Post by ashliy on Mar 8, 2017 17:11:29 GMT
We write often on Big Think about cognitive biases, and researchers in England have just discovered a new one we didn’t know about. You may be thinking, “just what we needed (sigh),” but anything that helps us see through the ways we fool ourselves is worth knowing about. It’s called the “Spontaneous Preference For Own Theories,” or “SPOT,” effect.
You may be familiar with these classic cognitive biases:
Illusory superiority bias — This widely held bias is the assumption one is better than average. Doesn’t matter what characteristic it is, you’re better. Obviously, only 50% of all actually are better than average, but no matter.
Confirmation bias — This is a description of our tendency to wind up believing what we want to believe. We may cherry-pick evidence, or we may stop gathering it altogether once we’ve got “proof” that the conclusion we desire has been confirmed.
Endowment effect — We acquire things we like, yes, but we also like the things we’ve acquired. We believe a thing that’s ours has greater value than it really does just because we own it.
And now Aiden Gregg and colleagues at the University of Southampton have announced the SPOT effect, which is sort of a combination of all three. It posits that we’re more likely to believe a theory because it’s ours, and will even attempt to hold onto our faith in it in spite of mounting evidence.
bigthink.com/robby-berman/my-theory-is-true-if-i-do-say-so-myself
You may be familiar with these classic cognitive biases:
Illusory superiority bias — This widely held bias is the assumption one is better than average. Doesn’t matter what characteristic it is, you’re better. Obviously, only 50% of all actually are better than average, but no matter.
Confirmation bias — This is a description of our tendency to wind up believing what we want to believe. We may cherry-pick evidence, or we may stop gathering it altogether once we’ve got “proof” that the conclusion we desire has been confirmed.
Endowment effect — We acquire things we like, yes, but we also like the things we’ve acquired. We believe a thing that’s ours has greater value than it really does just because we own it.
And now Aiden Gregg and colleagues at the University of Southampton have announced the SPOT effect, which is sort of a combination of all three. It posits that we’re more likely to believe a theory because it’s ours, and will even attempt to hold onto our faith in it in spite of mounting evidence.
bigthink.com/robby-berman/my-theory-is-true-if-i-do-say-so-myself