Always take the time to see and talk to your family, friends, or significant other. 16. Meditate. Meditating silences your mind and helps you find inner peace. You don’t have to be a zen master to pull it off. Happy people know how to silence their minds anywhere and anytime they need to calm their nerves. 17. Eat well. Junk food makes you sluggish, and it’s difficult to be happy when you’re in that kind of state. Everything you eat directly affects your body’s ability to produce hormones, which will dictate your moods, energy, and mental focus. Be sure to eat foods that will keep your mind and body in good shape. 18. Exercise. Studies have shown that exercise raises happiness levels just as much as Zoloft does. Exercising also boosts your self-esteem and gives you a higher sense of self-accomplishment. 19. Live minimally. Happy people rarely keep clutter around the house because they know that extra belongings weigh them down and make them feel overwhelmed and stressed out. Some studies have concluded that Europeans are a lot happier than Americans are, which is interesting because they live in smaller homes, drive simpler cars, and own fewer items. 20. Tell the truth. Lying stresses you out, corrodes your self-esteem, and makes you unlikeable. The truth will set you free. Being honest improves your mental health and builds others’ trust in you. Always be truthful, and never apologize for it. 21. Establish personal control. Happy people have the ability to choose their own destinies. They don’t let others tell them how they should live their lives. Being in complete control of one’s own life brings positive feelings and a great sense of self-worth. 22. Accept what cannot be changed. Once you accept the fact that life is not fair, you’ll be more at peace with yourself. Instead of obsessing over how unfair life is, just focus on what you can control and change it for the better. Source: http://www.lifed.com/22-things-happy-people-do-differently http://successify.net/2012/10/31/22-things-happy-people-do-differently/

Can crowdsourcing diagnose diseases better than doctors?

When people come together, they can solve difficult medical problems faster and more cheaply than the traditional clinical process. CrowdMed is a crowdsourced medical diagnosis platform. The company participated in the most recent Y Combinator class and launched publicly today at the TEDMED event in Washington, D.C. “The premise of the wisdom of crowds is that a large group of nonexperts can be very wise once you have the right mechanisms in place to aggregate their collective intelligence,” said founder Jared Heyman in an interview with VentureBeat. “Many people operate under the assumption that crowds are unwieldy, but they can be smarter than expert individuals. If I had to choose between one doctor and one random person on the street for a diagnosis, I would choose the doctor. But if I have to pick between one doctor and hundreds of people with relevant information to share, I would pick the crowd.” Heyman previously founded an online market research firm called Infosurv, where he experienced the power and accuracy of collective wisdom, and its capability to predict potential outcomes. In 2003, his sister got sick with an undiagnosed medical condition. She spent years going to specialist after specialist, but none of them could figure out what was wrong. By the time she was diagnosed with a rare disease that affects one in 15,000 women, she had seen 16 different doctors and racked up over $100,000 in medical bills. “This illness almost killed her — she lost three years of her life,” he said. “Many physicians are hyper-specialized these days and have a hard time seeing things outside of their speciality. This is a problem with the medical system, which meant my sister couldn’t get an accurate diagnosis. I thought there has to be an alternative between Google searches and WebMD and bouncing from doctor to doctor.” Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/16/yc-startup-bets-crowdsourcing-can-diagnose-diseases-better-than-doctors/#hGsPCAECGg37dpay.99 DreamIt Health, a new Philadelphia-based, health-focused chapter of incubator DreamIt Ventures, has announced its first class of ten startups. Independence Blue Cross (IBC) and Penn Medicine are sponsoring the class and Venturef0rth is providing the working space for the companies. The new accelerator was launched in December 2012. The startups will be provided with up to $50,000 in funding, office space, mentoring, and resources for developing and testing health-related products. The incubator will last four months, and companies will receive coaching from both entrepreneurs and health care executives. DreamIt Ventures has launched 80 companies over the past four years, including one health-related startup, 1DocWay. Supporting sponsors include global professional services company Towers Watson, and law firms Morgan Lewis, and Pepper Hamilton. In the FAQ section on DreamIt’s website, the company discusses the need for another health-specific incubator, explaining the health-specific resources DreamIt will provide startups. “For startups to be successful in healthcare, they need access to unusual resources typically out of reach – from … EMR systems to integrate with to big data sets of protected health information. In partnering with titans of industry such as Penn Medicine and Independence Blue Cross, we are opening up these resources to our companies,” the FAQ reads. Here are the ten startups: AirCare is developing an online and mobile app that will use video tele-nursing and patient analytics in an attempt to lower readmissions and improve patient outcomes. Biomeme is focused on creating a point-of-care molecular diagnostic device that is low-cost and mobile, to help clinicians and epidemiologists track infectious diseases in near-real time with smartphones. Fitly is an app that promotes healthier eating for kids with gamified mechanics. Families compete against one another to earn points by eating healthier foods, and Fitly provides meal plans, grocery lists, and even discounts. Winning families can win prizes up to and including cars and vacations, according to the company’s website. Grand Roundtable facilitates crowdsourcing for complex patient treatment