The Black Belt in Thinking Podcast

Cognitive Bias Episode 9 - Recency bias

Peter and Mirta's series on cognitive biases continues!   There are a few different cognitive biases that have a powerful influence on how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. Each episode will touch on a different bias. So make sure you tune in to them all!   This week Peter and Mitra talk about the Recency bias. Recency bias favours recent events over historic ones. Recency bias gives greater importance to the most recent event, such as the final lawyer's closing argument a jury hears before being dismissed to deliberate.   Recency bias should not be confused with anchoring or confirmation bias (which you can learn about in earlier podcasts). It commonly appears in employee evaluations, as a distortion in favour of recently completed activities or recollections.   If you’re enjoying the series and getting value out of the episodes please remember to share them around!   The hosts also love to hear any feedback or answer questions you may have, so feel free to send them a message at peter.cronin@viago.com.au or mirta@viago.co.nz!

Bias in house buying with Rhiannan Jenkins

In this episode Peter talks with Sydney buyers agent Rhiannan Jenkins about the biases in house buying and how learning about these bias could help you in the future.   Many of us are convinced we're logical. But our property buying and selling decisions are rooted in psychological biases, many of which we're not even aware of. Rhiannan points out our price perceptions can be framed by messages from the media about pricing. How a price-related frame might work is that as soon as the market levels off we frame the purchase as if it's suddenly a bargain. Listen in to find out what other biases we often don't realise we have when in the process of buying or selling a house. If you find value in the episode or any you have listened to in the past, please recommend and share with others so that we can continue to provide this content for you. 

Cognitive Bias Episode 8 - Fallacy of division

Peter and Mirta's series on cognitive biases continues!  There are a few different cognitive biases that have a powerful influence on how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. Each episode will touch on a different bias. So make sure you tune in to them all! This week Peter and Mitra talk about the Fallacy of division, which is the cognitive bias that occurs when a person reasons that something that is true for a whole must also be true of all or some of its parts. For example: If a cake is moist that must mean that all the ingredients of the cake are moist. Which is very much not the case, as flour, sugar and a bunch of other ingredients are in fact dry.  If you’re enjoying the series and getting value out of the episodes please remember to share them around! The hosts also love to hear any feedback or answer questions you may have, so feel free to send them a message at peter.cronin@viago.com.au or mirta@viago.co.nz! 

Cognitive Bias Episode 7 - Framing Effect

Peter and Mirta's series on cognitive biases continues!  There are a few different cognitive biases that have a powerful influence on how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. Each episode will touch on a different bias. So make sure you tune in to them all! This week Peter and Mitra talk about the Framing Effect, which is the cognitive bias where an individual’s choice from a set of options is influenced more by how the information is worded than by the information itself. For example: If you're concerned about your blood sugar level, and you choose a chocolate that is ‘90% sugar-free’ over one that is ‘10% sugar. If you’re enjoying the series and getting value out of the episodes please remember to share them around! The hosts also love to hear any feedback or answer questions you may have, so feel free to send them a message at peter.cronin@viago.com.au or mirta@viago.co.nz! 

Cognitive Bias Episode 6 - Optimism Bias

Peter and Mirta's series on cognitive biases continues!  There are a few different cognitive biases that have a powerful influence on how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. Each episode will touch on a different bias. So make sure you tune in to them all! This week Peter and Mitra talk about the Optimism bias (or the optimistic bias) which is a bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event. It is also known as unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism. For example: people believing that they are less at risk of being a crime victim, smokers believing that they are less likely to contract lung cancer or disease than other smokers, first-time bungee jumpers believing that they are less at risk of an injury than other jumpers, or traders who think they are less exposed to potential losses in the markets. If you’re enjoying the series and getting value out of the episodes please remember to share them around! The hosts also love to hear any feedback or answer questions you may have, so feel free to send them a message at peter.cronin@viago.com.au or mirta@viago.co.nz! 

Cognitive Bias Episode 5 - Survivorship Bias

Peter and Mirta start a new series on cognitive biases!  There are a few different cognitive biases that have a powerful influence on how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. Each episode will touch on a different bias. So make sure you tune in to them all! This week Peter and Luke talk about the Survivorship Bias, which is a bias that can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because multiple failures are ignored. It can also lead to the false belief that the successes in a group have some special property, rather than just coincidence For example, if three of the five students with the best college grades went to the same high school, that can lead one to believe that the high school must offer an excellent education when, in fact, it may be just a much larger school instead. This can be better understood by looking at the grades of all the other students from that high school, not just the ones who made the top-five selection process. If you’re enjoying the series and getting value out of the episodes please remember to share them around! The hosts also love to hear any feedback or answer questions you may have, so feel free to send them a message at peter.cronin@viago.com.au or mirta@viago.co.nz! 

Cognitive Bias Episode 4 - Anchoring

Peter and Mirta start a new series on cognitive biases!  There are a few different cognitive biases that have a powerful influence on how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. Each episode will touch on a different bias. So make sure you tune in to them all! This week Peter and Mirta talk about the Anchoring Bias, which is the tendency to over-rely on existing information or the first available information we get.  For example, if we walk into a store and the first TV we see is $4999, our brains have a tendency to use this first piece of information as an anchor to other prices. As we walk through the store, TVs that we see over that price will all of a sudden seem too expensive, and TVs under that price will seem like a bargain (given similar specs). As such we are vulnerable to being taken advantage of by marketers and salespeople who use this bias to their advantage. If you’re enjoying the series and getting value out of the episodes please remember to share them around! The hosts also love to hear any feedback or answer questions you may have, so feel free to send them a message at peter.cronin@viago.com.au or mirta@viago.co.nz! 

Cognitive Bias Episode 3 - Availability Bias

Episode 3 of the series on cognitive bias!  There are a few of the different cognitive biases that have a powerful influence on how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. Each episode will touch on a different bias. So make sure you tune in to them all! This week Peter and Mirta talk about the Availability Bias, which is the human tendency to think that examples of things that come readily to mind are more representative than is actually the case. Naturally, the things that are most memorable can be brought to mind most quickly. However, there are a number of factors that influence how well we remember things. For example, we tend to remember things that we observed ourselves more easily than things that we only heard about. If your enjoying the series and getting value out of the episodes please remember to share it around! The hosts also love to hear any feedback or answer questions you may have, so feel free to send them a message!  Peter Cronin - peter.cronin@viago.co.nz  Mirta Fagundes dos Santos - mirta@viago.co.nz