Cognitive Biases and Your Decision Making

Decision-making is an integral part of human behavior, influencing every aspect of our lives from the mundane to the critical. Whether deciding what to eat for breakfast or making strategic business decisions, the process by which we arrive at our choices is complex and multifaceted. Central to understanding this process is the concept of cognitive biases—systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. These biases reveal the ways in which our intuitive judgments do not always align with objective reasoning or optimal decision-making.

The study of cognitive biases was revolutionized in the 1970s by the groundbreaking work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who introduced the notion of heuristics—a kind of mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently. While heuristics are useful in many situations, they can also lead to errors in judgment, now widely known as cognitive biases. Since their initial research, the list of identified cognitive biases has expanded significantly, illustrating the pervasive impact of these biases on our thinking and decision-making processes.