Chapter sources
Part I: Reasoning Traps & Biases
When you feel not as sharp as everyone else
On feeling behind
The Fields Medal Winner Who Thought He Was a Slow Learner
When your brain is lying to you about money
Investing biases
What's the #1 Cognitive Bias That Derails Investors? (With Barry Ritholtz)
When you feel stuck in a job you don't like
Sunk cost fallacy
The Sunk Cost Fallacy and How It Influences Our Decisions
- Arkes & Blumer, "The psychology of sunk cost." www.researchgate.net/publication/4812596_The_psychology_of_sunk_cost
- Wrosch et al., "You've Gotta Know When to Fold 'Em: Goal Disengagement and Systemic Inflammation in Adolescence." www.researchgate.net/publication/6079069
- Barry Staw, "Knee-deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action." www.academia.edu/23160004
- Staw & Fox, "Escalation: The determinants of commitment to a chosen course of action." psycnet.apa.org/record/1978-07919-001
When you start seeing patterns that aren't there
Apophenia
Apophenia: Making Patterns Out of Unrelated Events
- Foster & Kokko, "The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behaviour" (Proc. Royal Society B). royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2008.0981
- On apophenia and early schizophrenia (NCBI PMC). www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2800156
- "Scientific apophenia in strategic management research: Significance tests & mistaken inference." www.researchgate.net/publication/282844919
- AMA Journal of Ethics: Barry Marshall & Robin Warren. journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/barry-marshall-md-and-robin-warren-md/2000-04
When an argument only sounds airtight
Validity and truth
When the easiest example feels like the whole truth
Availability bias
Availability Bias, The Passive Voice, and Representing Relative Magnitudes
- Tversky & Kahneman, "Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability." people.umass.edu/biep540w/pdf/Tversky%20availability.pdf
When you believe it because you want it to be true
Wishful thinking
Wishful Thinking: Why We Believe What We Want to Believe
- Ditto & Lopez, "Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions" (JPSP 1992). fbaum.unc.edu/teaching/articles/jpsp-1992-Ditto.pdf
- Westen et al., "Neural Bases of Motivated Reasoning: An fMRI Study of Emotional Constraints on Partisan Political Judgment in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election." www.researchgate.net/publication/6727730
When you only notice what you already believe
Confirmation bias
Confirmation Bias, We're Like a Family, and Overloading Symbols and Colors
- "4 widespread cognitive biases and how doctors can overcome them" (AMA). www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/ethics/4-widespread-cognitive-biases-and-how-doctors-can-overcome-them
- Cognitive bias in dermatologic diagnosis (JAAD). www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(19)32285-6/fulltext
- Francis Bacon and confirmation bias (NCBI PMC). www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5154407/
When the sample is hiding something
Selection bias
Selection Bias: How the Things We Don't See Distort Our Decisions
When you are only shown the winners
Survivorship bias
Survivorship Bias, People are Saying, and Making a Blood Pressure Graph More Readable
When the group starts thinking for you
Groupthink
- Irving Janis, "Groupthink." agcommtheory.pbworks.com/f/GroupThink.pdf
When you're sure the bias is only in other people
The bias blind spot
Why We Think Only Others Get It Wrong
- Pronin, Lin & Ross, "The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others." www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/pronin2015.pdf
- Pronin & Kugler, "Objectivity in the Eye of the Beholder: Divergent Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others." www.researchgate.net/publication/8458225
When a big decision is clouded by unknowns
Unknown unknowns
When "us versus them" gets manufactured
Moral exclusion
When you're buried under a flood of claims
The Gish gallop
When the person is attacked instead of the point
Ad hominem
Do Personal Attacks Ever Work?
When "Can't believe it" becomes "Can't be true"
Argument from incredulity
When you're judged by your associations
Guilt by association
When a claim can't be tested
Alder's razor
What Are Philosophical Razors? (Occam's Razor and Three Other Razors)
When the subject gets changed to your faults
Whataboutism
What About This? What About That?
