Memory Fillers
More strictly known as “availability biases”, these are gaps in what we remember, and what we know about, which we fill in confidently, but often absurdly. They are habitual failures of logic which can distort the way in which we observe and interpret events. We may remember just those matters of public policy in which there was a clearly-established villain. Seeing a picture of a problem may make the difference between whether we think it is important or not. We may forget about, or give less significance to, big events that happened some time ago, while being deeply concerned with minor events that happened recently. We may know nothing at all about Dick except the colour of his eyes, and deduce from that that he is an engineer. On the strength of our lack of acquaintance with any judges, we may assume (on hearing that one has been caught in a drink-driving offence), that they are all at it. Not knowing what we are talking about can have the reassuring effect of making us completely certain about it (Innocence).M10
The data we have available to think about—however carefully we may do the thinking—can consist of a scrapheap of things which are weird enough, or simply recent enough, for us actually to remember them.
Related entries:
Cognitive Dissonance, Mindset, Personal Experience, Lumpy Logic, Rote, False Premise.
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