There are as many views on a topic or a situation as there are people in the world. Cognitive biases are a clipping of reality that can help us make decisions quickly or that leads us to blur perception.
Some cuts are functional and adaptive, while others are negative and dysfunctional, affecting emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. We are going to see some examples in this article to clarify the issue. Don’t miss it and keep reading.
What are cognitive biases?
Cognitive biases are systematic errors in the interpretation and processing of information. This concept was raised by psychologists Kahneman and Tversky in 1972.
His working hypothesis was that, under certain circumstances, people do not make decisions responding to logic or through rational analysis, but instead rely on heuristic shortcuts that allow them to give more immediate answers.
This idea earned Kahneman the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, because he managed to relate and integrate aspects of psychology with economics, precisely by explaining human behavior and judgment in situations of uncertainty.
The investigations of Tversky and Kahneman led to the development of perspective theory as a more realistic proposition compared to rational choice theory.
Influence of biases on the perception of reality
However, even if it is a mistake, not everything is negative when talking about cognitive biases. They also provide economy of thought, that is, they allow us shortcuts that become very practical for decision making.
In this aspect, they save us time and energy, since it would be a burden to review and have to question everything. At some point, certain cognitive biases facilitate human well-being.
Likewise, it is important to consider that from cognitive theory special emphasis is placed on biases and on how certain clinical pictures arise or are presented. For example, when thinking acquires negative and pessimistic, categorical and personalistic nuances, it is possible that we are in the presence of a depressive picture.
The drawback with cognitive biases occurs when they lead us to have dysfunctional behaviors or that impact well-being. If we are unable to make thinking more flexible and recognize that there may be multiple views or interpretations of the same situation, negativities or frustrations may appear.
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