Mistakes Ive Made: Cognitive Errors for AP Psych

Directions:
a. Identify 5 bad decisions/poor choices/mistakes/incidences of misbehavior or problems that youve gotten
yourself into since the beginning of high school. A couple of examples could be: You bought the popular phone
rather than the one that worked the best, or you panicked when deciding to not apply to a certain college, you
went on a date with someone you shouldnt have, or you snuck out of the house and got caught. If you cant
think of 5, your parents can probably help you. If you still cant come up with 5, making some up is acceptable
(but you wont learn as much-semantic meaning/self-reference will be missing).
b. Once youve explained what you did, explain how that mistake is linked with one the biases or distortions below.
c. Explain what you should have done instead.
Example: When I bought my used car, I displayed anchoring bias because I was only worried about how it looked and I
ignored all other features of a car that matter (like gas mileage, reliability, safety, etc). Instead, I should have created a
grid showing the positives and negatives of each car, considering all of the important features. (2 or 3 sentences for
each of the 5 examples is fine; no repeated mistakes, biases or distortions please.
Another example: When I broke up with my girlfriend, Jezebel, during freshman year, I stomped around, yelled at
everyone I was close to, and embarrassed myself. This was All or Nothing thinking because I thought that she was the
only girl I would ever care about. Instead, I should have considered all of the other girls that are available for me to date
so that I would be less upset about the breakup.

Cognitive Biases: Common cognitive mistakes made when making decisions

1.

Hindsight Bias: I knew it all along causes individuals to feel better about themselves and their intelligence.

2.

Representativeness Heuristic: Making judgments, and ignoring other information, because something seems to represent
(match) a particular prototype. Somewhat like Stereotyping.

3.

Availability Heuristic: Vivid examples (planes crashing) come to mind more readily than other examples causing us to
believe they are more common.

4.

Anchoring Bias: the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when
making decisions. Example-your parents opinion about which college you should attend causes you to NOT want to attend
there.

5.

Confirmation Bias: We look for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory
information. Republicans who only watch FOX News only hear the conservative point-of view.

6.

Self-Serving Bias-Our readiness to perceive ourselves favorably-were all better than average.

7.

Expectancy Bias: Allowing expectations to affect the outcome of a decision.

8.

Self-Consistency Bias: When I think my opinion now was my opinion then. Not wanting to feel like a hypocrite even though
you may have changed your mind.

9.

Attentional Bias: a person does not examine all possible outcomes when making a judgment about a correlation or
association. They may focus on one or two possibilities, while ignoring the rest.

10. Bandwagon Effect: the observation that people often do and believe things because many other people do and believe the
same things.

Cognitive Distortions: these are often displayed by the mentally ill, especially those with major depression.
1.

All or Nothing Thinking: In polarized thinking, things are either black-or-white. We have to be perfect or were a failure
there is no middle ground. You place people or situations in either/or categories, with no shades of gray or allowing for
the complexity of most people and situations. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2.

Overgeneralization: In this cognitive distortion, we come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece
of evidence. If something bad happens only once, we expect it to happen over and over again. A person may see a single,
unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3.

Mental Filter: We take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. For
instance, a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so that their vision of reality becomes
darkened or distorted.

4.

Disqualifying the Positive: Similar to mental filtering, those who disqualify the positive tend to treat positive events like
flukes, thereby clinging to a more negative world view and set of low expectations for the future. Have you ever tried to help
a friend solve a problem, only to have every solution you pose shot down with a "Yeah but..." response? Youve witnessed
this cognitive distortion firsthand.

5.

Jumping to Conclusions: Without individuals saying so, we know what they are feeling and why they act the way they do. In
particular, we are able to determine how people are feeling toward us. For example, a person may conclude that someone
is reacting negatively toward them but doesnt actually bother to find out if they are correct. Another example is a person
may anticipate that things will turn out badly, and will feel convinced that their prediction is already an established fact.

6.

Magnification/Minimization: (also called Catastrophizing) We expect disaster to strike, no matter what. This is also referred
to as magnifying or minimizing. We hear about a problem and use what if questions (e.g., What if tragedy strikes?
What if it happens to me?). For example, a person might exaggerate the importance of insignificant events (such as their
mistake, or someone elses achievement).

7.

Emotional Reasoning: This one is a close relative of jumping to conclusions in that it involves ignoring certain facts when
drawing conclusions. Emotional reasoners will consider their emotions about a situation as evidence rather than objectively
looking at the facts. Im feeling completely overwhelmed, therefore my problems must be completely beyond my ability to
solve them, or, Im angry with you; therefore, you must be in the wrong here, are both examples of faulty emotional
reasoning. Acting on these beliefs as fact can, understandably, contribute to even more problems to solve.

8.

Should Statements: Those who rely on should statements tend to have rigid rules, set by themselves or others, that always
need to be followed -- at least in their minds. They dont see flexibility in different circumstances, and they put themselves
under considerable stress trying to live up to these self-imposed expectations.

9.

Labeling and Mislabeling: Those who label or mislabel will habitually place labels that are often inaccurate or negative on
themselves and others. Hes a whiner. Shes a phony. Im just a useless worrier. These labels tend to define people
and contribute to a one-dimensional view of them, paving the way for overgeneralizations to move in. Labeling cages
people into roles that dont always apply and prevents us from seeing people (ourselves included) as we really are. Its also
a big no-no in relationship conflicts.

10. Personalization: Those who personalize their stressors tend to blame themselves or others for things over which they have
no control, creating stress where it need not be. Those prone to personalization tend to blame themselves for the actions of
others, or blame others for their own feelings.