Educational Resources

Cognitive Biases

In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman details his research uncovering the numerous cognitive shortcuts. These shortcuts arise as adaptations to a world full of both signal and noise. While they can be beneficially employed as decision-making heuristics, they can also develop into cognitive biases and lead to cognitive errors.

In order to understand the reasoning process, it is vital to be familiar with the concept of cognitive bias and how it can lead to diagnostic and therapeutic mistakes. Well over one hundred cognitive biases in medicine have been described with significant overlap in their definitions. We propose a classification of biases which can help to organize these principles and facilitate learners to understand this vital concept.