Understanding human biases and overcoming them.
Stereotyping means attributing a personality trait or a set of personality traits to a group of people. These traits may either be positive or negative, and stereotyping of groups is usually done based on: For example, “Men are aggressive” is a stereotype based on gender, while “Italians are friendly” is a stereotype based on region. …
What causes homophobia?Why are some people homophobic?What are the psychological and biological drivers of homophobia? This article will attempt to answer these questions. Homophobia is a pervasive phenomenon that has been known to occur since the dawn of human history. It ranges from having antagonistic attitudes toward homosexuals to engaging in violent acts against them. …
You decide to learn a skill, say programming, and buy the best book you know about it. After finishing the book and doing some exercises, you feel like you’ve mastered programming. Say your ability to program has reached from level 0 to level 3. You feel like a pro and add ‘programming’ to your resume …
Why do people believe conspiracy in theories that sound stupid to others but not to the conspiracy theorists themselves? Conspiracy theorists such as: Shapeshifting reptilians are ruling our world, the earth is flat, and the moon is an abandoned spaceship. Aliens tripping on marijuana (which cures everything) draw crop circles in fields to communicate with …
This article will throw light on the major psychological causes of superstitions. While people have countless superstitious beliefs, the underlying psychological tendencies that give rise to them are more or less the same. Superstitions are everywhere. From the chain messages that ask you to ‘forward this to 10 people and something good will happen soon’ …
Simply put, a cognitive bias is a biased way of thinking that conflicts with logic and rationality. As much as we like to call ourselves rational, the truth is that the human psyche is loaded with many cognitive biases. Being rational, therefore, is a continuous process of being aware of these biases and not letting …