When someone retreats to a safer claim
The motte-and-bailey fallacy
- Nicholas Shackel, "The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology." orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/50091/1/shackel%20The%20Vacuity%20of%20Postmodernist%20Methodology%20final%20archivable.pdf
When the counterexample is defined away
No True Scotsman
When one example gets stretched into a rule
Hasty generalizations
Mind the Gap: The Pitfalls of Hasty Generalizations
When "no evidence against" is treated as proof
The appeal to ignorance
Mind the Gap: The Pitfalls of Hasty Generalizations
When one step is said to doom you to the last
Slippery slopes
Slippery Slopes, "It's Complicated", and The Trouble with Some Infographics
When you're offered only two doors
False dilemmas
False Dilemmas, Macroeconomic Conditions, and Visualizing Distributions
When too many options leave you frozen
The paradox of choice
Does Too Much Choice Paralyze Us?
- Schwartz et al., "Doing Better but Feeling Worse: The Paradox of Choice" (incl. the Iyengar & Lepper jam study). www.researchgate.net/profile/Julian-Barling/publication/232553222_Leading_Well_Transformational_Leadership_and_Well-Being
When the first thing you hear pulls you off course
Anchoring
How Anchoring Affects Our Decisions
- Strack & Mussweiler, "Explaining the Enigmatic Anchoring Effect: Mechanisms of Selective Accessibility." bear.warrington.ufl.edu/brenner/mar7588/Papers/strack-mussweiler-jpsp97.pdf
- Wilson et al., "A New Look at Anchoring Effects: Basic Anchoring and Its Antecedents." www.researchgate.net/profile/Timothy-Wilson-19/publication/14261071_A_New_Look_at_Anchoring_Effects_Basic_Anchoring_and_Its_Antecedents
- Tversky & Kahneman, "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases." www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc590Readings/TverskyKahneman1974.pdf
When expecting something makes it happen
Self-fulfilling prophecies
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Our Invisible Sidekick
- Robert K. Merton, "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy." entrepreneurscommunicate.pbworks.com/f/Merton.+Self+Fulfilling+Profecy.pdf
- Rosenthal & Jacobson, "Pygmalion in the Classroom" (the Oak School Experiment). people.wku.edu/steve.groce/RosenthalJacobson-PygmalionintheClassroom.pdf
- Crum et al. / Stanford, "Receiving genetic information can change risk." news.stanford.edu/stories/2018/12/receiving-genetic-information-can-change-risk
When you mistake sequence for cause
The false cause fallacy
Plausible Deniability, False Causes, and Telling a Crisper Story by Reducing Detail
When you can't let go of something you own
The endowment effect
The Endowment Effect: Owning Something Makes It More Valuable?
- Endowment effect review (NCBI PMC7983076). pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7983076/
- Kahneman, Knetsch & Thaler, "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem" (the coffee-mug study). web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Behavioral_Decision_Theory/Kahneman_et_al_1990_Experimental_tests.pdf
- Norton, Mochon & Ariely, "The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love." www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf
- IKEA / LEGO valuation experiments (SSRN). papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1777100
- Katz & Allen, "Investigating the Not-Invented-Here (NIH) syndrome" (NASA R&D groups). onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9310.1982.tb00478.x
When the good ol' days feel realer than they were
Nostalgia
Back in My Day; How Nostalgia Messes With Our Minds
- Rubin, Wetzler & Nebes, "Autobiographical memory across the lifespan" (the reminiscence bump). dukespace.lib.duke.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5a74dc57-bde3-4ea1-81f5-298a124736d7/content
- Charles, Mather & Carstensen, "Aging and Emotional Memory: The Forgettable Nature of Negative Images for Older Adults." www.researchgate.net/publication/10691119
- Cheung, Sedikides, Wildschut, Tausch & Ayanian, "Collective Nostalgia Is Associated With Stronger Outgroup-Directed Anger and Participation in Ingroup-Favoring Collective Action." www.researchgate.net/publication/318862735
When you wonder what makes handmade special
The handmade things we value
- Snyder & Fromkin, "Uniqueness: The Human Pursuit of Difference." www.jean-pfiffelmann.com/theory-of-uniqueness/
- Buell & Norton, "The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value." www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Norton_Michael_The%20labor%20illusion%20How%20operational_f4269b70-3732-4fc4-8113-72d0c47533e0.pdf
- Green & Brock, "The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives" (JPSP 2000, 79(5), 701–721).
