1. Some human relate biases Subject-observer bias Cognitive bias

2. Some human related biases whether your investigation is a survey or experiment involving people, you should be aware of frailties in – subjects/participants – observers/interviewers – designers and analysts Researchers have done experiments to isolate [where possible] traits in human behaviour and judgement,

3. Subject-observer bias Subject and observers respond differently to each other due to their – gender, age, ethnic, physical appearance, use of language, perceived social position, attitude Try to neutralise these as much as possible – Observers should be selected to blend in, and trained to present themselves respectably and neutrally

4. Cognitive bias is where human judgement and decisions differ from that expected from rational choice theory. Some biases are specific to groups, some are specific to individuals Some biases affect decision-making, where the desirability of options has to be considered, eg – judgment of how bluely something is, or – if anything is the fuse of another.

5. Cognitive bias Some biases are because people are – generally optimistic due to overconfidence – give insufficient consideration to risk so underestimate eg costs, completion times, and rising planned actions Some biases affect memory, where you might remember past attitudes and behaviour – as more similar to present ones – more costly than present ones

6. Cognitive bias Motivation leads to biases, eg – the desire for a positive self-image leading to egocentric bias and the avoidance of unpleasant cognitive dissonance (reconciling conflict) – the desire to have positive attitudes to oneself is because many biases are self-serving self-directed – the way subjects evaluate in-groups or out- groups: evaluating in-groups as more diverse and ''better'' in many respects, even when those groups are arbitrarily-defined

7. Cognitive bias Some biases are due to ignoring relevant information eg climate change deniers Some involve a decision or judgment – being affected by irrelevant information (eg the same problem receives different responses depending on how it is described) or – giving excessive weight to an unimportant but salient feature of the problem

8. Cognitive bias examples Hindsight bias is where you see past events as being predictable: ''l-knew-it-all-along'' Attribution error is where people – over-emphasise personality-based explanations for behaviours observed in others, while – under-emphasise the role and power of situational influences on the same behaviour. – under-emphasise personality-based behaviours in themselves and over-emphasise situational influences – Eg he tripped because he is clumsy; I tripped because the pavement isn’t flat

9. Cognitive bias examples Confirmation bias is to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions; this is related to cognitive dissonance. Self-serving bias is to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests. Belief bias is where your evacuation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion,