Cognitive Illusions

Cognitive Illusions explores a wide range of fascinating psychological effects in the way we think, judge and remember in our everyday lives.

Rüdiger F. Pohl is retired Professor of Psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany. His research interests include cognitive illusions, heuristics and decision-making, and autobiographical memory. Teaching psychology, he held lectures in all areas of Cognitive and Developmental Psychology as well as in History and Methods of Psychology.

Introduction 1. What are cognitive illusions? Part I Thinking 2. Conjunction fallacy 3. Base-rate neglect 4. Framing 5. Confirmation bias - Myside bias 6. Illusory correlation 7. Causality bias 8. Illusions of control 9. Wason selection task 10. Belief bias in deductive reasoning Part II Judgment 11. Availability 12. Judgments by representativeness 13. Anchoring effect 14. Illusory truth effect 15. Mere exposure effect 16. Halo effects 17. Assumed similarity 18. Overconfidence 19. Metacognitive illusions 20. Fake news and participatory propaganda 21. Positivity biases Part III Memory 22. Moses illusion 23. Survival processing effect 24. Labeling and overshadowing effects 25. Associative memory illusions 26. Misinformation effect 27. Hindsight bias