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The Abilene paradox occurs when a group collectively decides on a course of action that no individual member actually wants, because each person mistakenly believes the others want it and goes along to avoid conflict. Where groupthink is convergence on a leader's or majority's view, Abilene is unanimous agreement to something nobody prefers.
Absent-mindedness is forgetting an intended action or location because attention was elsewhere when the memory cue needed to be created.
The actor–observer bias is the tendency to attribute our own behavior to situational factors while attributing other people's behavior to their character. When I miss a deadline, it's because the week was chaotic; when you miss one, it's because you're disorganized.
The Ben Franklin effect is the tendency to like someone more after doing them a favor — rather than only doing favors for people we already like. The causal arrow runs backward from folk intuition: behavior shapes attitude.
The bystander effect is the tendency for individuals to be less likely to help — or act at all — when other people are present. Responsibility diffuses across the group, everyone assumes someone else will step in, and each person reads the others' inaction as evidence that action isn't needed.
The cheerleader effect is the finding that a face can be judged more attractive when seen in a group than when seen alone.
The cross-race effect, also known as own-race bias, refers to the tendency for people to more easily recognize faces of their own race compared to faces of other races. This cognitive bias is prevalent in facial recognition tasks and has significant implications in various fields, such as criminal justice, psychological research, and social interactions.
Decision fatigue is the claimed deterioration in decision quality after a long sequence of decisions: later choices drift toward defaults, avoidance, and impulsivity as the effort of active deciding accumulates. It is practically influential — and scientifically contested.
Distinction bias is exaggerating the importance of small differences when options are compared side by side, even though the difference would barely matter in use.
The end-of-history illusion is the tendency to believe that who we are right now is who we will remain — that our present values, preferences, and personality are the finished product, even while readily acknowledging how much we've changed in the past. At every age, people report substantial past change and predict minimal future change.
Essentialism is treating membership in a category as evidence of a fixed inner essence that explains how its members naturally are.
Extrinsic incentive error is overestimating how much other people are driven by visible rewards while underestimating interest, meaning, identity, and other internal motives.
Groupthink is a mode of thinking in cohesive groups where the desire for harmony and consensus overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives. Members self-censor doubts, dissenters are pressured, and the group converges on a decision that many individuals privately question — while feeling more confident than any of them would alone.
The halo effect is letting one positive trait — attractiveness, prestige, polish, friendliness, a famous brand — spill into judgments about unrelated traits. A good first impression quietly becomes evidence of competence, honesty, or quality.
Hostile attribution bias is the tendency to interpret ambiguous behavior by others as intentionally hostile. The bumped shoulder, the unanswered email, the terse comment — where intent is unclear, the biased reading defaults to malice, and the response escalates accordingly.
Implicit associations are automatic links between social categories and concepts that can be measured in rapid-response tasks, whether or not a person endorses those links explicitly.
In-group bias is favoring people we see as 'us' over people we see as 'them,' even when group membership is arbitrary and the evidence about individuals is equivalent. Belonging can quietly become a proxy for trust, competence, and deservingness.
The overjustification effect is the tendency for extrinsic rewards to undermine intrinsic motivation: pay someone for what they already loved doing, and once the payment stops — or even while it continues — the love can fade. The activity's explanation shifts from 'I do this because I enjoy it' to 'I do this for the reward.'
The Pygmalion effect is the phenomenon whereby higher expectations placed on a person lead to improved performance by that person. Expectations leak through behavior — attention, challenge, feedback, warmth — and become self-fulfilling; its dark twin, the Golem effect, is underperformance produced by low expectations.
Self-consistency bias is rewriting your past views to make your present self feel more coherent than it really was.
Shared information bias is the tendency of groups to spend their discussion time on information all members already know, while the unique knowledge held by individual members — often the information that would change the decision — never surfaces. Groups exist to pool knowledge, and this bias is precisely the failure to pool.
Social comparison bias is devaluing or avoiding people who threaten our relative status, especially when we control an opportunity they could receive. A stronger candidate can feel like a risk to the self rather than an asset to the group.
Social desirability bias is giving the answer that looks respectable, safe, or acceptable rather than the most accurate answer.
The spotlight effect is overestimating how much other people notice, remember, or care about your visible mistakes and appearance.
Stereotyping is using a broad belief about a group to infer traits, ability, motives, or behavior in a particular person. A category replaces individual evidence, often with more confidence than the evidence can support.
System justification is the tendency to defend, rationalize, and see as legitimate the existing social, economic, and organizational arrangements one lives under — even when those arrangements work against one's own interests. The status quo isn't just preferred; it gets moralized.
Time-saving bias is misjudging how much time a change in speed actually saves, especially when comparing rates rather than durations.