Mental self-defense 101: A primer on psychological resilience and self-control

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“Self-defense is a countermeasure that involves defending the health and well-being of oneself from harm.”
Source URL: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-defense

Protecting the mind can be seen as analogous to protecting the body from physical attacks. However, the difference is that psychological attacks are much more difficult to perceive and to objectify. However, their effects can be much more harmful to the organism than physical attacks. Many people practice physical self-defense but only very few systematically train their psychological self-defense mechanisms.

5 important topics:

  1. Heuristics & Biases (recognize and react)
  2. Dual-process theory (adjust habitual/automatic responses)
  3. Group-Dynamics (awareness of group process and their influence)
  4. Theory & praxis of self-control (executive functions and cognitive top-down regulation)
  5. Understanding contextual factors (seeing the bigger picture)

Further References

Sandal, G. M., Manzey, D., Smith, N., Landon, L. B., & Barrett, J. D.. (2017). Psychological resilience. In Space Safety and Human Performance

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-08-101869-9.00006-6
DOI URL
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Fletcher, D., & Sarkar, M.. (2013). Psychological resilience: A review and critique of definitions, concepts, and theory. European Psychologist

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1027/1016-9040/a000124
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Rutten, B. P. F., Hammels, C., Geschwind, N., Menne-Lothmann, C., Pishva, E., Schruers, K., … Wichers, M.. (2013). Resilience in mental health: Linking psychological and neurobiological perspectives. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/acps.12095
DOI URL
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Ong, A. D., Bergeman, C. S., Bisconti, T. L., & Wallace, K. A.. (2006). Psychological resilience, positive emotions, and successful adaptation to stress in later life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.730
DOI URL
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Luthans, F., Avolio, B. J., Avey, J. B., & Norman, S. M.. (2007). Positive psychological capital: Measurement and relationship with performance and satisfaction. Personnel Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007.00083.x
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APA. (2017). The Road to Resilience
Southwick, S. M., & Charney, D. S.. (2012). The Science of Resilience: Implications for the Prevention and Treatment of Depression. Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1126/science.1222942
DOI URL
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Gooding, P. A., Hurst, A., Johnson, J., & Tarrier, N.. (2012). Psychological resilience in young and older adults. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1002/gps.2712
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Bonanno, G. A., Galea, S., Bucciarelli, A., & Vlahov, D.. (2006). Psychological Resilience After Disaster. Psychological Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01682.x
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Fletcher, D., & Sarkar, M.. (2012). A grounded theory of psychological resilience in Olympic champions. Psychology of Sport and Exercise

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2012.04.007
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Sciences, P.. (2010). Applications of social network analysis for building community disaster resilience. National Reseacrh Council

Plain numerical DOI: 10.3149/jms.1801.22
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Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S.. (2012). Mindsets That Promote Resilience: When Students Believe That Personal Characteristics Can Be Developed. Educational Psychologist

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/00461520.2012.722805
DOI URL
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Bonanno, G. A., Galea, S., Bucciarelli, A., & Vlahov, D.. (2007). What Predicts Psychological Resilience After Disaster? The Role of Demographics, Resources, and Life Stress. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/0022-006X.75.5.671
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Sarkar, M., & Fletcher, D.. (2014). Psychological resilience in sport performers: a review of stressors and protective factors. Journal of Sports Sciences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2014.901551
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Thompson, R. W., Arnkoff, D. B., & Glass, C. R.. (2011). Conceptualizing mindfulness and acceptance as components of psychological resilience to trauma. Trauma, Violence, and Abuse

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/1524838011416375
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Bonanno, G. A.. (2005). Resilience in the face of potential trauma. Current Directions in Psychological Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00347.x
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Walker, F. R., Pfingst, K., Carnevali, L., Sgoifo, A., & Nalivaiko, E.. (2017). In the search for integrative biomarker of resilience to psychological stress. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.05.003
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Manufacturing consensus

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Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, in which the authors propose that the mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”, by means of the propaganda model of communication. The title derives from the phrase “the manufacture of consent,” employed in the book Public Opinion (1922), by Walter Lippmann (1889–1974).

The book was revised 20 years after its first publication to take account of developments such as the fall of the Soviet Union. There has been debate about how the Internet has changed the public´s access to information since 1988.

More at Wikipedia

“Pantheon books, 1988 the mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. it is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. in a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda. in countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of dominant elite. it is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. this is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. what is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance. a propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. it traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. the essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news ‘filters,’ fall under the following headings: (i) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (~) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and ‘experts’ funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) ‘flak’ as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) ‘anticommunism’ as a national religion and control mechanism. these elements interact with and reinforce one another. the raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. they fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the …”

Herman, E. S., & Herman, Edward S.; Chomsky, N.. (1988). Manufacturing Consent. News: A Reader

Plain numerical DOI: 10.2307/3517986
DOI URL
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Comeforo, K.. (2010). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. Global Media and Communication

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/1742766510373714
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Burawoy, M.. (1979). Manufacturing Consent. Social Scientist

