Whether we consider ourselves rational or irrational, one thing remains the same – mental errors are made by all of us. Researched believed, for a long time, that on average humans made rational and logical decisions, but in recent times patterns of mental errors have been defined. Dozens of mental mistakes have been identified, but out of all of them, few are very common. Loss aversion is the one where we tend to prefer avoiding loss rather than achieving gain. Survivorship and conformation biases make us focus on winners or information that will prove our beliefs.

Key Takeaways:

• Although the fallacy that humans in general make logical decisions has persisted, in truth data shows that a large percentage of human decisions are emotion-based and far from entirely rational.
• Many of our most cherished ideas hail from the notion that those that win in an arena are the ones that from whom we should learn.
• This survivorship bias, which forgets to cull data from much less learn from the so-called losers, is actually far from logical.

“In recent decades, however, researchers have uncovered a wide range of mental errors that derail our thinking.”

Read more: https://jamesclear.com/common-mental-errors