Thinking & Perception

The notion that the human brain has evolved to reason adaptively, rather than truthfully or even rationally, and that cognitive bias may have evolved as a mechanism to reduce the overall cost of cognitive errors as opposed to merely reducing the number of cognitive errors, when faced with making a decision under conditions of uncertainty.

A learning tool used to introduce a topic and illustrate the relationship between what the people are about to learn and the information they have already learned.

A mental shortcut where current emotions — fear, pleasure, dread, comfort — serve as a rapid guide for judgments and decisions, often bypassing slower analytical reasoning.

A cognitive bias where decision making is affected by a lack of information, or "ambiguity". The effect implies that people tend to select options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is known, over an option for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.

A cognitive bias that describes the tendency for an individual to rely too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions.

The tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. It has come to imply a universal human tendency to seek patterns in random information.

The tendency to pay disproportionate attention to certain stimuli — particularly those that are emotionally salient, threatening, or personally relevant — while ignoring others.

A mental shortcut in which a person faced with a hard question unconsciously answers an easier, related one instead — without realizing a swap has occurred.

The tendency to attribute greater accuracy and authority to the opinion of an authority figure and be more influenced by that opinion. The 1961 Milgram experiment in 1961 is widely cited as evidence of this bias (though this study has more recently been called into question).

The tendency to judge the likelihood of events based on how easily examples come to mind, rather than on actual probability or statistical data.

The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards.

Cognitive bias that causes people who encounter evidence which challenges their beliefs to reject that evidence, and to strengthen their support of their original stance.

If presented with related base rate information (i.e. generic, general information) and specific information (information pertaining only to a certain case), the mind tends to ignore the former and focus on the latter.

An optical illusion where a color may appear different depending on its relation to adjacent colors.

The measurable positive effects — reduced stress, improved focus, elevated mood — that humans experience when exposed to nature or natural elements, even artificial ones like a plant in an office or a nature screensaver.

A memory distortion in which people remember seeing more of a scene than was actually shown — as if the camera had been pulled back slightly, expanding the boundaries of the image.

The experience of a sudden urge to act on an impulse that is precisely what your judgment is telling you not to do, such as overlooking from a tall height or the urge to pull a fire alarm for no reason.

After an investment of effort in producing change, remembering one's past performance as more difficult than it actually was.

A cognitive process in which people have a difficult time making a decision when faced with many options.

A type of time illusion in which the first impression following the introduction of a new event or task-demand to the brain can appear to be extended in time.

In cognitive psychology, a process by which individual pieces of information are bound together into a meaningful whole, often used for memorization and mnemonics.

The phenomenon of the brain's ability to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, as when a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.

The overarching term for all tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgments.

The mental discomfort experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, such as by a situation in which a belief of a person clashes with new evidence perceived by that person.

In psychology, the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive.

The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.

Incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behavior as resembling present attitudes and behavior.

Aspect of cognition where one is influenced by environmental factors in the perception of a given stimulus. In other words, the effects of a given context can impact our learning abilities, word recognition, and memory.

The enhancement or diminishment of perception, cognition or related performance as a result of successive (immediately previous) or simultaneous exposure to a stimulus of lesser or greater value in the same dimension.

The instance of a forgotten memory returning without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original.

The difficulty of imagining what it's like not to know something you already know. Experts chronically overestimate how well others understand them because they can't un-know their own expertise.

A form of cognitive bias relating to currency, suggesting people may be less likely to spend larger currency denominations than their equivalent value in smaller denominations.

The notion that memory recall of stimuli is a function of the depth of mental processing. Deeper levels of analysis (such as tethering it one's own life or context) produce more elaborate, longer-lasting, and stronger memory traces than shallow levels of analysis (such as rote memorization or visual memorization).

The phenomenon that walking through a doorway leads one to forget their current task at hand.

The psychological observation that people's judgments of the unpleasantness of painful experiences depend very little on the duration of those experiences. Such judgments tend to be affected by two factors: the peak (when the experience was the most painful), and how quickly the pain diminishes.

A catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing.

The phenomenon where emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading them to experience the same emotions as those around them.

French term ("staircase wit") describing the feeling one has when thinking of the perfect reply — but a moment too late when one is already headed away from the moment.

A more extreme version of confirmation bias (interpreting information in such a way that it confirms a preconception), where the reality, when compared to real-world evidence, turns out to be less severe or extreme than the expectations.

A psychological phenomenon in which information regarding negative emotions tends to be forgotten more quickly than that associated with pleasant emotions.

A psychological phenomenon where a person recalls something that did not happen or differently from the way it happened.

A disinformation strategy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda, where one is trying to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear.

