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As this will be a long response, I apologize up front.While logical fallacies are objectively identifiable from what people write or say, especially in a formal argument, Cognitive Biases describe habits of mind that might go unspoken, but are recognizable as mental heuristic (rules-based) shortcuts, or rules of thumb when decisions or choices are made. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1972) first described cognitive biases while studying how people make business decisions. This research resulted in the development of a branch of economics called Behavioral Economics. Kahneman’s pioneering work on human judgment and decision making when there is uncertainty won him the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economics, which he shared with American economist Vernon L. Smith. As it turns out, people are not always rational when making business decisions because of systematic and built-in biases. Biases extend well outside of business decisions to affect any kind of decision-making, especially when there is uncertainty. Cognitive bias theory is not without its critics. Because cognitive bias theory describes mostly innate habits of mind, some suggest that accusing someone of having a cognitive bias is non-falsifiable and therefore impossible to refute.Lewis, M. (2016, November 16). How Two Trailblazing Psychologists Turned the World of Decision Making Upside Down. Vanity Fair. Retrieved from https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/decision-science-daniel-kahneman-amos-tverskyMany cognitive biases have been identified, and many will overlap with logical fallacies, but it is essential to realize cognitive biases are specifically recognized as being unconscious, implicit, or internal, and not necessarily ever formally expressed. The challenge is to recognize these biases within our mental, including emotional, efforts when making decisions or choices. Bringing these biases into the open and identifying them as recognizable tendencies of mind, can train people not to be biased, which should partly happen through an education that gives students a greatly expanded vocabulary and concepts to better reflect on and understand their thoughts and feelings. It is also worthwhile to recognize when people are playing on people’s biases to gain an advantage. Although over 150 biases have been identified, the following 25 biases are representative of bias categories that might be used:1. The Confirmation BiasOne of the most pervasive biases is the Confirmation Bias, which describes our tendency to surround ourselves with people that already agree with us or that we only seek information or evidence that confirms already held beliefs. For example, the aforementioned building of “echo chambers,” though social media engagement on the Internet is evidence of possible confirmation bias. In short, people only see or hear what they want to see or hear. In terms of Behavioral Economics, the:Confirmation bias can create problems for investors. When researching an investment, someone might inadvertently look for information that supports his or her beliefs about the investment and fail to see the information that presents different ideas. The result is a one-sided view of the situation. Confirmation bias can thus cause investors to make poor decisions, whether it’s in their choice of investments or their buy-and-sell timing.Scott, G. (2019, August 2). Confirmation Bias. Investopedia. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/confirmation-bias.asp2. The Appeal to Novelty BiasThe Appeal to Novelty Bias happens when we feel that a new thing is somehow more valuable than the similar older thing, even if newness is the only difference between them. If we express a preference for the new and leave behind the feeling, we might be committing the logical fallacy (cited above) identified with novelty. Advertising often appeals to the novelty bias. Not only can we be attracted to the newness of products, but also new advertising creativity draws attention. For example, when “new” products are advertised, they are not often “new” but merely an upgrade to bring the product up to the features of competing products.3. The Belief BiasThe Belief Bias results when judging the strength of an argument is based on the believability of the conclusion rather than the strength of the quality of evidence and argument supporting the conclusion. This primarily happens when the conclusion reflects already strongly held positive feelings for the belief. For example, you might believe that “natural” is better while choosing to ignore that there are many natural things like smallpox, cobra venom, and lightning strikes that are or can be deadly:In fact, researchers have looked at some of the reasons why people have that belief [that “natural” is necessarily good]. What they found is that a person’s preference for natural things involves a range of ideas, including the belief that nature is pure and inherently superior to humans. Researchers have also found that these beliefs, or biases, affect the decisions people make about their health.Editors. (2019, March 20). Natural Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Safer, or Better. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). Retrieved August 28, 2019, from https://nccih.nih.gov/health/know-science/natural-doesnt-mean-better4. The Impact BiasThe Impact Bias is the tendency to overestimate the length and intensity of positive emotions for products or events that we have not experienced yet. Our expectations can exceed realities, for example, when we expect a great experience, but it does not happen. Advertising sometime hypes the expected emotional impact of a product or event, which does not hold true after purchase. The impact bias might result in buyer or seller’s remorse, possibly because their belief was overly positive and not realistic, which sets up an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance in the mind of the buyer or seller. Research has found that, “college students overestimated how happy or unhappy they would be after being assigned to a desirable or undesirable dormitory, people overestimated how they would be 2 months after the dissolution of a romantic relationship, untenured college professors overestimated how unhappy they would be 5 years after being denied tenure, women overestimated how unhappy they would be upon receiving unwanted results from a pregnancy test, and so on.” Wilson, T. D., Gilbert. D. (2005). Affective Forecasting. Current Directions in Psychological Science. American Psychological Society, 14(3). p. 131.5. Occam’s Razor BiasThe Occam’s Razor maxim becomes bias when we believe the simplest solution must be best in the face of a more complicated and potentially better solution. Occam’s Razor or “parsimony” is a fundamental maxim because it tells us that the simplest answer or solution is probably the best when all aspects of the issue are equal. For example, Occam’s Razor becomes a bias when we compound theories about nature with metaphysical requirements. For example, asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin compounds the metaphysical concepts of angels (and presumably their angelic feet) with what is empirically known about pins and human feet. Sometimes Occam’s Razor does not apply because some issues are indeed very complicated, although the complexity may not at first be recognized because of the Occam’s Razor Bias. Occam’s Razor bias got its name from William of Ockham (1285 – 1347), an important theologian and philosopher of the medieval period who was interested in logic and metaphysics.6. The Ostrich Effect BiasThe Ostrich Effect Bias warns us that we sometimes avoid information that might adversely affect us. We effectively want to stick our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. (BTW: Ostriches do not do this, except to tend to eggs laid in a nest dug in the earth.) This bias suggests that we naturally seek to avoid the cognitive dissonance and especially the emotional state that occurs when we are forced to hold two contradictory beliefs. For example, some people avoid engaging news media about bad people or events because the news is upsetting.Similar to the Ostrich Effect Bias, is another bias, named for Ignaz Semmelweis (1818 – 1865) who contributed to the germ theory of disease. The Semmelweis Bias is an extreme version of the Ostrich Bias. The Semmelweis Bias describes a tendency to reject new evidence directly because it contradicts established norms, beliefs, or paradigms. Semmelweis first discovered that hospital fatality rates dramatically dropped when doctors washed their hands between treating patients; which the doctors at first rejected because they refused to believe that hands could transmit infection.Zoltan, I. (2019, August 9) Ignaz Semmelweis. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ignaz-Semmelweis7. The Pareidolia BiasThe Pareidolia Bias, sometimes called “patternicity,” describes our natural tendency to find patterns in noise or random and ultimately meaningless stimulus or data. Finding identifiable shapes in clouds or claiming the existence of an extraterrestrial spacecraft in an image of Unidentified Flying Object (UFO), when the object is just “unidentified,” are examples. The ability to see patterns in nature and expecting those patterns to repeat was essential to our survival as a species as we evolved. Shermer, M. (2008, December). Patternicity. Noun. The tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. Retrieved from https://michaelshermer.com/2008/12/patternicity/8. The Prejudice BiasThe widespread Prejudice Bias is a negative feeling about a person or group solely based on the person’s membership in that group. This bias is at the heart of the all too common racisms, sexisms, and ethnocentrisms. It should be noted that this bias is happening on an innately emotional level. From the Latin meaning “previous judgment,” prejudice is “a form of common sense, hard-wired into the human brain through evolution as an adaptive response to protect our prehistoric ancestors from danger.” Furthermore, this evolved defense mechanism to recognize perceived threat causes us to be naturally prejudiced. “Groups seen as posing threats to physical safety elicit fear and self-protective actions, groups seen as choosing to take more than they give elicit anger and inclinations toward aggression, and groups seen as posing health threats elicit disgust and the desire to avoid close physical contact."Arizona State University. (2005, May 25). Prejudice Is Hard-wired Into The Human Brain, Says ASU Study. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 28, 2019, from Prejudice Is Hard-wired Into The Human Brain, Says ASU StudyOnce it is recognized, critically thinking about prejudice by, in part, understanding that correlation does not mean causation should help dispel having any miscalculated feelings of prejudice. The challenge, to begin with, is to recognize the natural prejudice bias within one’s self.9. The Risk BiasThe Risk Bias describes the way we behave when there is a perceived risk, based on whether or not our perceptions are rational or real. We take more care when we fear more risk and show less care when we believe there to be less risk. This bias sometimes reduces the effectiveness of safety measures because we do not consider the greater risk and become reckless because our perception of low risk is unrealistic. Ignoring risk is being reckless.Risk assessment is so much a part of decision making with important ramifications that “recklessness” has a legal definition. For example, the Texas Penal Code says:A person acts recklessly, or is reckless, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he is aware of but consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that its disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor's standpoint.