In cognitive psychology, there is an effect called the “better-than-average” effect.

The basic concept of an “average” implies that 50% of people will be below average, and 50% of people will be above average. However, when you ask people if they’re below or above average when it comes to any particular skill (e.g., driving or singing in tune), far more people will rate themselves as above average than the 50% that would be expected.

Likewise, even when we know about certain cognitive biases, we often think of ourselves as being immune to those biases. We think “Other people might fall into that cognitive trap, but I’m too smart for that.”

If you’re looking to optimize your thinking, it can be worthwhile to look at which cognitive biases you see yourself as being immune to.

Here are some examples:

Treating more attractive people better.

Attractive people tend to get evaluated more positively than less attractive people. If you’re in a position like hiring a new employee or a realtor, or picking a doctor, then this is a good bias to be aware of.

Since weight stigma is also very prevalent in our culture, it’s useful to be aware if you’re attributing any negative judgments to someone who is overweight e.g., thinking they might be a lazy worker. Another example might be stereotyping that someone who has tattoos might be unreliable.

The same principle applies to treating people who are more similar to you more favorably. Even when we’re aware this general bias exists, we often don’t notice when it’s playing out in our lives e.g., in a class, you might find study groups organizing themselves by ethnicity or age, or in your neighborhood, you might have a friendlier relationship with neighbors who are more similar to you than those who are different.

Thinking bad things won’t happen to you.

For example, you might know the stats on how many people get cancer during their lifetime, but think your personal chance of that happening is much lower.

The key is recognizing your “average” vulnerability only to the extent that it’s useful and motivates positive behaviors. Examples of positive behaviors are getting a pap smear, carrying appropriate insurances, wearing a seat belt, and using sun protection. Outside of the health sphere, examples include taking basic precautions to secure your home or prevent your stuff getting stolen.

Vulnerability to marketing and sales techniques.

Most of us know about the common sales and marketing techniques used by brands and salespeople. For example, upsells that get us to pay more for unneeded extras, credit cards and loyalty programs that use rewards and bonus offers to get people to spend more than they usually would, free trials that you don’t get around to cancelling, and putting the most expensive brands at eye level on the store.

Which offers do you participate in but kid yourself that you’re not getting influenced by the sales and marketing techniques?

Sure, there may be some techniques that don’t cause you to change your thinking or behavior, but what’s useful here is for you to recognize when you are being influenced but not realizing it.

Our bias towards sticking to doing the same thing.

The more familiar something is, the more we tend to prefer it. When do you fail to recognize that you like something mostly because you’re familiar with it e.g., you like wearing black, just because you’re used to wearing black.

Seeing people we’re in love with through rose-tinted glasses.

When you’re in a committed relationship, it’s generally useful to see the best in your spouse or partner. It helps keep us happy in the relationships via making us think we made a good choice of partner, and it allows us to give our partner a break when they screw up (e.g., they did something stupid but we continue to see them as generally smart.)

However there can be times where we fail to recognize our partner’s shortcomings when that would be useful e.g., you might allow them to talk you into something financially risky or unethical.

At the dating stage, love and lust can also blind us to the extent we make a poor choice when a new partner’s negative qualities come to the surface (e.g., your partner is a superficially charming narcissist.)


Comment: Tell-tale signs that you are in a relationship with a narcissist

When would it be useful to you to recognize that your partner has a weakness in a particular area? e.g., they overestimate their driving abilities and drive too quickly when your entire family are in the car.

Wrap up

These are just a few examples of situations where people often fail to recognize when they’re vulnerable to cognitive traps that affect most people. You can read more about common thinking errors in this article.