Okuzeka
Psychology vocabulary · Cognition and Perception

Cognitive bias

Meaning in psychology, with examples

nounCommon term

In psychology, cognitive bias means: A systematic error in thinking or judgement that makes people depart from logic or evidence in predictable ways, such as confirmation bias.

In Turkish: bilişsel yanlılık, bilişsel önyargı

How it is used

Used in cognitive and social psychology, behavioural economics and clinical work. Common examples are confirmation bias, hindsight bias and, in anxiety, attentional bias towards threat. In CBT, similar thinking errors are called cognitive distortions.

Example sentences

  1. Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that makes us notice evidence for what we already believe.

  2. Clinicians are not immune to cognitive bias when they make a diagnosis.

Common collocations

  • confirmation bias
  • attentional bias
  • be prone to cognitive bias
  • reduce cognitive bias
  • heuristicA mental shortcut or rule of thumb that allows quick judgements and decisions with little effort, but can lead to systematic errors.
  • schemaA mental framework built from past experience that organises knowledge about something and guides how new information is noticed, interpreted and remembered.
  • cognitionThe mental processes we use to gain and use knowledge, such as thinking, remembering, paying attention, understanding language and solving problems.
  • fundamental attribution errorThe tendency to explain other people's behaviour by their personality or character while underestimating the influence of the situation they are in.

More terms: Cognition and Perception

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