(Texas) Penal Code, Title 2. General Principles of Criminal Responsibility,Chapter 6. Culpability Generally, Sec. 6.03(c.). Retrieved August 28, 2019, from https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.6.htm10. The Selective Perception BiasThe Selective Perception Bias causes us to miss or forget information that might cause discomfort or cognitive dissonance. We might choose to perceive only what we want to believe and ignore evidence that might be contrary to our belief. This bias can be intentionally manipulated when, for example, propaganda chooses to leave out information in a point of view that would otherwise undermine the point of view. The propaganda is otherwise true, except for the information that’s left out.Advertising uses the selective Perception Bias to promote the benefits of products while knowing that negative associations exist. For example, cigarette advertising often touted the health benefits of smoking without acknowledging known health risks: "L&M Filters are just what the doctor ordered” was claimed in a 1951 L&M Filter Tip ad despite the medical fact that smoking cigarettes was well-known to be unhealthy.Gardner, M. N., Brandt, A. M. (2006, February). The Doctors’ Choice Is America’s Choice. American Journal of Public Health. 96(2). pp. 222–232. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470496/11. The Bandwagon Effect BiasRelated to the above-cited “Bandwagon Logical Fallacy,” the Bandwagon Effect Bias describes a tendency to, especially on an emotional level, join others because they are excited about some belief, idea, fad or trend without necessarily considering the “why” behind joining. With more people joining or “getting on the bandwagon,” the more likely it will be for others to feel pressured to join. A political campaign rally can be seen as an occasion for the Bandwagon Effect Bias. The “Jump on the Bandwagon” phrase was popularized during the presidential campaign of Zachary Taylor in 1849. This bias is similar to “groupthink,” which is making decisions as a group without considering an individual point of view or responsibility.12. The Barnum-Forer Effect BiasThe Barnum-Forer Effect Bias is named for the famous 19th-century circus promoter P. T. Barnum who reputedly, (not verified) said, “a sucker is born every minute” and psychologist, Bertram R. Forer (1914 – 2000). The Barnum-Forer Effect Bias happens when we believe something vague that is said about us, especially when it is supposedly tailored for us. For example, Forer is famous for giving his psychology students a personality test, which he discarded so that he could return the same personality assessment to every student:You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside….When students were asked to rate the accuracy of their assessments, they consistently rated them good or excellent. Forer administered the test hundreds of times over many years, and the student ratings consistently showed their assessments to be good or excellent. It is pointed out that this test may demonstrate why people are so willing to accept the vague but usually positive, things that are said about their personalities that come from astrology, palmistry, tarot card reading, etc., and some types of personality tests.Carroll, R. T. (1994). The Skeptic’s Dictionary. Retrieved August 28, 2019 form http://skepdic.com/forer.html13. Change Blindness Bias (Multitasking)It is often heard, especially in a busy business office, that someone is “multitasking.” We like to think that we can control all of what we intend to, but research shows that we can only concentrate on about two tasks at a time and the attempt to switch attention among multiple activities “cut efficiency” and “raise the risk” of failure. According to the American Psychological Association:Understanding the hidden costs of multitasking may help people to choose strategies that boost their efficiency - above all, by avoiding multitasking, especially with complex tasks. (Throwing in a load of laundry while talking to a friend will probably work out all right.) For example, losing just a half second of time to task switching can make a life-or-death difference for a driver on a cell phone traveling at 30 MPH. During the time the driver is not totally focused on driving the car, it can travel far enough to crash into an obstacle that might otherwise have been avoided.Editors (2006, March 20). Multitasking: Switching costs. American Psychological Association. Retrieved August 29, 2019, from https://www.apa.org/research/action/multitaskThis inability to multitask or switch between multiple activities causes “change blindness,” which causes us to miss potentially important aspects within a single stimulus because of attention being drawn away by multiple stimuli.14. Just-world Hypothesis BiasAre good people rewarded and evil people punished? If someone is being punished, must they be a bad or an evil person? The Just-World Hypothesis Bias “assumes that people want to believe that they live in a world where good things happen to good people and bad things only to bad ones and where therefore everyone harvests what they sow.” Lerner M. J. (1980). “The belief in a just world,” in The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. (New York, NY: Springer; ), 9–30.For example, blaming the victim of a sexual assault for having caused the assault by flirting, dressing provocatively, or being drunk is considered within the purview of the Just-world hypothesis bias. In this instance, the blame is wrongly shifted from the perpetrator to the survivor.Gravelin, C. R., Biernat, M., & Bucher, C. E. (2019). Blaming the Victim of Acquaintance Rape: Individual, Situational, and Sociocultural Factors. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2422. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0242215. Zero-Sum BiasThe Zero-Sum Balance mistakenly assumes someone must win and someone must lose. The Zero-Sum bias presumes everything is competition such that gains and losses cannot be brought into balance, which is to say, “your loss is my gain” or conversely, “your gain is my loss.” Research suggests that the Zero-Sum Bias evolved as an adaptive response to scarce resources, which is presumed to have been the survival circumstance of most humans throughout evolutionary history.For example, nationalist attitudes about immigration suggest the Zero-Sum Bias because, “Even without direct contact [with immigrants], threat can be reduced by the absence of zero-sum conditions. …These zero-sum conditions and the presence of an out-group exacerbate in-groups members' sense of threat and, hence, increase prejudice.”Fussell, E. (2014). Warmth of the Welcome: Attitudes toward Immigrants and Immigration Policy. Annual review of sociology, 40, 479–498. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-04332516. IKEA™ effect BiasThe IKEA™ Effect Bias is a kind of effort justification bias and happens when we place a possibly unwarranted high value on things we have built:In four studies in which consumers assembled IKEA™ boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate boundary conditions for the IKEA™ effect—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their amateurish creations as similar in value to experts' creations, and expected others to share their opinions. We show that labor leads to love only when labor results in successful completion of tasks; when participants built and then destroyed their creations, or failed to complete them, the IKEA effect dissipated. Finally, we show that labor increases valuation for both “do-it-yourselfers” and novices.Norton, M. I., & Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2011, September 9). The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love. Journal of Consumer Psychology. Elsevier Inc. (22) pp. 453–460. Retrieved August 29, 2019, from http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20mochon%20ariely.pdfFor example, when students justify deserving a high grade because they spent a great deal of time working for a grade, they are committing the Justification Bias. The amount of time someone has spent building something has nothing to do with the supposed quality.17. The Halo Effect BiasThe Halo Effect Bias occurs when we assume people that we like or see as attractive are necessarily good or smart. Our villains are usually ugly people, and our heroes are usually beautiful people. The Halo Effect Bias conditions our perceptions of people:Despite the old adage not to ‘judge a book by its cover’, facial cues often guide first impressions and these first impressions guide our decisions. Literature suggests there are valid facial cues that assist us in assessing someone’s health or intelligence, but such cues are overshadowed by an ‘attractiveness halo’ whereby desirable attributions are preferentially ascribed to attractive people.Talamas SN, Mavor KI, Perrett DI (2016) Blinded by Beauty: Attractiveness Bias and Accurate Perceptions of Academic Performance. PLoS ONE 11(2): e0148284. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148284This bias may explain why we are attracted to advertisements using celebrity endorsements to promote products and services. Similarly, should we believe that wealthy people are better or smarter than the rest of us, just because they are wealthy?18. Cheerleader Effect BiasThe Cheerleader Effect Bias describes our tendency to see the attractiveness of people in a group better than we would if we saw individual members of the group separately:…Whenever we view a set of objects like an array of dots or a group of faces, our visual system automatically computes general information about the entire set, including average size of group members, their average location, and even the average emotional expression on faces.May, C. (2013, December 3). The Cheerleader Effect: Seeing faces in groups makes them appear more attractive. Scientific American. Retrieved August 29, 2019, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-cheerleader-effect/19. Placebo Effect BiasThe Placebo Effect Bias happens when we believe a substance is going to help us feel better, and it makes us feel better, when if fact, the substance has no active ingredients. The “nocebo” effect occurs when it is believed that a detrimental effect will be produced and it happens. Randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled clinical trials are the gold standard of medical research to determine whether treatments are effective. There is no evidence that a placebo effect cures any disease, but it does affect some aspect of the brain/body relationship, such as the perception of pain describes:The history of placebo shows that the assessment of the clinical significance of placebo has a very real potential to be biased. On the one hand, … [the] approach of analyzing placebo groups without comparing with an untreated