BEHAVIORAL BIASES

A glossary for planners and strategists

Created by Baiba Matisone
 BAIBA MATISONE
Is a strategic planner who tries to unlock a bunch of intriguing
questions around strategy, communication, brands, culture, and
people.

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A
ACTING BIAS: when faced with ambiguity
(creative fuzzy-front-end) favoring doing
something or anything without any prior analysis
even if it is counterproductive: “I have to do
something, even if I don’t know what to do”. Team
members can feel that they need to take action
regardless of whether it is a good idea or not. This
can be an issue when under time pressure in strict
design sprint workshops for example.
AFFORDANCE CUES: gives us a hint of how
we should interact with something.
AMBIGUITY AVERSION: we have an
instinctive avoidance of the unknown.
AMBIGUITY BIAS: favoring options where the
outcome is more knowable over those which it is
not. This bias has dire impacts on innovation
outcomes because the process is a fundamentally
risky and unknown process. If team members
subconsciously favor known knowns, you will
most likely follow known knowns and previously
trodden paths.
ANCHORING: we rely heavily on initial pieces of
information as a reference point for making
subsequent decisions
ANCHORING BIAS: being influenced by
information that is already known or that is first
shown. This causes pre-loaded and determined tunnel
vision and influences final decision making. We
deliberately manipulate team members’ minds by ‘pre-
loading’ them one of our warm-up exercises to
demonstrate this bias at play. The impact is highly-
significant on creative thinking and outcomes.
A, B, C
AUTHORITY BIAS: favoring authority figure
opinions ideas within innovation teams. This
means that innovative ideas coming from senior
team members trump or better all others, even if
other concepts, ideas, and inputs could be more
creative and relevant to problem-solving.
BANDWAGON BIAS: a commonly known bias
favoring ideas already adopted by others. This is
especially influential when linked to authority
bias. The bandwagon effect is a common
occurrence we see in workshops.
The rate and speed at which ideas are adopted by
others (through discussion, the rate of silent dot
voting, etc) can significantly influence the
likelihood of those ideas and concepts being
selected by the group and taken forward.
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE occurs when a
person holds two or more contradictory beliefs,
ideas, or values; or participates in an action that
goes against one of these three, and experiences
psychological stress because of that. According
to this theory, when two actions or ideas are
not psychologically consistent with each other, people
do all in their power to change them until they become
consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's
belief clashing with new information perceived,
wherein they try to find a way to resolve the
contradiction to reduce their discomfort.
COGNITIVE EASE: we have a preference for tasks
that are perceive as "easier" to achieve.
COMMITMENT: we like to be seen as consistent in
our promises and actions.
C, D, E
COCKTAIL PARTY EFFECT/THE POWER
OF PERSONALISATION: personalisation is
one way to grab attention. Just because you can,
doesn't mean you should. The problem with
personalisation is that when you get it wrong, it is
jarring. Plus, the aversion to personalisation will
fade with time.
CONFIRMATION BIAS: we believe what we
want to believe by favoring information that
confirms preexisting beliefs or preconceptions.
This results in looking for creative solutions that
confirm our beliefs rather than challenge them,
making us closed to new possibilities.
CONFORMITY BIAS: choices of mass
populations influence how we think, even if
against independent personal judgments. This can
result in poor decision making and lead to
groupthink which is particularly detrimental to
creativity as outside opinions can become
suppressed leading to self-censorship and loss of
independent thought.
CONCRETENESS: we process concrete
concepts easier than abstract ones.
COSTLY SIGNALING: we trust things more
when we feel there is an inherent cost attached to
produce them.
CHUNKING: smaller, individual tasks are perceived
as less daunting than big ones with multiple, interacting
stages.
DISTINCTIVENESS: being distinctive makes brands
memorable. This might sound like an obvious point but
it is one that is studiously ignored by the advertising
industry. Brands must seek inspiration from beyond
their category. If they do so they will see one of the
common factors of the few brands who have created a
genuine step-change in their category is that they were
highly distinctive.
EFFORT REWARD HEURISTICS: we value things
more when we have expended more effort on them.
E, F, G
EXPECTANCY THEORY: the better the serve,
the better the taste. When a drink is unknown the
serve forms a much greater proportion of the
consumer's knowledge and generates a more
sizeable effect. When drinkers disliked the brand
then drinking, for example, lager out of a glass
made those associations more salient and damaged
the taste.
FALSE CAUSALITY BIAS: citing sequential
events as evidence the first caused the second. This
can occur within the Design Thinking empathize
phase where you are intentionally seeking
confirmation of causality between what people say
vs.
what they do, leading to taking the wrong
problems or needs forward to solve.
FRAMING BIAS: being influenced by the way
