Our thinking comes from the experiences and memories we have as well as what’s happening right now.

Thinking is never “pure,” “objective,” and bias free.

All thinking can be said to be biased thinking from a certain perspective.

Have you ever been told you should change your attitude or that your thinking is biased in some way? Did you ever think something would turn out one way, but the result was the opposite? Perhaps your first meeting with a colleague was great, but they turned out not to be the person you thought.

Many times a day, we make judgments and decisions. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky were trailblazers in this area. They gave people tasks and asked them to make decisions and judgments (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). For example, they gave people descriptions of someone. Then the people had to choose that someone’s most likely job from a list such as pilot, farmer, or doctor. Or, based on a person’s attractiveness, they were asked how skilled the person might be. Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow (2011) is a delightful roam about this area.

Biases and Heuristics

From this work, patterns in our thinking called biases and heuristics were identified. For example, you can read about the confirmation bias and the availability heuristic. Heuristics seem like fun. There is a price heuristic, a........

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