Psychology

What is the status quo bias? What are some examples of the status quo bias? The status quo bias is the tendency to compare outcomes to the baseline of your experiences. This bias affects how you perceive gains and losses. We’ll cover two status quo bias examples and how it affects your expectations and emotional response when outcomes meet, or fail to meet, your expectations.

What is price anchoring? How does it affect sales, and how does it affect what you pay for your purchases or how much you donate to charity? Price anchoring is the practice of giving a price point for a sales item or donation to influence consumer or donor decisions. Price anchoring is based on the psychological principle that, when shown an initial piece of information, you bias toward that information, even if it’s irrelevant to the decision at hand. We’ll cover how price anchoring works and how you can keep it from overinfluencing your decisions if you’re the customer.

What is the halo effect? What is a good halo-effect example? The halo effect is a bias that says that if you think positively about something, it extends to everything else you can think about that thing. This is a cognitive bias that may lead to bad decisions. Learn the meaning of the halo effect in psychology, why we’re vulnerable to it, and how it works in a halo effect example.

What is intensity matching? How does Daniel Kahneman’s intensity-matching approach help fight bias? Intensity matching is translating values in a comparison across dimensions. Comparing values in different dimensions can help you make better judgments, but it can also lead to illogical thinking. We’ll cover examples of intensity matching and how it’s involved in the process of evaluation.

What is the certainty effect? How does it blind us to options that are less than optimal, but still pretty good? The certainty effect is the tendency of people to feel disproportionately better about outcomes that are certain compared to outcomes that are probable or possible. This leads people to overweight certainty when making judgments. We’ll cover how the certainty effect works and its role in Daniel Kahneman’s prospect theory.

What is duration neglect? What does it have to do with our overall happiness? Duration neglect is the psychological principle that the length of an experience has little effect on the memory of that event. This factor affects how remember pain and joy. We’ll cover the concept of duration neglect, how it affects overall happiness, and the experiments that demonstrate its power.

What is the meaning of the pygmalion effect? How do our expectations affect results? The pygmalion effect is a phenomenon in which a person’s expectation of a target person affects the target person’s performance. If you have higher expectations of a person, he or she will tend to do better.  Learn what the pygmalion effect means in everyday life and how bias plays a part in whether the pygmalion effect is positive or negative.

What is the “mere exposure effect”? How does it work? What’s a good mere exposure effect example? The mere exposure effect is the idea that exposing someone to an input repeatedly makes them like it more. For example, having a memory of a word, phrase, or idea makes it easier to see again. We’ll cover mere exposure effect examples that demonstrate its power, and how you can use the mere exposure effect to create cognitive ease.

What is the focusing illusion? How does it affect your memory of an event? The focusing illusion is a cognitive bias that happens when you focus too much on one aspect of an experience. This keeps you from holding an accurate memory of the experience as a whole and leads to bad predictions about future experiences. We’ll cover what the focusing illusion is, how it affects what we predict will make us happy, and how to counter it.

What’s an indifference curve? How does it explain how much I value my belongings? Where is it inaccurate? An indifference curve is a graph that demonstrates goods are quantities that a person sees as equal in value. Indifference curves don’t always accurately describe reality–for instance, they can’t explain why we tend to overvalue our belongings. We’ll cover the indifference curve definition and the properties of indifference curves.