50 HIDDEN INFLUENCES THAT

CAN WRECK YOUR

DECISIONS
Y our Decisions Are Based On "The Facts" Right?

Wrong. Like a raft being pulled by hidden currents, there are

over 100 different influences that pull you off course in your
decision making.

Here are 50 you need to know about.


PERSPECTIVE
Anchoring Effect: Being influenced on
subsequent judgment by a prior piece
of information.
41%
Difference in real estate agent home value
estimates. The difference correlated to
whether they were shown an asking price
substantially higher or lower than the
actual list price.
51%
282 ft 844 ft
Difference in estimated height of the tallest
redwood tree by visitors at the SF
Exploratorium. Difference corresponds to
high or low anchors used in the question.
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Authority Bias
— Tendency to more readily accept a person's view if
that person has some sort of credential or fame
Scarcity Bias
ONLY
2 LEFT! — An increased desire for that which we might lose
(or has a limited supply).
Confirmation Bias
— The tendency to "hear" only information that confirms
one's preconceptions (and dismiss what you don't
want to hear)
Hyperbolic Discounting
$1 $5 — A stronger preference for more immediate payoffs
relative to later payoffs with greater value.
Illusion of Control
— Believing we can control or at least influence
outcomes that are beyond our control.
Loss Aversion
GAIN
LOSSES
— The pain of giving up an object is greater than the
value associated with acquiring it. Cf. Endowment
Effect, Sunk Cost Fallacy.
Mere Exposure Effect
— Increased favorability for things merely
because you are familiar with them.
Outcome Bias
— Judging a decision by its eventual outcome instead of
based on the factors available at the time of the decision.
Cf. Second guessing play calls depending on how
it turns out.
Pseudocertainty Effect
— Making risk-averse choices if the expected outcome
is positive, but riskier choices to avoid negative outcomes.
Status Quo Bias
— Any proposed change from the current situation or
approach is perceived more negatively or as a loss.
Illusory Truth Effect
— Tendency to view as true those assertions
heard frequently (as few as 3-5 times).
Framing Effect
— Drawing different conclusions from the same
information, depending on how that
information is presented.
Priming Effect
— Exposure to a stimulus influences
response to a later stimulus.
 Reactance Bias
— The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants
PERSPECTIVE
ACTION

REACTION you to do because you want the freedom to choose.

Zero-Risk Bias
— Preference for reducing a small risk to
zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Planning Fallacy: The tendency to
underestimate the time or money it will take
to complete a task/project by assuming the
unrealistic best case scenario.
Availability Heuristic
— A biased prediction, based on a heightened awareness
or recall of certain information. For example, if 3 family
members had lung cancer, you assume a high percentage
of lung cancer cases nationwide.
Frequency Illusion
— Phenomenon in which people who just learn or notice
something start seeing it everywhere. Cf.
Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

Gambler's Fallacy
— Tendency to assume that individual random events
are influenced by previous random events.

2x
Illusory Correlation
— Inaccurately supposing a relationship between a
certain type of action and an effect.

$18,658 $38,769
Recency Effect
Estimate Actual
— Tendency to give greater weight to recent events
vs. earlier events.

2002 average cost underestimate by

Halo Effect
American homeowners to remodel their — Tendency to take one trait in a person (positive or
kitchen. negative) and attribute that positivity/negativity to
other areas of the person.

Dunning Kruger Effect

— People with lower skill levels overestimate their abilities,
while highly skilled often underestimate their abilities
45%
Impact Bias
— The tendency for people to overestimate the length or
the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
Underestimated cost for rail projects
worldwide (1969-1998) Optimism Bias
— The systematic tendency to be over-optimistic about
the outcome of planned actions.

