UX for Beginners

Chapter 33. What Is a Cognitive Bias?

Your brain is a system. Certain types of information go in, certain types of decisions come out. But like many systems, if you give it information it wasn’t designed for, you can get less-than-perfect results.

Have you ever seen The Matrix? When Neo (Keanu Reeves) meets The Architect, it is revealed that there have been other Neos before. They are a “systemic anomaly” that happens from time to time. A flaw in the system.

Cognitive biases are sort of like that. If you ask people certain types of questions, or ask in a certain way, the “intuition system” will reliably choose the wrong answer. Those “mistakes” are something we can use in UX design. We can let users choose whatever they want, and most of the time they will choose what we want. If you do it right.

Some examples will help:

Anchoring

The first number you say affects the next number in someone’s head. For example, if you ask people to donate to a charity, they might give an average of $2. But if you “suggest” a donation of $10, the average will go up to something more like $5. Nothing changed, but you anchored donors to $10, which made $2 feel lower.

Next time you want a raise at work, aim high. You won’t get the full amount, but the raise you get will be higher than it would have been otherwise.

Bandwagon Effect

The more people who believe something, the more likely it is that other people will believe it, too. Information doesn’t become more true or more false because lots of people believe ...