In the abnormal psychology option, what is the difference between cognitive biases and clinical biases? Clinical biases are cognitive biases that take place when a psychiatrist or psychologist is trying to make a diagnosis and label the behaviour. They can arise from experience (‘these symptoms nearly always mean this mental health problem’) and result in a misdiagnosis when other explanations … Read More
Planning your course effectively – more overlaps
Similarly to the biological approach, there are many overlaps between the cognitive approach and the options of abnormal psychology, development, health and human relationships. For example, the psychology of cognitive processes and their reliability can explain clinical biases in diagnosis of disorders, debates regarding the etiology of disorders and also inform their treatment. Watch out for more of these!
Can we learn to love anything or anyone if we just hang around them long enough?
One of the Cognitive Approach studies that we cover in our fabulous book, ‘Psychology Sorted, Book 1’ is by Slovic et al. (2017) and which concerns the Affect Heuristic. The Affect Heuristic is a cognitive bias composed of several dimensions, one of which is: The ‘mere exposure effect’: this may be a factor in the affect heuristic. It involves a favourable (‘good’) … Read More
Cognitive biases – don’t let them confuse you.
Studying the reliability of thinking and decision-making leads us into the slightly complex world of System 1 (fast) and System 2 (slow) thinking and heuristics. Teaching cognitive biases is straightforward, and less is more. The key point is that we are inclined to base our current thinking and decision-making on past experiences and present perceptions. Our memories distort the past, … Read More
Cognitive Biases
Cognitive biases – distortions of reality Cognitive biases arise from heuristics (shortcut thinking) and systematically distort the way we think and affect our decision-making. Three of the most common cognitive biases are confirmation bias, anchoring bias and cognitive dissonance. All three arise from our tendencies to focus on part of a story, especially the part that confirms our pre-existing beliefs, … Read More