When are choices biased, and what is the comparison standard?

For: Readers who want to evaluate claims about human irrationality.

Calling a choice biased requires a comparison. Was relevant information ignored? Was a probability calculation mistaken? Did the person pursue a different goal from the one the observer assumed? These possibilities should be separated before an error label becomes an explanation of the person.

MIT’s thinking session is a useful start because its official outline links concrete problems to functional fixedness, heuristics, anchoring and framing. Reconstruct an example in your own words. Specify the information, available responses and criterion for success before asking which mental shortcut might explain an answer.

Noba’s judgement chapter sets out a proposed systematic decision procedure and contrasts it with examples of confidence, anchoring and framing. Use it to distinguish a normative proposal—how a decision should be made under specified goals—from a descriptive claim about what people tend to do. The two claims need different kinds of support.

The additional selections deliberately widen the standards of comparison. Conditional probability supplies a mathematical rule when the problem concerns evidence. Gendler’s utilitarianism lecture introduces one moral framework; disagreement with that framework is not, by itself, an arithmetic error. Her discussion of sampling bias also reminds us that a striking classroom example is not automatically a reliable estimate for a wider population.

For the exercise, vary the wording of a fictional problem while holding its stated outcomes fixed. A changed answer would motivate a question about framing. It would not immediately establish a universal effect, its size or its mechanism. Different participants may interpret the wording differently, and the task may leave important goals unstated.

This guide teaches a way to read claims about bias rather than a catalogue of labels to apply to other people. Its foundational lectures are historically situated. Continue with probability if you need a clearer formal standard, or with strategic interaction when the outcome depends on what another person chooses.

Next step

Use the uncertainty path to establish a formal comparison before interpreting a response as mistaken.

Limits of this route

The foundational psychology and philosophy lectures are dated teaching material. Examples and definitions do not establish current effect sizes or universal mechanisms; the exercise illustrates a comparison, not a population result. Source checks establish scope and selection usefulness; they do not claim full-video viewing, human review or scientific validation.