Natural selection has resulted in two systems of human cognition.

Despite deliberate thinking granting

rational and analytical understandings, there are other situations that requires instinctive reactions or less
energy consumption that may be done with a simplified cognitive framework - automatic thinking. Although
being effective in most cases, automatic thinking is prone to cognitive biases that deviates form subjective
reality. The deviation may happen in both bottom-up cognition process, where the perception of input stimuli
were being misjudged, and the top down process, where the decision making were influenced by irrational
intuitions and previous misperceptions. Therefore, the cognitive process is subject to bias during both the
input processing and output decision making, with varying cost and benefits depending on situations

bottom-up - over extract- perception bias

Cognitive bias begins with misperception of the subjective situation during the bottom up cognition process,
where the interpretation of the input deviates from reality due limited input information unduly interpreted
as the whole picture.

Bottom up cognition consists the processing of input stimulus using the 5 senses, and the interpretation and
encoding of the information for memory storage and further utilities

However,

when little stimulus and context was given, people tends judge and infer using information that is the most
readily available

There are situations where interpretation have to be made with little or no information input available, either
due to time constraints or the lack of attention when assessing the information, In this case, assumptions and
abstraction has to be made with the ones that are available rules of thumbs.

In other situations which may not always be effective

One example would be the anchor effect, where the information first presented would affect the decision
making.

Where Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D. (2003) has found anchor effect negatively influencing
consumer decisions. In the study, random numbers were first presented to the participants as anchors. Then,
they were asked to bid on items, such as computers, chololates, etc. The participant’s bid were found be lead
towards anchor value rather than the perception of the value along
Another example would be the framing effect, where the judgment only focuses on information being
presented along without considering deeper context

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1981.[2]

Where the participants were asked to choose between two fictional vaccine program. Despite the outcome
between the programs were the same, it’s information were presented differently - either in terms of life
saved and life lost. The participant had shown significant preference towards the the vaccination program
that saves life, suggesting that their choice were significantly influenced by the framing of the information.

Despite perception biases allows series of cognitive process to initiate with little to no information being
avaliable, it isn’t effective for complex situations. It may ignore other potential possibility not being explained
by the information available, leading to further irrationalities during decision making.

when limited attention were to be applied during the process, the attention tends to be auto thinking

It could lead to irrational

In other situations, the selective attention to perception is

result of environmental adaptation. It enables recognition of
the important information among the stream of input,
In the study of corlin turnbull, 1960, the Mbuti pygmies were shown with ambiguous pictures of daily
scenarios. While the control group recognize one of the picture as a family sitting in a room, the pygmies
misinterpret the picture as the women carrying a basket on top of her head, where it is presumably the
window of the room, and the branching beam on the roof were seen as a tree. The fact that their
interpretation resembling to the stimuli seen daily

The selective attention to stimuli demonstrates that humans perceptual system is adapted and attuned to
specific demand, it allows up tfocus on information necessary to daily functioning while filtering irrelevant
information

Top down - selective facts/ attention previous experience

impact decision making
Similarly, cognitive fallacy may also occur in during top-down cognition when schema were miss used ,
resulting in irrational action output
Top down cognition is the process of retrieving previous memories for real life decision making and
execution. If done so with automatic thinking process, previous memories were selectively attended and
complex thought processes were simplified, and schemas, a shortcut for these simplified thought process,
would be formed.

Despite schema may facilitate instinctive judgements at times, it is could lead to irrational decision making.
For instant, the availability heuristics is when the most prominent information and the most recent memory
were used for interpretation.

In the study of (Linda problem), one group revives a neutral descriptive information about Linda, along with
the the information that she is concerns with discrimination active in demonstrations. The control group
receives the neutral information only. The result were that around 85% of the participants has made the
judgement that she is a feminist activists, despite it wasn’t mentioned from the stimuli

Another example would be Overconfident bias Where one are overly bias their rate of success. (Evolutionary)
(self confidence - more contrast - prob of gain > lost)

Where Individual tends to over value the expected probability of gain more than lost. From an evolutionary
perspective, overconfident bias increase the total incident success and induce competition to facilitate growth
of individual (evolution). but from a practical perspective, it could lead overestimate ability and control over
events, oversight of potential lost, which eventually leads to necessary failure

Another case would be self fulfill prophecy, where the schema of our own believes can influence our future
action, which in return, can predict the future outcome.

The Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study of “Pygmalion in the Classroom” (1968), examined how teacher’s
expectation would influence student’s performance. teachers were informed that certain students were likely
to be “growth sputters” with “academic potential” where they were actually chosen randomly. As the result,
the selected students, especially younger children, had indeed shown greater academic improvement.

stereotyping - generalized informations and expectation of certain groups that may lead to treating the
individual with biased manner that deviates from the subjective truth

sunken cost

selective attendance to the previous effort being invested, ignoring the protential benefit of switching
subjects

Leading to complex situational factors being overlooked, affecting the rationality of decisions
adaptation advantage - instinctive reactions during emergency
Schema and decision making bias offers selective advantage, it enables instinctive reactions during
emergency events, and allows efficient processing in familiar contexts

“Flin, Slaven, and Stewart (1996) (p275)” Has studied the emergency decision making during crisis. 6
experienced oil platform managers had to deal with a hypothesized crisis adapted from their standard
emergency procedure. A numerous number of decision points (N=107) were identified were decisions have
to done instantly. Little evidence of personal decision factors was found, and 90% of the decision made were
consistent guidelines. The result suggests that the participants were committed with automatic thinking,
facilitated by schema formed by biasily attend habits has been adapted with their training.

Further loops of bias of selective attending new informations

Confirmation bias - preference to seek information that researchers only seek data that confirms the
hypothesis

gamblers fallacy

believe chance is in own control, that

higher expectations for rewards to appear in another time.

sum up - the cost and benefit of

cog bias benefital for survival related situations, but could lead to overlooks during more complex
judgements