Cognitive Bias

A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from rationality or objective judgment, in which an individual constructs their own subjective sense of reality from perception, so that this constructed reality, rather than the objective input itself, often ends up dictating the person's behavior. Cognitive biases are not straightforwardly negative: while they can produce perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment and illogical interpretation, some are adaptive, allowing faster decisions that are desirable when timeliness matters more than accuracy, as in the use of heuristics. Other biases are described as a byproduct of ordinary human processing limitations, arising from bounded rationality, the influence of a person's biological state and constitution, or a limited capacity for information processing, and researchers have also linked cognitive biases to a greater inclination toward pseudoscientific belief, by lowering the amount of evidence a person requires before accepting a claim that already fits their preconceptions.