> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://meta.niceshare.site/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Effects · Psychological Effects & Cognitive Biases > 50 psychological effects and cognitive biases — the default programs of the human mind. Understanding them is the first step to transcending them and making clearer decisions. ## What are Effects? An effect (or bias) describes a **systematic psychological or behavioral pattern that humans exhibit in specific situations**. These are the defaults evolution gave us — they helped our ancestors survive rapidly in ancient environments, but in our complex modern world they often become blind spots in our judgment. > Effects are the bugs in your mental firmware. Recognizing them is the first step to debugging them. **This category covers 50 core psychological effects**, organized into three groups: * **Cognitive Biases**: systematic distortions in how we process information * **Social Psychology Effects**: behavioral patterns that emerge in human interaction * **Behavioral Economics Effects**: irrational patterns in economic decision-making *** ## Cognitive Biases The less competent, the more confident; the more expert, the more humble We seek evidence that supports what we already believe The first number we encounter anchors all subsequent judgments How information is presented changes how we evaluate it Recent events carry disproportionate weight in our judgments First impressions are disproportionately powerful and persistent After the fact, we feel we "always knew" what would happen We only see the winners; the failures are invisible The easier something is to recall, the more likely we think it is Bad news has far greater impact than equally significant good news We systematically underestimate the probability that bad things will happen to us We attribute successes to ourselves and failures to external factors We overweight character and underweight context when judging others Once you know something, you can no longer imagine not knowing it We perceive relationships between things that are actually unrelated We assume others share our thoughts, feelings, and preferences We underestimate disasters because "it's never happened before" *** ## Social Psychology Effects One positive trait colors our evaluation of a person's entire character We do things because others are doing them The more people present, the less likely any individual will help High expectations lead to higher performance Low expectations lead to lower performance The rich get richer; the advantaged accumulate more advantage People change their behavior when they know they're being observed We overestimate how much others notice and remember our actions A small, human mistake can actually increase perceived attractiveness Doing someone a favor makes you like them more Repeated exposure to something increases our preference for it We accept vague, general descriptions as uniquely accurate portraits of ourselves We favor members of our own group over outsiders We perceive out-group members as more similar to each other than they are Humans can maintain only about 150 stable social relationships Individual effort decreases as group size increases Being told what to do makes us want to do the opposite Attempting to suppress information causes it to spread more widely A solution makes the original problem worse *** ## Behavioral Economics Effects Believing something works makes it work Believing something is harmful makes it harmful We continue bad decisions because of what we've already invested The pain of losing is roughly twice the pleasure of an equivalent gain We overvalue things simply because we own them We prefer the current state of affairs and resist change We evaluate experiences by their peak moment and their ending, not the average We place disproportionately high value on things we partially created Uncompleted tasks are remembered better than completed ones A third option changes how we compare the original two Large bills are harder to spend than equivalent small ones Perception shifts based on what we're comparing against Too many options leads to decision paralysis Small initial differences compound into vastly different outcomes