155: The PM’s Guide to Cognitive Biases

Product Manager’s Guide To Cognitive Biases

That sounds funny, doesn’t it? I’m not giving you cognitive biases in this episode. I’m giving you information about cognitive biases so you can manage them better.

What’s a cognitive bias? According to Wikipedia: “A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment.”

Cognitive biases lead to bad decision making and other bad, or at least, non-rational outcomes. Knowing about them can help us manage them, because we all have them, even if we think we don’t. (The name for that is the “Blind Spot Bias” – which makes our own cognitive biases invisible to us.)

Links and resources

* Julia Galef’s TED talk about Soldier Mindset and Scout Mindset, Why You Think You’re Right, Even If You’re Wrong.

* Wikipedia articles on cognitive biases and the list of cognitive biases.

* Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahnemann, Nobel Prize-winning researcher, with Amos Tversky, who established many of the ideas around cognitive biases.

* Influence, by Robert Cialdini (and here’s a great podcast interview with him talking about the ideas in the book).

* The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons

* More info about Dr. Semelweiss (the play by Mark Rylance) and Dr. Semelweiss (the person – Wikipedia article).

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Product Manager’s Guide To Cognitive Biases

That sounds funny, doesn’t it? I’m not giving you cognitive biases in this episode. I’m giving you information about cognitive biases so you can manage them better.

What’s a cognitive bias? According to Wikipedia: “A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment.”

Cognitive biases lead to bad decision making and other bad, or at least, non-rational outcomes. Knowing about them can help us manage them, because we all have them, even if we think we don’t. (The name for that is the “Blind Spot Bias” – which makes our own cognitive biases invisible to us.)

Links and resources

* Julia Galef’s TED talk about Soldier Mindset and Scout Mindset, Why You Think You’re Right, Even If You’re Wrong.

* Wikipedia articles on cognitive biases and the list...