What are cognitive biases?

Every day we take about 35,000 decisions*.

If you don’t consider sleeping hours, that means roughly 1 decision every two seconds. About 2,000 decisions per hour!

I know it seems impossible, but it’s true. Obviously this includes all sorts of decisions, whether they are simple or complicated.

The bad news is that our brain knows no difference between the two: in terms of cognitive load there is no difference, the fatigue is the same.

In this scenario, it’s only natural that we use mental shortcuts and rules of thumb, and this leads us to make systematic errors.

This means that what we think we know leads us to inefficient choices.

Cognitive biases are just that: errors of perception or judgement, that lead us to bad choices. The fact that these errors are systematic (and not isolated errors) makes us somewhat predictably irrational, as best selling-author and Behavioral Economist Dan Ariely puts it!

In short: cognitive biases are just mental traps.

*Source: https://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/how-to-make-great-decisions-most-of-the-time.html