Notes on How We Know What Isn't So: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life by Thomas Gilovich, 1991, Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 0029117062 (Google Books info)
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I'd highly recommend this as one of the starting points to anyone interested in learning about cognitive biases. Gilovich is both a prominent researcher and an excellently readable writer. He encourages the reader to think like a bias researcher. Using logical principles, we can get hypotheses about which biases to expect. With controlled experiments, we can verify the existence of biases and by applying them to specific topics we can see how natural human fallibility can have disastrous results. Cordelia Fine's "A Mind of Its Own" complements it nicely, and is more recent.
Outline
Part One: Cognitive Determinants of Questionable Beliefs
Ch. 2: Something Out of Nothing: The Misperception and Misinterpretation of Random Data
Ch. 3: Too Much from Too Little: The Misinterpretation of Incomplete and Unrepresentative Data
Ch. 4: Seeing What We Expect to See: The Biased Evaluation of Ambiguous and Inconsistent Data
Part Two: Motivational and Social Determinants of Questionable Beliefs
Ch. 5: Seeing What We Want to See: Motivational Determinants of Belief
Ch. 6: Believing What We Are Told: The Biasing Effects of Secondhand Information
Ch. 7: The Imagined Agreement of Others: Exaggerated Impressions of Social Support
- False consensus effect: subjects exaggerating the extent to which others share their beliefs, preferences or attitudes (classic experiment is Ross, Greene & House (1977) in J. Exp. Soc. Psych.)
- False consensus has a variety of motivational and cognitive mediators
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- One important process maintaining false consensus is the lack of negative feedback on behaviour due to adult etiquette.
- Children merrily taunt each other for breaking and social norm. Adults learn not to do this; to minimise their apparent disagreement, avoid pointing out when a man has his fly undone, for example. It's etiquette not to discuss politics or religion with someoneBad-ScienceBad-Science
Part Three: Examples of Questionable and Erroneous Beliefs
Ch. 8: Belief in Ineffective "Alternative" Health Practices
Ch. 9: Belief in the Effectiveness of Questionable Interpersonal Strategies
Ch. 10: Belief in ESP
Part Four: Where Do We Go from Here?
Ch. 11: Challenging Dubious Beliefs: The Role of Social Science
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