in which information is presented rather than the
information itself. We see this one all the time,
particularly when developing prototypes for
pitching as well as in presenting polished slides.
People will avoid risk if presented well and seek
risk if presented poorly meaning that decision
making logic can easily be skewed.
FEATURE POSITIVE EFFECT(CLOSE LINKS
WITH OPTIMISM BIAS): due to limited time or
resources, people tend to focus on the ‘good’ benefits
whilst ignoring negative effects even when the
negative effects are significant. This is influential
when deep-diving into specific new feature sets for
new concepts (especially when coupled with loss
aversion bias) because it means that teams will
overlook missing information especially when it is
outside expertise resulting in taking ideas forward
with critical flaws.
GOAL GRADIENT: the closer we think we are to
completing a goal, the more we try to achieve it.
G, H, L, M
GOODHART'S LAW: when a measure becomes
a target, it ceases to be a good measure. In other
words, setting a naive target encourages behaviour
that superficially meets the goal rather than the
underlying objective.
HABIT is a routine of behavior that is repeated
regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. The
American Journal of Psychology defines a "habit,
from the standpoint of psychology, [as] a more or
less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling
acquired through previous repetition of a mental
experience."
LABOUR ILLUSION: we value things more
when we believe extra effort has been exerted on
our behalf.
LOSS AVERSION: we are more motivated to
avoid losses than to pursue gains.
LOSS AVERSION BIAS: once a decision has
been made, sticking to it rather than taking risks
due to the fear of losing what you gained in
starting something and wishing to see it finished.
We also Attach more value to something once we
have made an emotional investment in it. A
consequence of effort, time and
The energy put into creative thinking, team members can
become biased and become emotionally attached to their
outcomes.
MEDIA CONTEXT: visual illusions illuminate our
thought process. Just as context influences what our eyes
see, so it determines what our minds think. As with
visual illusions, context can determine how messages are
interpreted in media. Information is not perceived
neutrally. People are swayed by contextual cues.
M, N, O, P
MOOD is an affective state. In contrast to emotions
or feelings, moods are less specific, less intense,
and less likely to be provoked or instantiated by a
particular stimulus or event. Moods are typically
described as having either a positive or negative
valence.
NEGATIVE SOCIAL PROOF is the inadvertent
misuse of the social proof bias. It's when social
proof is used in such way that it has the opposite
effect to that intended (also see SOCIAL PROOF).
NUDGE proposes positive reinforcement and
indirect suggestions as ways to
influence the behavior and decision making of
groups or individuals. Nudge will make it more
likely that people will behave in a particular way.
OSTRICH EFFECT: we tend to avoid making
choices when faced with a potentially negative
outcome.
PRATFALL EFFECT is the tendency for an
interpersonal appeal to increase or decrease after
an individual makes a mistake, depending on the
individual's perceived ability to perform well in a
general sense. An individual perceived to be
highly competent would be
considered more likable after committing a blunder,
while a perceived average individual would be
considered less likable.
PRO-INNOVATION BIAS: new innovations
should be adopted by all members society
(regardless of the wider needs) and are pushed-out
and accepted regardless. Novelty and ‘newness’ are
seen as inherently good, regardless of potential
negative impacts (inequality, elitism, environmental
damage, etc) resulting in new ideas and concepts
generated being judged through somewhat rose-
tinted spectacles.
P, R, S
PROJECTION BIAS: from behavioral
economics, over-predicting future tastes or
preferences will match current tastes or
preferences. This bias has particular influence as
new innovations are conceived in the now and are
projected into the future when they enter markets
resulting in over value-appreciation of consumer
preferences.
POWER OF FREE: we see no downside to
FREE - this makes it overly, irrationally,
attractive.
PRICE RELATIVELY: our mind's perception of
value is just as relative as our eye's perception of
size. The relativity of our judgments is not limited
to low-value items bought with minimal
consideration. Perceptions of value can be
tweaked by altering the competitors in the
comparison set.
REGRET AVERSION: when people fear that
their decision will turn out to be sub-optimal or
wrong in hindsight they attempt to minimize
potential regret.
RE-FRAMING information may be numerically
identical, but people will interpret them very differently
depending upon how it is presented.
SALIENCE: our attention is drawn to what's novel and
seems relevant to us.
SCARCITY: people value attractive products more
highly when they believe that they're scarce.
SELF-EFFICACY: an individual's belief in their ability
to achieve a goal.
S
SELF-SERVING BIAS favoring decisions that
enhance self-esteem. This results in attributing
positive events to oneself and conversely negative
events as blame on oneself. Within innovation
workshops, this can mean that decisions made can
be loaded with personal agendas rather than
customer and business logic for the company.
SOCIAL PROOF: also known as informational
