The Course of Uncomfortable Ideas
Facts Don't Care About Feelings. Science Isn't Concerned About Sensibilities. Reality Couldn't Care Less About Rage.
$9.95
Cognitively Biased
The Online Course Exploring the Illusions of the Mind That Make us Unreasonable, Irrational, and Wrong.
Unlock the power of understanding human decision-making by enrolling in Cognitively Biased and gain insights to navigate and influence real-world scenarios effectively.
About this course
In this course, you will learn a new cognitive bias, effect, or heuristic each day and understand why others (and you) make poor decisions, bad arguments, and hold false beliefs. All cognitive biases in this course are involved in the reasoning process and can lead to accepting bad arguments. The first and most important way to combat the negative effects of cognitive biases is to recognize them. This course will help you do that.
Mitigate the Effects of Cognitive Biases and Become More Reasonable
- Passive microlearning: receive an e-mail a day on a cognitive bias for 125 days
- Become a better debater
- Improve your critical thinking skills
- Ditch your false beliefs
- Become smarter
Become a Cognitive Bias Whiz and Understand Logical Fallacies Better
In the early 1970s, two behavioral researchers, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky pioneered the field of behavioral economics through their work with cognitive biases and heuristics, which like logical fallacies, deal with errors in reasoning. The main difference, however, is that logical fallacies require an argument whereas cognitive biases and heuristics (mental shortcuts) refer to our default pattern of thinking. Sometimes there is crossover. Logical fallacies can be the result of a cognitive bias, but having biases (which we all do) does not mean that we have to commit logical fallacies. Consider the bandwagon effect, a cognitive bias that demonstrates the tendency to believe things because many other people believe them. This cognitive bias can be found in the logical fallacy, appeal to popularity.
Everybody is doing X.
Therefore, X must be the right thing to do.
The cognitive bias is the main reason we commit this fallacy. However, if we just started working at a soup kitchen because all of our friends were working there, this wouldn’t be a logical fallacy, although the bandwagon effect would be behind our behavior. The appeal to popularity is a fallacy because it applies to an argument.
When we understand cognitive biases, we understand the reasons behind countless bad arguments, bad reasoning, and bad ideas.
128
lessons imported
3
preview lessons
2
curriculum sections
Psychology
primary category
Curriculum preview
Imported lessons, grouped into real sections.
This rendering uses normalized lesson data from the migration pipeline — not placeholder text.
Introduction
1 lesson
Welcome to this online course all about cognitive biases! In researching for this course, I found that about 30% of the covered biases had good explanation videos created…
Cognitive Biases
127 lessons
A tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external causes, while attributing other people’s behaviors to internal causes. Example: “I tripped because of the uneven pav…
A bias in decision making where people tend to select options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is known, over an option for which the probability of a fav…
A bias in decision making where one relies too heavily on the first piece of information offered (or the “anchor”). Example: “The guy asking for donations asked me if I w…
The tendency for a person’s perception to be affected by his or her recurring thoughts at the time. Example: (As Jimmy is watching Shark Week on television). “Jimmy, you …
The tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of a general authority figure (not one specific to the topic at hand) and be more influenced by that opinion. Ex…
The tendency to favor suggestions from automated decision-making systems and to ignore contradictory information made without automation, even if it is correct. Example: …
A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or “repeat something long …
A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. Example: Believing that driving acros…
+ 119 more lessons in this section
Related courses
More in Psychology.
Intro to Psychology
A College-Level Online Course
$19.95
The Psychology of Addiction
Understanding the Neurological and Emotional Roots of Compulsive Behavior
$9.95