The Online Course Exploring the Illusions of the Mind That Make us Unreasonable, Irrational, and Wrong.
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
Approximate Hours of Course Media
In this course, you will learn a new cognitive bias, effect, or heuristic each day and understand why others (and you) make poor decisions, bad arguments, and hold false beliefs. All cognitive biases in this course are involved in the reasoning process and can lead to accepting bad arguments. The first and most important way to combat the negative effects of cognitive biases is to recognize them. This course will help you do that.
Become a Cognitive Bias Whiz and Understand Logical Fallacies Better
In the early 1970s, two behavioral researchers, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky pioneered the field of behavioral economics through their work with cognitive biases and heuristics, which like logical fallacies, deal with errors in reasoning. The main difference, however, is that logical fallacies require an argument whereas cognitive biases and heuristics (mental shortcuts) refer to our default pattern of thinking. Sometimes there is crossover. Logical fallacies can be the result of a cognitive bias, but having biases (which we all do) does not mean that we have to commit logical fallacies. Consider the bandwagon effect, a cognitive bias that demonstrates the tendency to believe things because many other people believe them. This cognitive bias can be found in the logical fallacy, appeal to popularity.
Everybody is doing X.
Therefore, X must be the right thing to do.
The cognitive bias is the main reason we commit this fallacy. However, if we just started working at a soup kitchen because all of our friends were working there, this wouldn’t be a logical fallacy, although the bandwagon effect would be behind our behavior. The appeal to popularity is a fallacy because it applies to an argument.
When we understand cognitive biases, we understand the reasons behind countless bad arguments, bad reasoning, and bad ideas.
Bo Bennett's personal motto is "Expose an irrational belief, keep a person rational for a day. Expose irrational thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime." Much of his work is in the area of education—not teaching people what to think, but how to think. His projects include his books, The Concept: A Critical and Honest Look at God and Religion, Logically Fallacious, the most comprehensive collection of logical fallacies, and Year To Success, a full year course in success. Bo has a podcast/blog called "The Dr. Bo Show" at http://www.TheDrBoShow.com where he takes a critical thinking-, reason-, and science-based approach to issues that matter with the goal of educating and entertaining.
Bo holds a PhD in social psychology, with a master's degree in general psychology and bachelor's degree in marketing. His complete bio along with current projects can be found at BoBennett.com.