Plain numerical DOI: 10.2307/3517986
DOI URL
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Burawoy, M.. (2001). Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism. Contemporary Sociology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.2307/3089314
DOI URL
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Borkar, V. S., Karnik, A., Nair, J., & Nalli, S.. (2015). Manufacturing Consent. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1109/TAC.2014.2349591
DOI URL
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Chomsky, E. I. A. S. O. I. I.. (1992). Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. East
Han, R.. (2015). Manufacturing Consent in Cyberspace :. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/03797720500083443
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N.. (1988). Manufacturing Consent, A Propaganda Model. Manufacturing Consent
Burawoy, M.. (2012). Manufacturing Consent revisited. La Nouvelle Revue Du Travail

Plain numerical DOI: 10.4000/nrt.143
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Impression management

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Impression management is a conscious or subconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event. They do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction.[1] It was first conceptualized by Erving Goffman in 1959 in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, and then was expanded upon in 1967.[2] An example of impression management theory in play is in sports such as soccer. At an important game, a player would want to showcase themselves in the best light possible, because there are college recruiters watching. This person would have the flashiest pair of cleats and try and perform their best to show off their skills. Their main goal may be to impress the college recruiters in a way that maximizes their chances of being chosen for a college team rather than winning the game.[3]

Impression management is usually used synonymously with self-presentation, in which a person tries to influence the perception of their image. The notion of impression management was first applied to face-to-face communication, but then was expanded to apply to computer-mediated communication. The concept of impression management is applicable to academic fields of study such as psychology and sociology as well as practical fields such as corporate communication and media.

Johnson-Cartee, K. S.. (2010). Impression management. In Political and Civic Leadership: A Reference Handbook

Plain numerical DOI: 10.4135/9781412979337.n94
DOI URL
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Leary, M. R., & Kowalski, R. M.. (1990). Impression Management: A Literature Review and Two-Component Model. Psychological Bulletin

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.107.1.34
DOI URL
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Gardner, W. L., & Martinko, M. J.. (1988). Impression Management in Organizations. Journal of Management

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/014920638801400210
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Moro, E., & Vidailhet, M.. (2010). Management. Blue Books of Neurology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/B978-1-4160-6641-5.00027-1
DOI URL
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Henderson, P. W., Giese, J. L., & Cote, J. A.. (2004). Impression Management Using Typeface Design. Journal of Marketing

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1509/jmkg.68.4.60.42736
DOI URL
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Bolino, M. C., Kacmar, M. K., Turnley, W. H., & Gilstrap, B. J.. (2008). A multi-level review of impression management motives and behaviors. Journal of Management

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0149206308324325
DOI URL
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Wayne, S. J., & Liden, R. C.. (1995). EFFECTS ON IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT ON PERFORMANCE RATINGS: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY.. Academy of Management Journal

Plain numerical DOI: 10.2307/256734
DOI URL
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Barich, H., & Kotler, P.. (1991). A Framework for Marketing Image Management. Sloan Management Review

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/0024-6301(90)90145-T
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Bolino, M. C.. (1999). Citizenship and impression management: Good soldiers or good actors?. Academy of Management Review

Plain numerical DOI: 10.5465/AMR.1999.1580442
DOI URL
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Grant, A. M., & Mayer, D. M.. (2009). Good Soldiers and Good Actors: Prosocial and Impression Management Motives as Interactive Predictors of Affiliative Citizenship Behaviors. Journal of Applied Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/a0013770
DOI URL
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Paulhus, D. L.. (1984). Two-component models of socially desirable responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.46.3.598
DOI URL
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Bolino, M. C., & Turnley, W. H.. (2003). More than one way to make an impression: Exploring profiles of impression management. Journal of Management

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/S0149-2063(02)00212-X
DOI URL
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Parhankangas, A., & Ehrlich, M.. (2014). How entrepreneurs seduce business angels: An impression management approach. Journal of Business Venturing

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2013.08.001
DOI URL
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Schlenker, B. R., & Weigold, M. F. .. (1992). Interpersonal processes involving impression regulation and management. Annual Review of Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1146/annurev.psych.43.1.133
DOI URL
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Epistemology

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Epistemology (/ɪˌpɪstɪˈmɒlədʒi/ (About this sound listen); from Greek, Modern ἐπιστήμη, epistēmē, meaning ‘knowledge’, and λόγος, logos, meaning ‘logical discourse’) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge.[1]

Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. Much debate in epistemology centers on four areas: (1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such concepts as truth, belief, and justification,[2][3] (2) various problems of skepticism, (3) the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and (4) the criteria for knowledge and justification. Epistemology addresses such questions as: “What makes justified beliefs justified?”,[4] “What does it mean to say that we know something?”,[5] and fundamentally “How do we know that we know?”.[6]

List of cognitive biases

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cognitive-liberty.online/cognitive-biases-zoomify/list-of-cognitive-biases.html

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Decision-making, belief, and behavioral biases

Many of these biases affect belief formation, business and economic decisions, and human behavior in general.

