【脳の不思議】認知科学から見た判断を誤らせる脳の6つの偏見

6 Cognitive Biases That Are Messing Up Your Decision Making

　Over millions of years of evolution you’d think your brain would have gotten pretty good at thinking. But the truth is natural selection hasn’t been nudging our brains to be ever more rational. It’s been nudging them to keep us alive. Those aren’t always the same thing.

　If our brains were bad at spotting predators, running away from danger, and evaluating possible friends and enemies quickly, the human race would have died out long ago. The trouble is, avoiding hungry lions is no longer the main task we use our brains for. These days we expect them to make rational decisions.

　Turns out that’s one thing they’re not so well equipped to do. According to an incredibly fascinating body of social science (made most famous by the work of Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahnemann) our minds are riddled with a host of cognitive biases that help us act quickly in the face of danger but make accurately weighing evidence, assessing probabilities, and deciding logically often pretty difficult.

　Forewarned is forearmed, and knowing about these biases can help you recognize and correct for them. But if you don’t have time to read excellent but in-depth books on the subject, here’s a quick cheat sheet of some of the most common errors to watch out for.

1. Confirmation bias
2. Availability heuristic
3. Anchoring
4. Halo effect
5. Sunk cost fallacy
6. Survivorship bias

Inc.