solutions within a group of professionals, and provides doctors with easier means to compare patients’ electronic records to a database of similar patients from around the world. Medlio is an app that acts as a smart health insurance card, offering patients up-to-date information and providers more accurate front-end cost estimates. OnShift is developing a physician messaging platform for clinicians caring for the same patient which also incorporates care analytics. Osmosis is a web and mobile platform that uses a social learning framework to educate medical students, better preparing them to acquire and retain knowledge. MemberRx leverages electronic health records to reduce the cost of pharmaceuticals by choosing the best generic or branded drug for a specific patient n a specific case. SpeSo Health is an analytics platform connecting patients with rare or complex diseases to online second opinions about their treatment or condition. Stat is a service aiming to speed up patient transport and lower costs by matching providers and payers with idle transportation resources. Source :http://mobihealthnews.com/21516/new-incubator-dreamit-health-launches-first-class/ The doctors expertise can also be crowdsourced: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/10/the_doctors_will_see_you_now.html Sometime in 1995, an e-mail from China arrived in my inbox with a desperate request for medical advice. I was a naïve medical student at Johns Hopkins University and an early adopter of the modem; the e-mail's author was identified only as "Peking University." In broken English, the message described a 21-year-old woman who had felt sick to her stomach and within days lost all her hair. This problem went away, but a few months later, "She Began to facial paralysis, central muscle of eye's paralysis, self-controlled respiration disappeared," and needed to be put on a ventilator. "This is the first time that Chinese try to find help from Internet," the message explained. "Please send back e-mail to us." With immature confidence I consulted some texts and replied that maybe she had a weird form of lupus. I never heard back and figured it was a prank. The following year at the supermarket, I was browsing the August issue of Reader's Digest and saw a piece titled "Rescue on the Internet." It turned out that I wasn't the only one who'd replied to the posting, and the whole thing had not been a hoax. Incredibly, hundreds of doctors had seen the brief message and correctly determined that the patient was being poisoned by a tasteless, odorless heavy metal called thallium. Soon after, Chinese doctors were able to give an antidote to save the woman's life. (She did end up permanently disabled.) In 2006, Wired magazine coined the term "crowdsourcing," to describe the process of seeking a problem's solution from a wide community, often online. Such collaboration certainly didn't come naturally to doctors. For millennia, they'd worked as solo practitioners who jealously guarded their secrets. But the Chinese e-mail episode shows how large groups of doctors might come together to solve a problem. More than 1,000 trained medical professionals independently guessed at the cause of the woman's illness, and while many were wrong, almost one-third suspected thallium poisoning. That was enough to get her doctors in China to consider the possibility and then confirm it. Advertisement In many ways, such crowdsourcing resembles an expert poll—sort of like Trident's claim that "four out of five dentists" recommend sugarless gum, minus the commercial bias. And it works. One example: the New England Journal of Medicine hosts a weekly, online "image challenge," which shows mysterious x-rays or biopsies and asks for a diagnosis via multiple-choice. I don't often pick the right answer, but if you look at the aggregate choices from tens of thousands of other doctors around the world, the plurality invariably hits the mark. Doctors in the United States have found help from their peers for real-life situations, too. Earlier this year, an internist (and sometime Slate author) named John Schumann posted the details of a peculiar case to a widely-read medical blog. A friend of his had developed inexplicable weight loss, low blood counts, and a weird, softball-sized mass in his liver. A dozen doctors saw the MRI scans and other test results online, and about half came up with the correct diagnosis: a benign growth of blood vessels. Debunking the myth of the lone maverick, health researchers suggest that groups of doctors outperform individuals not only in diagnosing problems but also in treating them. In 2007, NEJM began polling its readers for consensus opinions on tough treatment questions: how to handle an abnormal prostate cancer screening test, how to treat an athlete's skin infection, what to do for hepatitis C infection, and a few others. Responses from almost 20,000 doctors across the globe were tabulated. Still, patients may be uncomfortable turning over their care to a majority vote of faceless doctors. But the reality doesn't have to sound so scary and impersonal. In some cases, crowdsourcing works by soliciting many ideas, and then having designated subspecialists vet them. (As on Wikipedia, not all contributors are given equal authority.) At major medical centers, for example, a group of experts called a "tumor board" reviews tough cancer cases as a group, e-mails around the country for advice on the hardest ones, and then discusses the options with the individual patient. In my own field of pediatric cardiology, more than 1,500 doctors worldwide subscribe to an e-mail list for crowd-sourcing tough issues, but the final decisions are left to the cardiologist who knows the patient. Doctors can draw on group consults when necessary, but nonphysicians rarely have access to the power of crowd-sourced medicine. To be sure, many patients with complex or poorly understood medical problems like amyotrophic lateral sclerosiscongregate in large virtual communities such as PatientsLikeMe, where they share details of their medical treatments and symptoms with each other—and occasionally even launch their own unregulated and informal drug trials. These communities provide some helpful information and support for many people.