More FREE IKEA Effect

— Placing a disproportionately higher value
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MEMORY
Hindsight Bias: Also known as Predictive
Memory Bias, it is the tendency to filter
memory of past events through present
knowledge. It tricks us into believing "we
knew it all along," making us overconfident
on future predictions.
RESEARCHERS
Researchers Fischhoff and Beyth found:
— If a predicted event occurred, people
consistently exaggerated the probability
they originally thought an event would
happen.
— If a predicted event didn’t occur, they
wrongly recalled being sure it wouldn’t.
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Von Restorff Effect
— The tendency for an item that "stands
out like a sore thumb" to be more likely
to be remembered than other items.
Rosy Retrospection
— Propensity for remembering (or even
exaggerating) the positives from past
events and minimizing the negatives.
Negativity Bias
— Paying more attention and more easily
-
+
++
remembering negative things
compared to positive.
Peak-End Bias
— Tendency to give greater weight to the most
memorable events (good/bad). Cf. a good vacation
with a bad experience (assess the whole vacation poorly).
Self-Serving Bias
— The tendency to remember and attribute
successes to personal characteristics
ER
WINN
while blaming past failures on outside forces.
Modesty Bias
Me
— Unlike the self-serving bias, some have the tendency
Other
to blame failures on oneself while attributing successes
to situational factors.
Hindsight Bias
— Also known as Predictive Memory Bias, it is the
tendency to filter memory of past events through present
knowledge, so that those events look more predictable
than they actually were; also known as the
'I-knew-it-all-along effect'.
Choice-Supportive Bias
— The tendency to remember one's choices
as better than they actually were.
Consistency Bias
— Incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and
behavior as resembling present attitudes and behavior.
 SOCIAL Illusion of Transparency
— People overestimate others' ability to know them,
and they also overestimate their ability to know others.

Ingroup Bias
— The tendency for people to give preferential
treatment to others they perceive to be members
of their own groups.
Illusion of Transparency:
People overestimate others' ability to know
them, and their ability to know others.
Projection Bias
— The tendency to unconsciously assume that others
share the same or similar thoughts, beliefs, values,
or positions.

False Consensus Effect

The source of many couple's arguments are AGREE — Overestimating the degree to which
because one party assumes the other should others agree with them.

know what they are thinking and feeling.

Outgroup Homogeneity Bias

— Individuals see members of their own group as being
more varied than members of other groups.

Fundamental Attribution Error

— Overemphasize personality based
explanations for behaviors observed in Ultimate Attribution Error
others while underemphasizing the role — Tendency to attribute a characteristic to an entire
group instead of the individuals within the group.
and power of situational influences on the
same behavior. The opposite is true when
looking at your own behavior.

Reciprocity
— Inclination to respond to a positive action toward
us with another positive action, rewarding kind actions.

"You screwed up because you are an idiot.

I screwed up because of the circumstances
Social Proof
I was facing." — A tendency to conform to the actions and
Customer
Reviews recommendations of others, assuming those
actions are the correct behavior.
 Physical Fatigue and/or Hunger Effects
— Tendency to gravitate toward riskier
PHYSICAL options with a larger/faster payoff but an
equally signficant downside.

Fatigue, emotional or stress factors can often

increase our desire to choose easier or Stress Effect
— Tendency to focus on the potential upside and
higher payoff, higher risk options. discount the downside of options. Also, men are more
willing to take risk, while women get more conservative.

Choice Overload Syndrome

— Too many choices can cause us to choose the easiest
"default" or status-quo option… or nothing at all.

Emotional Bias
— Our emotions significantly increase or decrease the
risk tolerance of an option, depending on the
"Sure, let's give it a try... double or nothing!" type of emotion.

Decision Fatigue

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— A particular type of fatigue caused by repeated
decision making, leading to the inclination to choose the
Resources at easiest option with the quickest payoff… or nothing at all.
 4 Ways to Thwart
Hidden Decision Influencers
BE HUMBLE
— Before any decision, humbly acknowledge that you may not see the
situation as clearly as you think. After a decision, humbly accept
the possibility you could be wrong.

BE AWARE
— Become knowledgeable about these influencers… so you can
spot them in yourself and others before it’s too late.

SEEK OUTSIDE INPUT

— Gatheradditional perspectives from wise people who aren’t seeing “the facts”
the same way. Often, you can use different perspectives to triangulate reality.

FOLLOW A PROCESS
— Develop and use a regular decision making process to counteract
the hidden currents. Visit WiseInsights.net/better-decisions to learn
about a proven 5-step process for making better decisions.

WiseInsights.net
Free Resources for Better Decisions.

Attribution: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases; WiseInsights.net;

Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman;
https://thepip.com/en-us/2015/09/fatigue-and-athlete-decision-making-the-pip/

©2016 WiseInsights.net and Patrick McDaniel. All rights reserved.