A set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies, organize, perceive, and communicate about reality.

The cognitive phenomenon where people are more likely to take action towards a goal after temporal landmarks that represent new beginnings, such as a new home, new workplace, or even walking through a doorway.

A cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used.

The adage from Bill Gates that, "Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years."

A phenomenon where information is better remembered if it is generated from one's own mind rather than simply read.

The cognitive bias which causes people to think individuals are more attractive when they are in a group.

A nostalgic reference to a past period remembered as happy, peaceful, and successful.

The tendency to let one positive trait — attractiveness, confidence, a nice smile — color your judgment of a person's entirely unrelated qualities. First impressions cast a long shadow.

The axiom that "it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."

The observation that humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones, which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor itself, the act of understanding the humor, or simply the emotions that the humor causes.

A term coined to describe a phenomenon reported in a controversial scientific study which claims that, although humans cannot consciously hear ultrasound (sounds at frequencies above approximately 20 kHz), the presence or absence of those frequencies has a measurable effect on their physiological and psychological reactions.

The use of pictorial images to make actions, objects, and concepts in a display easier to find, recognize, learn, and remember.

The notion that one is more likely to identify as true statements those they have previously heard (even if they cannot consciously remember having heard them), regardless of the actual validity of the statement. In other words, a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one.

The tendency to seek more information even when it won't change your decision. More data feels productive but can delay action without improving outcomes.

Icelandic term for 'intuition', but can also mean 'the sea within' and more generally conveys a sense of inner awareness and ability to empathize with others from within one's own self.

A cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable.

The degradation of serial recall when speech sounds are presented, even if the list items are presented visually. The sounds need not be a language the participant understands, nor even a real language; human speech sounds are sufficient to produce this effect.

Predicts that when multiple homogeneous stimuli are presented, the stimulus that differs from the rest is more likely to be remembered.

In memory, sharpening is usually the way people remember small details in the retelling of stories they have experienced or are retelling those stories. Leveling is when people keep out parts of stories and try to tone those stories down so that some parts are excluded.

A phenomenon in which large groups of people share the same false memory — such as many recalling Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, when he was actually released in 1990 and died in 2013.

A phenomenon of human visual perception in which colorless gratings appear colored contingent on the orientation of the gratings. It is an aftereffect requiring a period of induction to produce it.

Perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception. The illusion occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound. The visual information a person gets from seeing a person speak changes the way they hear the sound.

An explanation of a thought process, typically in a more abstract form, about how something works in the real world.

The observation that the number of objects an average person can hold in working memory is about seven.

Recall of specific memories are less accurate because of post-event information that in part over-writes or fills-in the specific memories (intentionally or not).

The missing letter effect refers to the finding that, when people are asked to consciously detect target letters while reading text, they miss more letters in frequent, function words (e.g. the letter "h" in "the") than in less frequent, content words.

A learning technique that aids information retention and retrieval in memory by making use of connected encoding, and retrieval cues.

The finding that how information is presented — visually, audibly, or otherwise — affects how well it's learned and remembered. The medium shapes the message.

The tendency to more easily recall memories that match your current emotional state. When you're sad, sad memories surface more readily — and vice versa.

A factitious disorder wherein those affected feign disease, illness, or psychological trauma to draw attention, sympathy, or reassurance to themselves.

The tendency of people to prefer the letters in their name over other letters in the alphabet.

The phenomena of people being unable to recall information concerning events immediately preceding their turn to perform.

A psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to a stimulus, usually an image or a sound, by perceiving a familiar pattern where none exists.

The ability not to remember irrelevant information. Scientifically speaking, memory inhibition is a type of cognitive inhibition, which is the stopping or overriding of a mental process, in whole or in part, with or without intention. Also, an adaptive process, as it is essential not only to activate the relevant information, but also to inhibit irrelevant information.

Lack of attention that is not associated with any physical or instrumental defects — where objects or events that are unexpected and should be easy to notice simply are not.

A temporal perceptual illusion where in perceiving a sequence of consecutive stimuli, subjects tend to overestimate the elapsed time between two successive stimuli when the distance between the stimuli is sufficiently large, and to underestimate the elapsed time when the distance is sufficiently small.

A psychological phenomenon in which a dissociation is shown between conscious expectation of an event and the strength or speed of a response to the event.

A tendency, described by psychologists, to assume that people who are physically attractive also possess other socially desirable personality traits.

The finding that images are far more likely to be remembered than words alone. If you want something to stick, show it — don't just say it.

A cognitive bias describing a tendency to retroactively ascribe positive attributes to an option one has selected — for example, in assigning positive values to a purchase that was recently made.