control group generates inflated estimations of placebo effects. Additionally, popular fascination with the placebo effect fuels unrealistic assessments of its therapeutic potential. The … meta-analyses, involving progressively larger numbers of studies and subjects, challenges the belief that in general the placebo is powerful. Yet it is unwarranted to conclude that placebo interventions are incapable of producing clinically meaningful benefit. It is generally not possible to prove a negative; moreover the meta-analyses identified several well-designed clinical trials with relatively large analgesic [pain relief] effects of placebo, and a general tendency for effects on patient-reported continuous outcomes. This, in addition to collateral evidence from laboratory experiments, points to the conclusion that placebo analgesia is a real phenomenon with the potential for clinical significance in some settings. However, estimating the size of the effect of placebo is subject to considerable uncertainty. The challenge in rigorously assessing the clinical benefit of placebo interventions is to reliably distinguish the magnitude of any real effect of placebo from the noise embedded in the human interaction of an experiment or a clinical trial.Hróbjartsson, A., Kaptchuk, T. J., & Miller, F. G. (2011). Placebo effect studies are susceptible to response bias and to other types of biases. Journal of clinical epidemiology, 64(11), 1223–1229. Retrieved August 29, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146959/It has been shown that the brain may be actually responding to a placebo. A recent fMRI study uncovered a “placebo-corrected drug response predictive brain signal and show[s] that in some subjects the active drug tends to enhance predicted placebo response, while in others it interferes with it. …These results provide some evidence for clinical placebo being predetermined by brain biology and show that brain imaging may also identify a placebo-corrected prediction of response to active treatment.”Tétreault P., Mansour A., Vachon-Presseau E., Schnitzer T. J., Apkarian A.V., et al. (2016) Brain Connectivity Predicts Placebo Response across Chronic Pain Clinical Trials. PLOS Biology 14(10): e1002570. Retrieved August 28, 2019 from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.100257020. Memory Inhibition Bias & the Google EffectThe Memory Inhibition Bias is the tendency to ignore or not remember details perceived as irrelevant. The Google Effect suggests that if information is easily looked up and accessible online, we are less likely to hold the information in active memory.In a well-known 2008 article, appearing in The Atlantic magazine and titled Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains, technology writer Nicholas Carr observes that he and many others believe the Internet is negatively affecting reading comprehension and memory. He points out how changes in reading and writing technologies throughout history have been accused of making people think differently. He suggests the mere act of writing, “bemoaned” by the ancient Greeks as being a “substitute for knowledge;” how the printing press would lead to “intellectual laziness” and cause a “weakening of mind;” and cites philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) who bought a typewriter which, it was claimed, changed his writing to be “telegram style.”Carr, N. (2008, July/August). Is Google making us stupid? The Atlantic. Retrieved August 29, 2019, from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/The Internet became publically available with World Wide Web access on August 6, 1991, and Google was founded September 4, 1998. The first generation to be alive and to be in complete correlation with Google’s existence is now 21 years old (2019). Is it too early to suggest Google is causing memory inhibition, and whether this is necessarily a problem concerning the pace of progress?21. The Anchoring BiasThe Anchoring Bias happens when we rely on the original information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions. For example, “setting a high price for one item makes all others seem cheaper, though only when the price shown is actually plausible (and not some silly amount!).” Once the anchor is set, other considerations move away from the anchor, but the bias causes us to consider other considerations in terms of the anchor.Sugden, R; Zheng, J; Zizzo, D. (2013). Not all anchors are created equal. Journal of Economic Psychology. (39) pp. 21-31.The anchoring bias is an often-used sales tactic when an initial price for an item is set higher than the actual or fair market price. Initially quoting the higher price possibly prompts the buyer to counter-offer with a lower price that may still be higher than the fair-market price, especially when market pricing is variable. Buying a previously owned home or automobile are examples of situations when the anchoring bias might come into play.An anchoring tactic might not work well with a well-informed consumer who comes with his or her own “anchored price” based on research. Because of easily achieved web searches for products and pricing, phenomena known as “showrooming” and “webrooming” have been recognized as common consumer behaviors. Showrooming has consumers visiting showrooms and then buying online. Webrooming is the opposite of showrooming and has consumers researching online and then going to the showroom for purchase. In either case, consumers are empowered with pricing and product information to counter the effects of the anchoring bias.Khan, H. (2018). Consumers Are Showrooming and Webrooming Your Business, Here's What That Means and What You Can Do About It. Retrieved from