3rd Edition
Cognitive Illusions Intriguing Phenomena in Thinking, Judgment, and Memory
Cognitive Illusions explores a wide range of fascinating psychological effects in the way we think, judge and remember in our everyday lives. In this volume, Rüdiger F. Pohl brings together leading international researchers to define what cognitive illusions are and discuss their theoretical status: are such illusions proof of a faulty human information-processing system, or do they only represent by-products of otherwise adaptive cognitive mechanisms?
The book describes and discusses 26 different cognitive illusions, with each chapter giving a profound overview of the respective empirical research including potential explanations, individual differences, and relevant applied perspectives. This edition has been thoroughly updated throughout, featuring new chapters on negativity bias, metacognition, and how we respond to fake news, along with detailed descriptions of experiments that can be used as classroom demonstration in every chapter.
Demonstrating just how diverse cognitive illusions can be, it is a must read for all students and researchers of cognitive illusions, specifically, those focusing on thinking, reasoning, decision-making, and memory.
Introduction
1 What are cognitive illusions?
Rüdiger F. Pohl
Part I
Thinking
2 Conjunction fallacy
John E. Fisk
3 Base-rate neglect
Gordon Pennycook, Christie Newton & Valerie A. Thompson
4 Framing
Anton Kühberger
5 Confirmation bias – Myside bias
Hugo Mercier
6 Illusory correlation
Klaus Fiedler, Karolin Salmen, & Florian Ermark
7 Causality bias
Helena Matute, Fernando Blanco, & Maria Manuela Moreno-Fernández
8 Illusions of control
Suzanne C. Thompson
9 Wason selection task
Jonathan St. B. T. Evans
10 Belief bias in deductive reasoning
Jonathan St. B. T. Evans, Linden J. Ball, & Valerie A. Thompson
Part II
Judgment
11 Availability
Anine Riege & Rolf Reber
12 Judgments by representativeness
Karl H. Teigen
13 Anchoring effect
Štěpán Bahník & Fritz Strack
14 Illusory truth effect
Lena Nadarevic
15 Mere exposure effect
Robert F. Bornstein & Catherine Craver-Lemley
16 Halo effects
Simon M. Laham & Joseph P. Forgas
17 Assumed similarity
Isabel Thielmann & Benjamin E. Hilbig
18 Overconfidence
Ulrich Hoffrage
19 Metacognitive illusions
Monika Undorf, Sofia Navarro-Báez, & Malte F. Zimdahl
20 Fake news and participatory propaganda
Stephan Lewandowsky
21 Positivity biases
Carla A. Zimmerman & W. Richard Walker
Part III
Memory
22 Moses illusion
Felix Speckmann & Christian Unkelbach
23 Survival processing effect
Meike Kroneisen & Edgar Erdfelder
24 Labelling and overshadowing effects
Rüdiger F. Pohl
25 Associative memory illusions
Henry L. Roediger, III, & David A. Gallo
26 Misinformation effect
Emma PeConga, Jacqueline E. Pickrell, Daniel M. Bernstein, & Elizabeth F. Loftus
27 Hindsight bias
Rüdiger F. Pohl & Edgar Erdfelder
Biography
Rüdiger F. Pohl is retired Professor of Psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany. His research interests include cognitive illusions, heuristics and decision-making, and autobiographical memory. Teaching psychology, he held lectures in all areas of Cognitive and Developmental Psychology as well as in History and Methods of Psychology.
