Clustering Illusion
A cognitive bias where people see patterns in random data. Important for designers to improve data interpretation and avoid false conclusions based on perceived random patterns.
225 topics found for:
“cognitive psychology”
Seven Stages of Action
A model by Don Norman outlining the cognitive steps users take when interacting with a system: goal formation, planning, specifying, performing, perceiving, interpreting, and comparing. Important for designing user-friendly and effective products by understanding and supporting user behavior at each stage.
Serial Position Effect
A cognitive bias where people tend to remember the first and last items in a series better than those in the middle, impacting recall and memory. Crucial for designing information presentation to optimize user memory and recall.
Escalation of Commitment
A cognitive bias where individuals or organizations continue to invest in a failing project or decision due to the amount of resources already committed. Important for designers to recognize and mitigate their own risks of continuing unsuccessful initiatives.
Semmelweis Reflex
A cognitive bias where new evidence or knowledge is automatically rejected because it contradicts established norms or beliefs. Important for recognizing resistance to change and designing strategies to encourage openness to new ideas among designers.
Hyperbolic Discounting
A cognitive bias where people disproportionately prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, later rewards. Important for understanding and designing around user decision-making and reward structures.
Dunning-Kruger Effect
A cognitive bias where individuals with low ability at a task overestimate their ability, while experts underestimate their competence. Crucial for designers to create educational content and user interfaces that accommodate varying levels of user expertise.
Perky Effect
A phenomenon where vivid mental images can interfere with actual perception, causing individuals to mistake imagined experiences for real ones. Important for ensuring that marketing and product design set realistic user expectations to avoid disappointment and maintain brand integrity.
Performance Load
The mental and physical effort required to complete a task, influencing user experience and performance. Crucial for designing systems that minimize cognitive and physical load, enhancing usability and efficiency.
Less Is Better Effect
A cognitive bias where people prefer a smaller set of higher-quality options over a larger set with lower overall quality. Useful for designing product offerings and experiences that emphasize quality over quantity for users.
Restraint Bias
A cognitive bias where individuals overestimate their ability to control impulsive behavior, leading to overexposure to temptations. Important for designing systems that help users manage self-control and avoid overexposure to temptations.
Deep Processing
A cognitive approach that involves meaningful analysis of information, leading to better understanding and retention. Crucial for designing educational and informational content that promotes deep engagement and learning.
Declarative Memory
A type of long-term memory involving information that can be consciously recalled, such as facts and events. Important for understanding how users retain and recall information in design.
Functional Fixedness
A cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. Important for designers to foster creative problem-solving and innovation.
Take the Best Heuristic
A decision-making rule where individuals choose the option with the highest perceived value based on the first good reason that comes to mind, ignoring other information. Crucial for understanding and designing for quick decision-making processes.
Convergent Thinking
A cognitive process where ideas are brought together to find a single, best solution to a problem. Important for problem-solving and decision-making in design processes.
Contrast Effect
The enhancement or diminishment of perception, cognition, or related performance as a result of exposure to a stimulus of greater or lesser value in the same dimension. Useful for designing interfaces that leverage contrasting elements to guide user attention and behavior.
Conjunction Fallacy
A logical fallacy where people assume that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one. Important for understanding and addressing cognitive biases in user behavior.
Projection Bias
The tendency to overestimate how much our future preferences and behaviors will align with our current preferences and behaviors. Important for understanding user behavior and designing experiences that account for changes over time.
Illusion of Validity
A cognitive bias where individuals overestimate the accuracy of their judgments, especially when they have a lot of information. Important for understanding and mitigating overconfidence in user decision-making.
Pratfall effect
A psychological phenomenon where individuals are perceived as more likable if they make a mistake, provided they are generally competent. Important for understanding human perception and leveraging relatability in marketing and leadership.
Chunking
A cognitive process that groups information into manageable units, making it easier to remember and process. Important for designing user interfaces that enhance usability and information retention.
Planning Fallacy
A cognitive bias where individuals underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future actions while overestimating the benefits. Important for realistic project planning and setting achievable goals for designers.
Emergence
A key aspect of Gestalt psychology where complex patterns arise out of relatively simple interactions. Crucial for understanding how users perceive complex designs and patterns.
Placement Bias
A cognitive bias where people overemphasize information that is placed prominently or in a way that catches their attention first. Crucial for designing interfaces and information displays that manage user attention effectively.
Category Size Bias
A cognitive bias where people judge the likelihood of an event based on the size of its category rather than its actual probability. Crucial for designers to understand how category size influences user perception and decision-making processes.
Representativeness
Representativeness is a heuristic in decision-making where individuals judge the probability of an event based on how much it resembles a typical case. Crucial for understanding biases in human judgment and improving decision-making processes.
Repetition Blindness
A phenomenon where people fail to recognize a repeated item in a visual sequence, impacting information processing and perception. Important for understanding visual perception and designing interfaces that avoid repetitive confusion.
Ostrich Effect
A cognitive bias where people avoid negative information or situations, preferring to remain uninformed or ignore problems. Important for understanding user behavior and designing systems that encourage proactive engagement.
InfoVis
Information Visualization (InfoVis) is the study and practice of visual representations of abstract data to reinforce human cognition. Crucial for transforming complex data into intuitive visual formats, enabling faster insights and better decision-making.
Numerosity Bias
The tendency to perceive a greater quantity as a better value, regardless of the actual utility. Important for understanding consumer behavior and designing effective marketing strategies.
Framing
The way information is presented to users, which can significantly influence their decisions and perceptions. Important for designing messages and interfaces that guide user choices effectively.
Neuroaesthetics
The study of how the brain perceives and responds to art and design, exploring the neural basis for aesthetic experiences. Important for understanding the neurological underpinnings of aesthetic preferences and enhancing design impact.
Information Bias
A cognitive bias where people seek out more information than is needed to make a decision, often leading to analysis paralysis. Crucial for designing decision-making processes that avoid information overload for users.
Exposure Effect
A psychological phenomenon where repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to an increased preference for it. Useful for designing marketing and user engagement strategies that increase familiarity and preference.
Illusion of Transparency
A cognitive bias where individuals overestimate how well their thoughts, feelings, and emotions are understood by others. Crucial for designing communication and user interfaces that account for and mitigate this bias.
Modality Effect
The phenomenon where people remember information better when it is presented through multiple sensory modalities rather than a single modality. Crucial for enhancing memory retention and understanding through multimodal presentations.
Iconic Memory
A type of sensory memory that briefly holds visual information for a fraction of a second. Useful for understanding how users process visual information and designing interfaces accordingly.
Change Blindness
A phenomenon where users fail to notice significant changes in their visual field. Important for understanding and designing around potential user perception issues.
Self Reference Effect
Also known as Self Relevance Effect, the tendency for individuals to better remember information that is personally relevant or related to themselves. Important for designing personalized user experiences and enhancing memory retention.
Egocentric Bias
A cognitive bias where people rely too heavily on their own perspective and experiences when making decisions. Important for designers to recognize and mitigate their own perspectives influencing design decisions.
ZPD
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is a concept in educational psychology that describes the difference between what a learner can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance and support. Crucial for designing effective educational experiences and scaffolding that promote optimal learning and skill development.
Zero-Risk Bias
A cognitive bias where people prefer the option that seems to eliminate risk entirely, even if another option offers a greater overall benefit. Important for understanding decision-making and designing risk communication for users.
Retroactive Interference
A phenomenon where new information interferes with the ability to recall previously learned information, affecting memory retention. Crucial for understanding memory dynamics and designing educational or training programs.
Depth of Processing
A theory suggesting that information processed at a deeper, more meaningful level is better remembered than information processed at a shallow level. Crucial for designing educational and informational content that enhances retention and understanding.
Decision Theory
The study of how individuals make choices among alternatives and the principles that guide these choices. Important for designing decision-making processes and interfaces that help users make informed choices.
Decision Staging
The process of breaking down decisions into smaller, manageable stages to simplify the decision-making process. Useful for guiding users through complex decisions in a structured manner.
Intertemporal Choice
The study of how people make choices about what and how much to do at various points in time, often involving trade-offs between costs and benefits occurring at different times. Crucial for designing systems that account for delayed gratification and long-term planning.
Reference Dependence
A cognitive bias where individuals evaluate outcomes relative to a reference point rather than on an absolute scale. Essential for understanding decision-making and consumer behavior.
Observer Bias
A type of bias that occurs when the observer's expectations or beliefs influence their interpretation of what they are observing, including experimental outcomes. Essential for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of research and data collection.
Fresh Start Effect
A cognitive phenomenon where people are more likely to pursue goals or change behavior following a temporal landmark (e.g., new year, birthday). Useful for designing interventions and features that leverage these moments to encourage positive behavior.
Continued Influence Effect
The persistence of misinformation in memory and influence on reasoning, even after it has been corrected. Crucial for understanding and mitigating the impact of misinformation in design and communication.
Fast and Frugal Heuristics
Decision-making strategies that use simple heuristics to make quick, efficient, and satisfactory choices with limited information. Important for designing user experiences that support quick and efficient decision-making.
Naive Allocation
A heuristic where individuals evenly distribute resources across all options, regardless of their specific needs or potential. Useful for understanding and designing around simplistic decision-making strategies.
Association Fallacy
A logical fallacy in which it is assumed that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, due to an irrelevant association. Important for avoiding incorrect associations in user research and data interpretation.
Anecdotal Fallacy
A logical fallacy where anecdotal evidence is used to make a broad generalization. Crucial for improving critical thinking and avoiding misleading conclusions.
Closure
A Gestalt principle where the mind completes incomplete figures to form a whole, aiding in the perception of shapes and objects. Crucial for designing visual elements that are easily understood by users.
Illusion of Completeness
A cognitive bias where users believe they have explored all available content, even when more is present. Important for designing interfaces that clearly indicate the presence of additional content.
Choice-Supportive Bias
The tendency to attribute positive qualities to one's own choices and downplay the negatives, enhancing post-decision satisfaction. Useful for understanding user satisfaction and designing experiences that reinforce positive decision outcomes.
Affect Heuristic
A mental shortcut where current emotions influence decisions, often bypassing logic and reasoning. Important for understanding how emotions impact user decisions, aiding in more effective design and marketing.