In Judgment and Decision Making
A cognitive bias is the human tendency to make systematic decisions in certain circumstances based on cognitive factors rather than evidence. Bias arises from various processes that are sometimes difficult to distinguish. These processes include information-processing shortcuts, motivational factors, and social influence. Such biases can result from information-processing shortcuts called heuristics. They include errors in judgment, social attribution, and memory. Cognitive biases are a common outcome of human thought, and often drastically skew the reliability of anecdotal and legal evidence. It is a phenomenon studied in cognitive science and social psychology. A cognitive bias also has the tendency to make systematic decisions in certain situations.
Read more about this topic: Bias
Famous quotes containing the words judgment, decision and/or making:
“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.”
—Samuel Johnson (17091784)
“Moral choices do not depend on personal preference and private decision but on right reason and, I would add, divine order.”
—Basil Hume (b. 1923)
“Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)