Cognitive Biases

This infographic has been floating around for the past few months.  It explains common cognitive biases that push decision makers away from rationality.

In my MBA classes, we often debate the idea of rationality when agents make decisions.  Students still believe that ideas such as the efficient market hypothesis still exist, even though there is clear evidence contradicting the idea that rationality is an empirically sound assumption.

What I like about this chart is that students should be able to clearly see where their own biases reside.  I find myself struggling to always overcome these biases even though I should know better when making decisions, and I assume students are share that sentiment.

What I wish this chart did was include some of the recent econometric advancements which contribute to irrationality so that students can see how to model deviations from rationality.

 

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