PSYC 3480 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Loss Aversion, Cognitive Bias, In-Group Favoritism

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3480
• Professor: Dan Yarmey

Document Summary

If you don"t use the high quality information you will make bad decisions: use of high quality info will result is good decisions and better ones. Confirmation bias: this represents a specific case of selective perception: we seek out information that reaffirms our past choices, and we discount information that contradicts them. We are most prone to the confirmation bias when we believe we have good information and strongly believe in our opinions. Mere exposure bias: the tendency to like something merely because you"re familiar with it, over something you"ve never seen or heard before. Hindsight bias: this is the tendency to believe falsely, after the outcome is known, that we"d have accurately predicted it. The hindsight bias reduces our ability to learn from the past. It lets us think we"re better predictors than we are and can make us falsely confident. Loss aversion: refers to people"s tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains.