Endowment Effect
A cognitive bias where people ascribe more value to things merely because they own them. Useful for understanding user attachment and designing persuasive experiences.
225 topics found for:
“cognitive psychology”
Certainty Effect
A cognitive bias where people give greater weight to outcomes that are certain compared to those that are merely probable. Important for designers to consider how users weigh certain outcomes more heavily in their decision-making.
Bundling Bias
A cognitive bias where individuals evaluate the value of bundled items differently than they would if the items were evaluated separately. Important for understanding user behavior and designing effective product bundles and pricing strategies.
Gambler’s Fallacy
A cognitive bias where individuals believe that past random events affect the probabilities of future random events. Important for designers to understand user decision-making biases related to randomness.
Hindsight Bias
A cognitive bias where people perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. Important for understanding and mitigating biases in user feedback and decision-making.
Learning Theory
The study of how people acquire knowledge, skills, and behaviors through experience, practice, and instruction. Useful for creating educational content and interactive tutorials that enhance user learning.
Ingroup Bias
A cognitive bias where people favor members of their own group over those in other groups. Important for designing inclusive and equitable experiences for users.
Testing Effect
The phenomenon where taking a test on material improves long-term retention of that material more than additional study sessions. Crucial for designing educational tools and methods that enhance learning and retention.
Omission Bias
A cognitive bias where people judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions). Important for understanding user decision-making and designing systems that mitigate this bias.
Consistency Bias
The tendency to recall past behavior in a way that aligns with current beliefs and attitudes. Crucial for understanding how memories and self-perception can be influenced by current perspectives.
Information Aversion
The tendency to avoid information that one perceives as potentially negative or anxiety-inducing. Important for designing experiences that encourage information-seeking behavior.
Status Quo Bias
A cognitive bias that leads individuals to prefer things to remain the same rather than change, often resisting new options or changes. Crucial for understanding resistance to change and designing strategies to overcome it among users.
Spacing Effect
A learning phenomenon where information is better retained when study sessions are spaced out over time rather than crammed in a short period. Crucial for designing educational tools and content that optimize long-term retention.
Illusion of Control
The tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events. Important for understanding user behavior and designing experiences that manage expectations.
Anchoring
Anchoring (also known as Focalism) is a cognitive bias where individuals rely heavily on the first piece of information (the "anchor") when making decisions. Crucial for understanding and mitigating initial information's impact on user decision-making processes.
Perceptual Set
The tendency to perceive and interpret information based on prior experiences and expectations, influencing how different users perceive design differently. Important for designing interfaces that meet user expectations, improving usability and intuitive navigation.
Peak End Rule
A cognitive bias where people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (most intense point) and its end, rather than the total sum of the experience. Crucial for designing memorable and satisfying user experiences.
Google Effect
The tendency to forget information that can be easily found online, also known as digital amnesia. Important for understanding how access to information impacts memory and designing experiences accordingly.
Normalcy Bias
The tendency to believe that things will always function the way they normally have, often leading to underestimation of disaster risks. Important for understanding risk perception and designing systems that effectively communicate potential changes.
Illusory Truth Effect
A cognitive bias where repeated statements are more likely to be perceived as true, regardless of their actual accuracy. Crucial for understanding how repetition influences beliefs and designing communication strategies for users.
Illusory Superiority
A cognitive bias where individuals overestimate their own abilities, qualities, or performance relative to others. Important for understanding user self-perception and designing systems that account for inflated self-assessments.
Myopic Loss Aversion
A cognitive bias where individuals tend to avoid risks when they perceive potential losses more acutely than potential gains. Important for understanding decision-making behavior in users and designing systems that mitigate risk aversion.
Illusory Correlation
The perception of a relationship between two variables when no such relationship exists. Crucial for understanding and avoiding biases in data interpretation and decision-making.
Prägnanz
A Gestalt principle stating that people will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images as the simplest form(s) possible. Important for understanding visual perception and designing intuitive user interfaces.
Picture Superiority Effect
The tendency for images to be more easily remembered than words, highlighting the power of visual communication. Crucial for designing effective visual content that enhances memory retention and user engagement.
Lag Effect
A phenomenon where learning is improved when study sessions are spaced out over time rather than crammed together. Crucial for designing educational and training programs that enhance long-term retention.
Regret Aversion
A tendency to avoid making decisions that might lead to regret, influencing risk-taking and decision-making behaviors. Crucial for understanding decision-making processes and designing systems that minimize regret.
Gestalt Theory
A set of principles describing how the human mind organizes visual information into meaningful wholes. Crucial for designing intuitive digital interfaces and cohesive user experiences that align with natural human perception patterns.
Availability Cascade
A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse. Important for understanding how information spreads and influences public perception.
Mental Accounting
A behavioral economics concept where people categorize and treat money differently depending on its source or intended use. Crucial for understanding financial behavior and designing systems that align with users' mental accounting practices.
