Anxiety changes what you pay attention to in conversation.

Attentional control theory suggests that anxiety impairs your ability to shift attention away from task-irrelevant stimuli.

Michael Eysenck, 2007
#psychology #science #cognitivebias

🎬 How to Communicate with Someone Who Disagrees with You 2/5: Why “You’re Wrong” Makes People More Certain — See entire video series at ➡️ www.youtube.com/@jennygrankin ⬅️ #MotivatedReasoning #Psychology #Persuasion #CommunicationSkills #BehavioralScience #CognitiveBias #ConflictResolution

Your best decisions happen when you stop thinking hard.

A 2006 study by Dijksterhuis proposed that complex decisions are made more effectively when distracted, though these findings have faced extensive challenges in replication.

Ap Dijksterhuis, 2006, Science
#psychology #science #cognitivebias

When an algorithm gives you a polished answer in 2 seconds, your brain stops stress-testing it. That’s Automation Bias, and generative AI supercharges that mental flaw. When we use AI we mistake syntactic fluency for actual truth. 🧵👇 #AI #EdSky #CognitiveBias

You avoid thinking deeply even when you could.

Cognitive reflection is the tendency to override an intuitive, incorrect response in favor of a more deliberate, accurate one.

Shane Frederick, 2005
#psychology #science #cognitivebias

You categorize people before you know their names.

The social categorization process begins almost instantly, shifting your perception of an individual based on their group identity.

uncertain
#psychology #science #cognitivebias

You perform differently when the task requires effort.

The effort-accuracy trade-off shows that you adjust your cognitive effort based on how much accuracy you believe the task requires.

Payne et al., 1988
#psychology #science #cognitivebias

You struggle to change your mind despite evidence.

Belief persistence describes the psychological tendency to maintain an initial belief even after the evidence supporting it is proven false.

Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard, 1975
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econopass.com · Marco Bellinari

In 1995, a man named McArthur Wheeler robbed two banks in Pittsburgh in broad daylight. He made no attempt to disguise himself. He walked in, handed …

#dunningkruger #overconfidence #cognitivebias #psychology #humanbehaviour

Your brain predicts what you see before you actually see it.

The predictive processing model suggests your brain creates a mental model of reality and updates it with sensory error signals.

Friston, 2010, Nature Reviews Neuroscience
#psychology #science #cognitivebias

You feel more confident in a decision after it is made.

Choice-supportive bias drives the brain to emphasize the positives of a chosen option and ignore its drawbacks post-selection.

Henkel and Mather, 2007, Memory & Cognition
#psychology #science #cognitivebias

Quality is a property of the work. Authorship is a fact about its origin. In a 2025 blinded study, clinicians rated AI-written advice as more empathic, then rated responses higher when told a human expert wrote them. That isn't a quality standard. It's an authorship tax. #AI #cognitivebias

You are more likely to lie when the incentive is small.

Research indicates that the level of dishonesty is largely independent of the magnitude of the reward.

Mazar, Amir, and Ariely, 2008, Journal of Marketing Research
#psychology #science #cognitivebias

Why most American voters don’t analyze politics the way we assume. news.berkeley.edu/2026/10/01/o... #PoliticalPsychology #DecisionMaking #CognitiveBias #PublicOpinion #CriticalThinking #AmericanBehavior #Politics #Democracy #ResearchNews #UCBerkeley

You focus on what you expect to see.

Feature integration theory suggests we use focused attention at a specific location to bind pre-attentively registered features into a coherent object.

Treisman and Gelade, 1980
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You make judgements based on how quickly you think.

The feeling of ease, or processing fluency, acts as a heuristic for validity.

Reber and Schwarz, 1999
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You are a slave to your previous assumptions.

Schema-based processing leads to faster information integration at the cost of detail.

Bartlett, 1932
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Music tempo changes how you shop.

A 1986 study found that stores playing slower music saw significantly higher sales than those playing faster tempos.

Milliman, 1986, Journal of Marketing
#psychology #science #cognitivebias

Your name influences your career choices.

Research in the early 2000s suggested a correlation between initials and career choice, but this has been largely debunked as an artifact of confounders.

Pelham et al., 2002, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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