Memorize Cognitive Biases and Heuristics: 59 Flashcards from Anchoring to the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Every intro psychology or behavioral economics exam asks the same kind of question: "A participant judges Linda more likely to be a feminist bank teller than a bank teller. Which error is this?" You need the name (conjunction fallacy), the mechanism (representativeness heuristic) and the difference from its neighbors. That is a memorization problem, and the Cognitive Biases & Heuristics deck (code DT1055, 59 cards) on Flip It is built exactly for it.

What the 59 cards actually cover

Front = the name of the bias, back = a one-sentence definition precise enough to separate it from its look-alikes:

Across the full deck you will master: cognitive bias, heuristic, representativeness, availability and anchoring heuristics, the Linda Problem, confirmation bias, hindsight bias, self-serving bias, halo effect, belief bias, framing effect, status quo bias, sunk cost fallacy, overconfidence effect, planning fallacy, mere exposure effect, bandwagon effect, groupthink, bystander effect, cognitive dissonance, bias blind spot, illusion of control, optimism and pessimism bias, recency, primacy and serial position effects, negativity and positivity bias, attentional bias, egocentric bias, false consensus effect, illusion of transparency, spotlight effect, illusory correlation, pareidolia, gambler's fallacy, hot hand fallacy, backfire effect, ingroup bias, outgroup homogeneity bias, just-world hypothesis, actor-observer bias, debiasing, cognitive bias modification, bounded rationality, motivated reasoning, affect heuristic, the Stroop effect, the Cognitive Reflection Test and projection bias.

Study the deck in clusters, not alphabetically

Group the cards into families and the confusable pairs sort themselves out:

• Judging probability — representativeness, availability, anchoring, conjunction fallacy, gambler's fallacy, hot hand fallacy, illusory correlation.
• Judging yourself — self-serving bias, overconfidence, Dunning-Kruger, optimism bias, illusion of control, bias blind spot, planning fallacy.
• Judging others — fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, halo effect, false consensus, outgroup homogeneity, just-world hypothesis.
• Social pressure — bandwagon effect, groupthink, bystander effect, ingroup bias.
• Memory order — primacy, recency, serial position effect.
• Losses and change — loss aversion, status quo bias, sunk cost fallacy, framing effect.
• Fixing it — debiasing, cognitive bias modification, Cognitive Reflection Test, bounded rationality.

Run one cluster at a time for two days, then let the app shuffle everything.

Two tips specific to this deck

1. Learn the pairs by their contrast, not their definition. Exam writers love the near-twins: fundamental attribution error (others' behavior → personality) vs actor-observer bias (my behavior → situation, yours → personality); illusion of transparency (others can read my mind) vs spotlight effect (others notice my appearance); gambler's fallacy (a streak must end) vs hot hand fallacy (a streak will continue). When one card comes up, name the twin before flipping.

2. Attach one concrete scene to each card. The deck already gives you the Linda Problem for the conjunction fallacy; do the same for the rest — a casino for the gambler's fallacy, a horoscope for the Barnum effect, a project that ran three months late for the planning fallacy. Recalling the scene pulls the name with it — the availability heuristic working for you.

Where this fits

Most of these effects come from Kahneman and Tversky, so for the historical context start with our guide to the history of psychology from Wundt to Kahneman, then come back to DT1055.

Log in to Flip It, search the library for Cognitive Biases & Heuristics (DT1055), and let spaced repetition schedule the 59 cards for you.