If you have ever studied psychology, you probably know that there are several biases involved in decision making. These biases are not inherently good or bad. They help us to make decisions quicker and easier but they can also cause those decisions to be less than optimal. Nobody can ever make decisions fully free of these biases, but being aware of their existence may help you to take them into consideration while pondering whether you should do something or not. This might eventually lead to better-informed decision making and ultimately better decisions. That is why I decided to write this article, because I believe that everyone should be aware of these biases in order to be more in control of their own decisions.
In this article, I will only talk very shortly about the most common biases there are. Many will be left out but if you would like to learn more, any good psychology textbook should have a chapter or two about them. So, without further ado, here are some of the most common biases of decision making:
Overconfidence Bias
According to this bias, we have a tendency to be overconfident about our abilities. We think that we are right much more often than we actually are without being aware of this ourselves. Not challenging this bias may lead to poor decision making.
Anchoring Bias
This bias is based on the idea that the human brain tends to fixate itself on the first piece of information it is presented with. The human then uses this piece of information as an anchor to compare new information to. For example a salesperson might use this to their advantage by giving a product a much higher price than what it is worth in the beginning of bargaining. Though the person buying the product knows that the price is way too high, their brain still uses the first number as an anchor for the upcoming bids.
Confirmation Bias
According to this bias, we tend to gather information that supports opinions that we already have and disregard information that contradicts our existing worldviews. The same applies for our decisions: we usually try to look for information that enforces the image that we have made a good decision while ignoring signs that our decision was not necessarily that great. If we are faced with information that suggests our opinions are false, we give it less weight than information that supports our views. Luckily, it is at least partly possible to override this bias by being mindful of it.
Availability Bias
This bias suggests that we usually base our decisions on information that is easily available to us. Things that make some pieces of information more available than others include the involvement of emotions, us obtaining the information recently or it being repeated frequently. Because of this, we might fear for example flight accidents unduly; though they happen extremely seldom, they get very much media attention.
Self-Serving Bias
This bias is based on the idea that people tend to explain their successes using internal factors such as talent or wits whereas failures are much more frequently blamed on external factors such as hurry or bad working conditions. However, the failures of others are often seen as being caused by their internal factors. This bias resembles overconfidence bias quite a lot since it further emphasises how people have a tendency to be overconfident about their abilities.
Sources:
https://www.slideshare.net/humaapkeliye/decision-making-bias-and-errors
Robbins & Judge: Essentials of Organizational Behaviour