social influence. It describes a psychological and
social phenomenon wherein people copy the
actions of others in an attempt to undertake
behavior in a given situation. A lot of people are
doing it, it must be good.
SOCIAL NORMS: our behavior is heavily
influenced by that of others, with common
patterns signaling what is "appropriate".
STRATEGIC MISREPRESENTATION:
knowingly understating the costs and overstating
the benefits. When developing innovative
concepts, ballpark figures, and business model
prototypes, teams are prone to understating the
true costs and overstating the likely benefits in
order to get a project approved (which happens
all the time in large governmental contracting).
Over-optimism is then spotted and challenged by
managers
assessing how truly innovative team outcomes are.
STATUS-QUO BIAS: favoring the current situation
or status quo and maintaining it due to loss aversion
(or fear of losing it) and do nothing as a result. This is
a subtle bias on an emotional level that makes us
reduce risk and prefer what is familiar or “the way we
do things around here” as it is known. It has severe
consequences when seeking out new ways to
creatively solve needs and problems.
S, T
STATUS-QUO BIAS: favoring the current
situation or status quo and maintaining it due to
loss aversion (or fear of losing it) and do nothing
as a result. This is a subtle bias on an emotional
level that makes us reduce risk and prefer what is
familiar or “the way we do things around here” as
it is known. It has severe consequences when
seeking out new ways to creatively solve needs
and problems.
THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE: the difficulty
of imagining what it's like not to know something
that we know.
THE DANGER OF CLAIMED DATA: How do
we know the truth when everyone lies? It's very
important to keep in mind before you do any
research on customers - people often don't know
their genuine motivations. It's not that they are
lying; more that they are unaware of their
motivations. Direct questioning is unsatisfactory
because of lying and confabulation. A more accurate
alternative is to observe behavior. Observed data is
a significant improvement in surveys. However, it is
far from perfect and still needs to be interpreted
with caution.
THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR:
your assumption about the selfishness of the business
is an example of the fundamental attribution error.
That's the tendency to overestimate the importance of
personality and underestimate that of context, by
explaining behavior. This implication is widespread
and has important implications for how we think
about targeting our comms.
THE PAIN OF PAYMENT: when we pay with cash,
we typically overestimate our spend by 9%, whereas
those using contactless cards underestimated by 5%.
T, V
THE PRATFALL EFFECT is the tendency for
an interpersonal appeal to increase or decrease
after an individual makes a mistake, depending on
the individual's perceived ability to perform well
in a general sense. This bias makes people more
appealing as it increases their approachability and
makes them seem less austere, more human.
THE POWER OF THE GROUP: the audience
doesn't trust itself, it trusts someone else. If they
hear someone applauding in theatre very
aggressively and intensively, they think that
something extraordinary is going on.
THE REPLICABILITY CRISIS: Many famous
marketing studies fail to be repeated upon replication,
a notable example being the "too-many-choices"
effect, in which a high number of choices of the
product makes a consumer less likely to purchase.
Replication studies in marketing are needed to
examine the applicability of theories and models
across countries and cultures, which is especially
important because of the possible influences of
globalization. Don't take a single study as definitive
proof.
VARIABILITY is a lack of consistency or fixed
pattern; liability to vary or change. The bias that works
in one situation might backfire in another.
VEBLEN GOODS is a type of luxury good for which
demand increases as the price increases, in apparent
contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an
upward-sloping demand curve. A higher price may
make a product desirable as a status symbol in the
practices of conspicuous consumption and
conspicuous leisure. For example, the high price of the
pill will lead to an assumption that it would be more
effective and this assumption shaped the actual
perception.
W
WISHFUL SEEING: Experiments demonstrated
that perceivers tend to see desirable objects (i.e.,
those that can fulfill immediate goals—a water
bottle to assuage their thirst, money they can win,
a personality test providing favorable feedback) as
physically closer to them than less desirable
objects. Seeing desirable objects as closer than less
desirable objects serves the self-regulatory
function of energizing the perceiver to approach
objects that fulfill needs and goals.
WINNER'S CURSE is a phenomenon that may
occur in common value auctions, where all bidders
have the same value for an item but receive
different private signals about this value and
wherein the winner is the bidder with the most
optimistic evaluation of the asset and therefore will
tend to overestimate and overpay.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Shotton, R., The Choice Factory, Harriman Ho
use LTD, Great Britain

Kahneman, D., Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar

, Straus and Giroux

Thaler, H., R, Nudge, Penguin books

Bias Map