Information Foraging
The theory that users search for information in a manner similar to animals foraging for food, aiming to maximize value while minimizing effort. Important for designing efficient and user-centered information retrieval systems.
Directed Cognition
The process by which attention is guided by internal goals and external stimuli, affecting how information is processed and remembered. Useful for designing user interfaces that direct user attention effectively.
Cognitive Theory
The study of mental processes such as perception, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving. Important for designing interfaces that align with how users process information and make decisions.
Cognitive Load Theory
A theory that explains how the amount of mental effort required to process information can impact user experience and task performance. Important for designing user interfaces that minimize unnecessary cognitive effort, enhancing usability and user satisfaction.
Executive Function
A set of cognitive processes that include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control, crucial for planning, decision-making, and behavior regulation. Crucial for designing interfaces and experiences that support users' cognitive abilities.
Recency Effect
A cognitive bias where individuals better remember the most recent information they have encountered, influencing decision-making and memory recall. Important for designing user experiences that leverage or mitigate the impact of recent information.
Base Rate Fallacy
A cognitive bias where people ignore general statistical information in favor of specific information. Critical for designers to use general statistical information to improve decision-making accuracy and avoid bias.
Ratio Bias
A cognitive bias where people judge the likelihood of an event based on its relative size rather than absolute probability. Important for understanding user decision-making biases and designing systems that present information accurately.
Recognition Heuristic
A cognitive shortcut that relies on the recognition of one option over another to make a decision, often used when individuals have limited information. Crucial for designing interfaces and experiences that facilitate quick and effective decision-making.
Pseudo Set Framing
The cognitive bias where people treat a set of items as more significant when they are perceived as a cohesive group. Important for understanding user perception and decision-making.
Extension Neglect
A cognitive bias where people ignore the relevance of sample size in making judgments, often leading to erroneous conclusions. Crucial for designers to account for appropriate sample sizes in research and analysis.
Hick’s Law
A principle that states the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices available. Crucial for designing user interfaces that minimize cognitive load and enhance decision-making efficiency.
Information Processing
The series of actions or operations involved in the acquisition, interpretation, storage, and retrieval of information. Crucial for understanding how users handle information and designing systems that align with cognitive processes.
Pseudocertainty Effect
A cognitive bias where people perceive an outcome as certain while it is actually uncertain, based on how information is presented. Crucial for understanding and mitigating biased user decision-making.
Availability Heuristic
A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. Crucial for understanding how people make decisions and the biases that influence their choices.
Shallow Processing
A cognitive approach where information is processed at a surface level, focusing on basic features rather than deeper meaning, often leading to poorer memory retention. Important for designing educational and informational content that encourages deeper processing and understanding.
Limited Attention
The concept that humans have a finite capacity for attention, influencing how they perceive and interact with information. Crucial for designing user experiences that are not overwhelming and facilitate focus.
Boundary Extension
A cognitive bias where people remember scenes as being more expansive than they actually were. Important for understanding how users perceive and recall visual information, aiding in better visual design decisions.
Bizarreness Effect
A cognitive bias where bizarre or unusual information is better remembered than common information. Useful for designers to create memorable and engaging user experiences by incorporating unique elements.
Zeigarnik Effect
A psychological phenomenon where people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. Crucial for designing engaging experiences that leverage task incompletion to maintain user interest.
Law of the Instrument
Also known as "Maslow's Hammer," a cognitive bias where people rely too heavily on a familiar tool or method, often summarized as "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.". Important for designers to recognize and avoid over-reliance on familiar methods in problem-solving and design.
Belief Bias
The tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the believability of their conclusions rather than the logical strength of the arguments. Important for understanding cognitive biases that affect decision-making and user perceptions.
Crystallized Intelligence
The ability to use learned knowledge and experience, often increasing with age and accumulated learning. Important for understanding how expertise and knowledge accumulation impact design and decision-making.
Assumed Similarity Bias
A cognitive bias where people assume others share the same beliefs, values, or preferences as themselves. Important for helping designers avoid projecting their own biases and assumptions onto users during research and design.
Semantic Encoding
The process of encoding sensory input that has particular meaning or can be applied to a context, enabling deeper processing and memory retention. Important for understanding how information is processed and stored, enhancing design of educational content.
Halo Effect
A cognitive bias where the perception of one positive trait influences the perception of other unrelated traits. Important for designers to manage and utilize this bias effectively in user experience design.
Decision Fatigue
The deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making, due to mental exhaustion. Important for designing interfaces that minimize cognitive load and simplify decision processes.
Curse Of Knowledge
A cognitive bias where someone mistakenly assumes that others have the same background knowledge they do. Essential for designers to ensure communications and products are clear and accessible to all users, regardless of their background knowledge.
Framing Bias
A cognitive bias where people's decisions are influenced by how information is presented rather than just the information itself. Crucial for designers to minimize bias in how information is presented to users.
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. Crucial for understanding cognitive biases that affect user decision-making and designing interventions to mitigate them.