- Newman & Bloom, "Art and Authenticity: The Importance of Originals in Judgments of Value." www.researchgate.net/publication/51797088
When you feel like a fraud
Imposter thoughts
There's An Upside to Imposter Thoughts? With Basima Tewfik
- Clance & Imes, "The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention." psycnet.apa.org/record/1979-26502-001
- Tewfik, "The Impostor Phenomenon Revisited: Examining the relationship between workplace impostor thoughts and interpersonal effectiveness at work." scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=dDV4dYoAAAAJ&citation_for_view=dDV4dYoAAAAJ:UeHWp8X0CEIC
When you can't see your own assumptions
Plato's cave
You Must Leave the Cave to See the Cave
Part II: Language & Rhetoric
When you want to be funny without being cruel
Brian Regan; comedy & wordplay
My Chat With Brian Regan: Comedy, Wordplay, and Kindness
When a warm word slips past your guard
Feel-good associations
Confirmation Bias, We're Like a Family, and Overloading Symbols and Colors
When one voice is dressed up as a crowd
"People are saying" and vague authority
Survivorship Bias, People are Saying, and Making a Blood Pressure Graph More Readable
When no one will say who actually did it
The passive voice
Availability Bias, The Passive Voice, and Representing Relative Magnitudes
When an object is blamed for what a person did
Misattributing actions
Converse Errors, Misattributing Actions, and Comparing Shapes of Lines
When someone plants an idea without saying so
Plausible deniability
Plausible Deniability, False Causes, and Telling a Crisper Story by Reducing Detail
When a fancy phrase hides the real reason
Euphemisms and red herrings
False Dilemmas, Macroeconomic Conditions, and Visualizing Distributions
When something simple is made to seem complex
"It's complicated"
Slippery Slopes, "It's Complicated", and The Trouble with Some Infographics
When a precise-sounding number hides the truth
Concealing with precision
How Anchoring Affects Our Decisions
When name dropping poisons what's being said
Irrelevant possessives
When everything is a "slam" and a "blast"
Hyperbole
Mind the Gap: The Pitfalls of Hasty Generalizations
When work-speak leaves you baffled
Jargon
Jargon: Why Do We Sometimes Talk Funny?
- Bullock et al., "(Mis)communicating science? Effects of specialized jargon on scientific comprehension" (Public Understanding of Science). comm.osu.edu/sites/comm.osu.edu/files/PUS%202019-%20Bullock%20et%20al..pdf
- Shulman & Bullock, "Varying Metacognition Through Public Opinion Questions: How Language Can Affect Political Engagement." www.researchgate.net/publication/316627720
When a product launch is built to make you buy
Decoding the Apple keynote
How Do Apple's Sentences Compare to Hemingway's?
- APA, "Speaking of Psychology: Why our attention spans are shrinking" (Gloria Mark's research). www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans
When an app is designed to trick you
Dark patterns
Dark Patterns: How Deceptive Design Tricks Us
When people say one thing and mean another
Grice's maxims and the cooperative principle
Part III: Images & Narratives
When a story is edited to lead you astray
The Rashomon effect and manipulated narratives
When you can't figure out a chart
How graphics confuse
Confirmation Bias, We're Like a Family, and Overloading Symbols and Colors
When you need to show data clearly
Choosing the right form, with makeovers
Data-visualization segments across several issues: relative magnitudes, blood-pressure graph, slope graphs, visualizing distributions.