Overview
Time is not the only area where we tend to make faulty predictions. In fact this is also common across the areas of frequency and probability.
Types
| Name | Description | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Hot-hand fallacy | The "hot-hand fallacy" (also known as the "hot hand phenomenon" or "hot hand") is the belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts. | [1] |
| Gambler's fallacy | The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads." | [1] [3] |
| Regressive bias | Tendency to remember high values and high likelihoods/probabilities/frequencies as lower than they actually were and low ones as higher than they actually were. Based on the evidence, memories are not extreme enough. | [1] [4, 5] |
| Availability heuristic | The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be. | [1] [6] |
| Subadditivity effect | The tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts. | [1] [7] |
| Base rate fallacy | The tendency to ignore general information and focus on information only pertaining to the specific case, even when the general information is more important. | [1] [8] |
Performance Perspectives
- As in the previous section, by knowing there are such flaws we can be motivated to practice and improve.
- Again, as in the previous, external systems can help us improve and bias-correct.
References & Acknowledgements
[1] Wikipedia contributors. "List of cognitive biases." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Jul. 2020. Web. 23 Jul. 2020. link
[2] Sanna LJ, Schwarz N (July 2004). "Integrating temporal biases: the interplay of focal thoughts and accessibility experiences". Psychological Science. 15 (7): 474–81. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00704.x. PMID 15200632.
[3] Investopedia Staff (2006-10-29). "Gambler's Fallacy/Monte Carlo Fallacy". Investopedia. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
[4] Attneave F (August 1953). "Psychological probability as a function of experienced frequency". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 46 (2): 81–6. doi:10.1037/h0057955. PMID 13084849.
[5] Fischhoff B, Slovic P, Lichtenstein S (1977). "Knowing with certainty: The appropriateness of extreme confidence". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 3 (4): 552–564. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.3.4.552.
[6] Schwarz N, Bless H, Strack F, Klumpp G, Rittenauer-Schatka H, Simons A (1991). "Ease of Retrieval as Information: Another Look at the Availability Heuristic" (PDF). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 61 (2): 195–202. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.195. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 February 2014. Retrieved 19 Oct 2014.
[7] Baron, J. (in preparation). Thinking and Deciding, 4th edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[8] Baron J (1994). Thinking and deciding (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-43732-5.
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