Sources of Biases> Cognitive Bias

Lack of information leads people to take mental shortcuts, causing attributional biases.​ Cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking due to simplified information processing.

Counter factual thinkings are biases which are not based on objective facts or reasons, but based on imagination and hypothetical views.

• Attribution biases are caused by information-processing limitations, not bad intentions.
• The brain filters and simplifies information, which sometimes distorts social judgments.

• Michael D. Storms at Yale University studied how visual perspective affects attributions.
• Two actors conversed while two observers watched; videotape was used to reverse viewpoints.​
• Normally, actors blamed the situation while observers blamed the actor's personality.
• When perspectives were reversed via videotape, the attributions also reversed.
• Storms called this "cognitively driven attribution biases" — biases shaped by what a person can observe.

• Means "counter to the facts" — imagining "What if?" alternatives to events that already happened.
• Based on imagination and hypothetical views, not on objective facts.​
• Creates bias because different people imagine different alternatives and reach different conclusions about the same event.

• Limited information → cognitive shortcuts → attribution biases.
• Storms proved that visual perspective directly determines attributions.
• When thinking moves from facts to imagination, it becomes counterfactual and further distorts attributions.

• Cognitive Bias: Lack of information leads people to use mental shortcuts, causing errors in judgment.
• Cognitive Model: Attribution biases occur due to limits in human information processing.
• Storms’ Study (1973): Visual perspective affects how people make attributions.
• Counterfactual Thinking: Imagining alternatives to events that did not actually happen.
• Connection: Limited information and imagination together can distort judgments about people and events.