Misc
18 Cognitive Bias Examples Show Why Mental Mistakes Get Made
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18 Cognitive Bias Examples
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Out of the 188 cognitive biases that exist, there is a much narrower group of biases that has a disproportionately large effect on the ways we do business.
These are things that affect workplace culture, budget estimates, deal outcomes, and our perceived return on investments within the company.
Mental mistakes such as these can add up quickly, and can hamper any organization in reaching its full bottom line potential.
Cognitive Bias Examples
Today’s infographic from Raconteur aptly highlights 18 different cognitive bias examples that can create particularly difficult challenges for company decision-making.
The list includes biases that fall into categories such as financial, social, short term-ism, and failure to estimate:
Financial biases
These are imprecise mental shortcuts we make with numbers, such as hyperbolic discounting – the mistake of preferring a smaller, sooner payoff instead of a larger, later reward. Another classic financial cognitive bias example is the “Ostrich effect”, which is where one sticks their head in the sand, pretending that negative financial information simply doesn’t exist.
Social biases
Social biases can have a big impact on teams and company culture. For example, teams can bandwagon (when people do something because other people are doing it), and individual team members can engage in blind spot bias (viewing oneself as less biased than others). These both can lead to worse decision-making.
Short Term-isms
One way to ensure a business that doesn’t last? Engage in short term-isms – fallacies that gear your business towards decisions that can be rationalized now, but that don’t add any long-term value. Status quo bias and anchoring are two ways this can happen.
Failure to Estimate
So much about business relies on making projections about the future, and the biases in this category make it difficult to make accurate estimates. Cognitive bias examples here include the availability heuristic (just because information is available, means it must be true), and the gambler’s fallacy (future probabilities are altered by past events).
Want more on cognitive biases? Here are five main biases that impact investors, specifically.
United States
Charted: What Southeast Asia Thinks About China & the U.S.
A significant share of respondents from an ASEAN-focused survey are not happy about rising American and Chinese influence in the region.
What Southeast Asia Thinks About China & the U.S.
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
This chart visualizes the results of a 2024 survey conducted by the ASEAN Studies Centre at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Nearly 2,000 respondents were asked if they were worried or welcoming of rising Chinese and American geopolitical influence in their country.
The countries surveyed all belong to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a political and economic union of 10 states in Southeast Asia.
Feelings Towards China
On average, a significant share of respondents from all 10 countries are worried about rising influence from both the U.S. and China.
However, overall skepticism is higher for China, at 74% (versus 59% for U.S.).
Country | Worried About Growing 🇨🇳 Influence | Welcome Growing 🇨🇳 Influence |
---|---|---|
🇧🇳 Brunei | 58% | 42% |
🇰🇭 Cambodia | 66% | 34% |
🇮🇩 Indonesia | 57% | 43% |
🇱🇦 Laos | 68% | 32% |
🇲🇾 Malaysia | 56% | 44% |
🇲🇲 Myanmar | 95% | 5% |
🇵🇭 Philippines | 81% | 19% |
🇸🇬 Singapore | 74% | 26% |
🇹🇭 Thailand | 84% | 16% |
🇻🇳 Vietnam | 96% | 4% |
Average | 74% | 27% |
The recently-cooled but still active territorial concerns over the South China Sea may play a significant role in these responses, especially in countries which are also claimants over the sea.
For example, in Vietnam over 95% of respondents said they were worried about China’s growing influence.
Feelings Towards America
Conversely, rising American influence is welcomed in two countries with competing claims in the South China Sea, the Philippines (69%) and Vietnam (55%).
Country | Worried About Growing 🇺🇸 Influence | Welcome Growing 🇺🇸 Influence |
---|---|---|
🇧🇳 Brunei | 73% | 27% |
🇰🇭 Cambodia | 58% | 42% |
🇮🇩 Indonesia | 73% | 27% |
🇱🇦 Laos | 79% | 21% |
🇲🇾 Malaysia | 68% | 32% |
🇲🇲 Myanmar | 45% | 55% |
🇵🇭 Philippines | 32% | 69% |
🇸🇬 Singapore | 37% | 63% |
🇹🇭 Thailand | 80% | 20% |
🇻🇳 Vietnam | 45% | 55% |
Average | 59% | 41% |
Despite this, on a regional average, more respondents worry about growing American influence (59%) than they welcome it (41%).
Interestingly, it seems almost every ASEAN nation has a clear preference for one superpower over the other.
The only exception is Thailand, where those surveyed were not a fan of either option, with 84% worried about China, and 80% worried about the U.S.
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