The tendency for attractiveness to increase or decrease after an individual makes a mistake, depending on the individual's perceived ability to perform well in a general sense.

The cognitive notion that our brains are fundamentally trying to minimize errors concerning their own predictions of the incoming sensory stream.

The observation that information that takes longer to read and is thought about more is more easily remembered.

The tendency to believe that big events must necessarily have big causes — a belief often seen in conspiracy-theory thinking as a justification for hidden coordination and groups.

The individual instances of subjective, conscious experience, such as how one perceives of taste, or of color.

When the same event is given contradictory interpretations by different individuals involved.

A systematic error caused by differences in the accuracy or completeness of the recollections retrieved recalled by study participants regarding events or experiences from the past. For example, in studies of risk factors for cancer, people who have had the disease may search their memories more thoroughly than members of the unaffected control group.

The tendency to weigh recent events or information more heavily than earlier ones, regardless of their actual significance.

The belief or impression that something (typically a word or language usage), is of recent origin when it is long-established.

The observation that showing users things they can recognize improves usability over needing to recall items from scratch because the extra context helps users retrieve information from memory.

The tendency to remember high values and high likelihoods/probabilities/frequencies lower than they actually were and low ones higher than they actually were.

The tendency for older adults to have increased recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood.

A cognitive bias whereupon a saying or aphorism is judged as more accurate or truthful when it is rewritten to rhyme.

The notion that individuals have a right to determine the development of their life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past.

A tendency to remember the past more positively than it actually was, judging earlier experiences as better than they seemed at the time.

The property of being noticeable or important — i.e. the perceptual quality by which an observable thing stands out relative to its environment.

Communicating a socially tuned message to an audience can lead to a bias of identifying the tuned message as one's own thoughts.

The tendency to filter incoming information so that what aligns with existing beliefs is noticed and remembered, while what contradicts them is overlooked or quickly forgotten.

A tendency for people to encode information differently depending on the level on which they are implicated in the information. When people are asked to remember information when it is related in some way to themselves, the recall rate can be improved.

The observation that we recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst.

The phenomenon where a message becomes more persuasive over time, even if it originally came with a reason to doubt it. We forget the source but remember the claim.

The phenomenon in most languages of disproportionately higher representation of words related to social and interpersonal interactions, as compared to words related to physical or mental aspects of behavior.

The cognitive phenomenon of remembering information correctly but being wrong about the source of that information.

The observation that learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of time in a single session.

A demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task, particularly the delayed reaction times when the color of the word doesn't match the name of the word.

A cognitive bias where when trying to hear a list of items to be remembered, which is then followed by an irrelevant item or list (the suffix), the initial list is more challenging to recall.

An exaggerated version of a stimulus to which there is an existing response tendency, or any stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which it evolved.

A neurological condition that alters the perception of time, usually induced by physical exertion, drug use, or a traumatic event. For someone affected by tachypsychia, time perceived by the individual either lengthens, making events appear to slow down, or contracts, objects appearing as moving in a speeding blur.

The time displacement of an event where people perceive recent events as being more remote than they are (backward telescoping) and distant events as being more recent than they are (forward telescoping).

Long-term memory is improved when some of the learning period is devoted to retrieving the information.

When people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams.

People's tendency to misestimate the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) speed. In general, people underestimate the time that could be saved when increasing from a relatively low speed (e.g., 25 mph or 40 km/h) and overestimate the time that could be saved when increasing from a relatively high speed (e.g., 55 mph or 90 km/h).

The phenomenon of not being able to retrieve a word from memory, combined with the sense of being on the cusp of being able to retrieve it.

An organism's subjective model of the world, shaped by the capabilities of its particular sensory organs and perceptual systems. Though organisms may share the same physical environment, each inhabits a distinct perceptual reality.

The phenomenon where giving a verbal description of a face (or other complex stimuli) impairs recognition of that face or stimuli.

The observation that the "gist" of what someone has said is better remembered than the verbatim wording.

An optical illusion where a spinning wheel appears to slow down, stop, or reverse direction — caused by the frame rate of perception or recording not matching the rotation speed.

A proposed relationship between the magnitude of a physical stimulus and the intensity or strength that people feel, suggesting the relationship between stimulus and perception is logarithmic.

Cognitive bias where one underestimates the duration in traveling an often-used route, and overestimates the duration taken in traveling less familiar ones.

A psychological phenomenon where recognition times are faster for words seen more frequently than for words seen less frequently.

The phenomenon that people have better recognition of letters presented within words as compared to isolated letters and to letters presented within nonword (orthographically illegal, unpronounceable letter array) strings.

The gap between what a learner can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance. Real learning happens in this stretch zone.