SPED102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Confirmation Bias, Coin Flipping, Pareidolia
2 Jun 2018
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Cognitive Biases
Examples of Weird Beliefs:
• Beliefs that if true, would overturn current scientific worldview
o Mediumship → talking to the dead
o Telepathy, precognition, psychic healing
o Homeopathy (alternative medical substance which is diluted)
o Auras, graphology (infers a person’s character and disposition from
their handwriting), rumpology (bumps and lumps of your butt)
• Who believes these weird things?
o All cultures and societies
o Regardless of gender, socioeconomic status or education
o Susceptibility traits → fantasy proneness (failure to distinguish reality
from fiction), hypnotic-suggestibility, dissociation (people tend to
measure higher on detachment from reality)
o A pattern emerges, yet few conclusive findings
The Role of Cognition:
• Our cognitive abilities consistently let us down
• We often see what we have not seen, hear what we have not heard and even
recall events that never took place
• Cognitive biases → picture of pizza or Marilyn Monroe, a face or a rock etc.
o All of these are examples of pareidolia
Pareidolia:
• Psychological phenomena whereby we perceive meaning in random stimuli
• All humans feel the need to find meaning but believers will often find
paranormal context in random stimuli where none exists
• Similarly for conspiracy theorists – if you are looking for evidence based on
certain beliefs, then you will almost certainly find it
• Evolutionary advantage of being sensitive to patterns → false positives present
less risk than false negatives
Preconceptions:
• Strong influence for what we can see or hear
• Perception is influenced by context, environment and culture
• We see or hear what we expect to see or hear (making up lyrics or reading
them whilst listening)
The Illusion of Control:
• False belief that we have control over random events
o Who plays Lotto? Who used quick pick? Who chooses their own
numbers?
o E.g. blowing on your dice before rolling it
Misunderstanding Relative and Absolute Risk:
• Relative risk increase can be large when absolute risk is very small (e.g. only
1.5/10 million if you continue your medication – much less than being
attacked by a shark and over 500 times less than dying from flu)
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