There are a hundred ways in which we are fooled--and fool ourselves and others. We are flawed, imperfect beings. We consider ourselves rational, but it's not so simple.

In this section of the textbook, I'd like to open your eyes to four major ways in which we deceive and are deceived. The point is not to memorize them all, but to begin to grapple with how hard it is for us to capture truth. 

I call these the four cognitive artifices.

• Cognitive Biases:
  • Cognitive biases are ways in which our brain warps our perceptions of reality. The cognitive biases are like a scratched lens, diffusing light as it comes into our mind. For example, we tend to prefer information that conforms with what we already believe, and we tend to discount information that doesn't. 
• Logical Fallacies:
  • The logical fallacies are things that sound true but are errors in reasoning. For example, if a bad person says "I shower every day," one would not stop showering. On the other hand, if a politician says something you don't like, it's hard not to go right for "I've always thought he was a bad person!"
• Rhetorical Devices:
  • The key to rhetorical strategies is the word rhetorical: the art of effective or persuasive argumentation. While rhetorical devices can be true, they are not primarily intended to be--their only purpose is to be persuasive. 
• Cognitive Distortions:
  • These are ways in which we fool ourselves. Like cognitive biases, these happen inside our minds but are patterns of thought that we can interrupt. 

I do not expect you to know all of the possible artifices for this class, but I want you to be able to explain what each of them is with a few examples. As such, for each section below, I will give three primary examples, knowing there are dozens more that we could spend time studying.

Here is what I expect you to know:

• What is the definition and difference between logical fallacies, cognitive biases, rhetorical devices, and cognitive distortions?
• What are some of the major cognitive biases?
  • Reactance, confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, availability heuristic.
    
  • Ingroup bias, the Dunning-Krueger effect, 
• What are heuristics?
  • Representativeness heuristic
  • Anchoring heuristic
  • Adjustment heuristic
• What is confabulation?
• What is the fallacy fallacy?

Cognitive Biases:

• Confirmation bias: the tendency to highlight, emphasize, search for, or filter in any information that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.

• Availability bias:  This is also known as the availability heuristic, and means that you think of examples that are most readily available to your mind rather than objectively looking at all possible truth. Then, your brain makes assumptions based on that small sample. For example, plane crashes make people nervous about flying because crashes are publicized in the media. And yet, the chances of dying in car crashes are far higher. Another example: Tversky and Kahneman asked subjects "If a random word is taken from an English text, is it more likely that the word starts with a K, or that K is the third letter?" There are far more words that have K as a third letter--but the words that begin with K more naturally pop into mind. 
• 
• Sampling bias: This is what happens when survey designers aren't careful to ensure the representativeness of data.

Another couple I love are the Barnum effect and the Mandela effect.

Logical Fallacies:

Ad hominem

Straw man

Appeal to authority

Rhetorical Devices:

Pathos, logos, ethos.

Analogy

Hyperbole

Cognitive Distortions:

Catastrophizing

Black-and-white thinking

Discounting the positive

Which is an example of a logical fallacy? 

Attacking the character of someone you disagree with 

Stating what the research has found

Referencing work by a professional

Reasoning that if soething happened once, it'll happen again under the same circumstances

What is a rhetorical device?

Using a rhetorical question to begin a conversation 

A fact gathered from a study

A faulty point used during an argument

A tool used in argument to be effective and persuasive

Which of these is NOT a cognitive bias?

Reactance

Confirmation bias

Fundamental attribution error

Empirical observation

Availability heuristic

Ingroup bias