https://www.shopify.com/retail/119920451-consumers-are-showrooming-and-webrooming-your-business-heres-what-that-means-and-what-you-can-do-about-it22. Choice-supportive BiasThe most common occurrence of the Choice-supportive Bias is dealing with feelings of buyer’s remorse when we think we have paid too much money or were overly influenced by a salesperson. To counter buyer’s remorse feelings, people often rationalize that their choice was best, whether it was objectively so or not.An example of positively addressing the choice-supportive bias is an online marketing strategy that encourages website visitors to feel good about their visits so they will likely return. Asking visitors about their visits and showing products they have previously shopped or purchased (see Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more) implicitly justifies previous engagement and elicits positive feelings about the website. Playing the choice-supportive bias is a significant aspect of post-purchase customer relationship management and contributes to customer loyalty and the lifetime value of a customer.Lind, Martina; Visentini, Mimì; Mäntylä, Timo; Del Missier, Fabio (2017, December 4). "Choice-Supportive Misremembering: A New Taxonomy and Review". Frontiers in Psychology. (8) p. 2062. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02062.23. The Conservatism BiasWe generally do not like to revise our existing beliefs when presented with new evidence that contradicts those beliefs. When we hold on to beliefs, we are committing the Conservatism Bias. Even when we have changed our minds, we might have to resist the urge to return to the contradicted belief. At least, we may hold on to parts of the belief to have what is called the “continued influence effect.” The conservatism bias is a kind of “neophobia” or fear of the new and is prevalent in marketing and investment decisions when risk is present. When investors have a conservative bias to only go with “winners,” they may expect a company’s earnings to continue to go up, if they have been climbing for several years in a row. Investor overreaction might push stock prices to be overvalued.The conservatism bias makes us want to stick with what we know, rather than going with what new evidence might suggest. In marketing, branding seeks to have a business, product, service, or person becomes recognizable to a targeted audience in such a way that the brand can be thought of without prompting. Companies like Apple, Coca Cola, Ikea, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Amazon can be easily recalled, not only in terms of what they do but also in terms of an emotional impression. Corporations carefully nurture their brands to maintain pervasive and positive recall. The ideal marketing position to have is when a brand name becomes a verb, such as saying to “Google” something when meaning to do an Internet search, whether or not Google is used.24. Parkinson’s Law of Triviality (bike-shedding effect)Originally formulated by Cyril N. Parkinson, a British Naval historian and author, the Parkinson's Law of Triviality, also know as the “bike-shedding effect” happens when trivial issues capture attention and consideration when more important issues are apparent.The bias appears especially when discussing options within a group and we give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. The “bike-shedding” effect comes from an observation by Parkinson during a meeting about a nuclear power plant when an inordinate amount of time was used to discuss the shed to house bicycles.Bauer, R. (2015, November 6). This is why work will always fill up your time. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from This is why work will always fill up your time25. The Framing Effect BiasThe Framing Effect Bias or “decision frame” refers to:…the decision-maker's conception of the acts, outcomes, and contingencies associated with a particular choice. The frame that a decision-maker adopts is controlled partly by the formulation of the problem and partly by the norms, habits, and personal characteristics of the decision-maker.Tversky, A., Kahneman, D. (1981, JANUARY 30). The Framing Decision and the Psychology of Choice. SCIENCE, (211). pp. 453-457. Retrieved from http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/surveys.course/TverskyKahneman1981.pdfSimply put, we make different choices about information depending on how it is presented or “framed” in terms of a potential loss or a gain. People can be risk averse or risk takers. Tversky and Kahneman found that “choices involving gains are often risk averse and choices involving losses are often risk taking.” even when the problem resolutions presented are identical. (Ibid.)For example, if two alternative medical programs are developed to ward off a disease, and it is suggested that the effect on a group of 600 people will result in one of two outcomes:a)That 200 people will be saved, orb)1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved with a 2/3 probability that that no people will be saved. (200 people will still be saved.)If we are “risk averse,” we will more likely to choose the framing that 200 will be saved because, “certainly saving 200 lives is more attractive than a risky prospect of equal expected value, that is one-in-three chance of saving 600 lives.” (Ibid.)In a second scenario:a)400 people will die, or there is ab)1/3 probability that 600 people will live and a 2/3 probability that 600 will dieIf we are “risk takers,” the certainty that 400 people will die is less attractive than a 1/3 chance that 600 will live. (Ibid.)See my eBook (ISBN: 978-1-7924-0855-7): Critical Thinking in a New Information Age: The Nature of Intellectual Inquiry