Name Description
Ambiguity effect The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem “unknown”.[10]
Anchoring or focalism The tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor”, on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject).[11][12]
Anthropocentric thinking The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena.[13]
Anthropomorphism or personification The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions.[14]
Attentional bias The tendency of perception to be affected by recurring thoughts.[15]
Automation bias The tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions.[16]
Availability heuristic The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater “availability” in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.[17]
Availability cascade A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or “repeat something long enough and it will become true”).[18]
Backfire effect The reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one’s previous beliefs.[19] cf. Continued influence effect.
Bandwagon effect The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.[20]
Base rate fallacy or Base rate neglect The tendency to ignore base rate information (generic, general information) and focus on specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case).[21]
Belief bias An effect where someone’s evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.[22]
Ben Franklin effect A person who has performed a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than they would be if they had received a favor from that person.[23]
Berkson’s paradox The tendency to misinterpret statistical experiments involving conditional probabilities.[24]
Bias blind spot The tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.[25]
Bystander effect The tendency to think that others will act in an emergency situation.[26]
Choice-supportive bias The tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.[27]
Clustering illusion The tendency to overestimate the importance of small runs, streaks, or clusters in large samples of random data (that is, seeing phantom patterns).[12]
Confirmation bias The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.[28]
Congruence bias The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.[12]
Conjunction fallacy The tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.[29]
Conservatism (belief revision) The tendency to revise one’s belief insufficiently when presented with new evidence.[5][30][31]
Continued influence effect The tendency to believe previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected. Misinformation can still influence inferences one generates after a correction has occurred.[32] cf. Backfire effect
Contrast effect The enhancement or reduction of a certain stimulus’ perception when compared with a recently observed, contrasting object.[33]
Courtesy bias The tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one’s true opinion, so as to avoid offending anyone.[34]
Curse of knowledge When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.[35]
Declinism The predisposition to view the past favorably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.[36]
Decoy effect Preferences for either option A or B change in favor of option B when option C is presented, which is completely dominated by option B (inferior in all respects) and partially dominated by option A.[37]
Default effect When given a choice between several options, the tendency to favor the default one.[38]
Denomination effect The tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g., coins) rather than large amounts (e.g., bills).[39]
Disposition effect The tendency to sell an asset that has accumulated in value and resist selling an asset that has declined in value.[40]
Distinction bias The tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.[41]
Dunning–Kruger effect The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.[42]
Duration neglect The neglect of the duration of an episode in determining its value.[43]
Empathy gap The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.[44]
Endowment effect The tendency for people to demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.[45]
Exaggerated expectation Based on the estimates,[clarification needed] real-world evidence turns out to be less extreme than our expectations (conditionally inverse of the conservatism bias).[unreliable source?][5][46]
Experimenter’s or expectation bias The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.[47]
Focusing effect The tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.[48]
Forer effect or Barnum effect The observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests.[49]
Form function attribution bias In human–robot interaction, the tendency of people to make systematic errors when interacting with a robot. People may base their expectations and perceptions of a robot on its appearance (form) and attribute functions which do not necessarily mirror the true functions of the robot.[50]
Framing effect Drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented.[51]
Frequency illusion The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias).[52] This illusion is sometimes referred to as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.[53]
Functional fixedness Limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used.[54]
Gambler’s fallacy The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy arises from an erroneous conceptualization of the law of large numbers. For example, “I’ve flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads.”[55]
Hard–easy effect Based on a specific level of task difficulty, the confidence in judgments is too conservative and not extreme enough.[5][56][57][58]
Hindsight bias Sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable[59] at the time those events happened.
Hostile attribution bias The “hostile attribution bias” is the tendency to interpret others’ behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign.[60]
Hot-hand fallacy The “hot-hand fallacy” (also known as the “hot hand phenomenon” or “hot hand”) is the belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts.
Hyperbolic discounting Discounting is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. Hyperbolic discounting leads to choices that are inconsistent over time – people make choices today that their future selves would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning.[61] Also known as current moment bias, present-bias, and related to Dynamic inconsistency. A good example of this: a study showed that when making food choices for the coming week, 74% of participants chose fruit, whereas when the food choice was for the current day, 70% chose chocolate.
Identifiable victim effect The tendency to respond more strongly to a single identified person at risk than to a large group of people at risk.[62]
IKEA effect The tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects that they partially assembled themselves, such as furniture from IKEA, regardless of the quality of the end result.[63]
Illicit transference Occurs when a term in the distributive (referring to every member of a class) and collective (referring to the class itself as a whole) sense are treated as equivalent. The two variants of this fallacy are the fallacy of composition and the fallacy of division.
Illusion of control The tendency to overestimate one’s degree of influence over other external events.[64]
Illusion of validity Belief that our judgments are accurate, especially when available information is consistent or inter-correlated.[65]
Illusory correlation Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events.[66][67]
Illusory truth effect A tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity. These are specific cases of truthiness.
Impact bias The tendency to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.[68]
Information bias The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.[69]
Insensitivity to sample size The tendency to under-expect variation in small samples.
Irrational escalation The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong. Also known as the sunk cost fallacy.
Law of the instrument An over-reliance on a familiar tool or methods, ignoring or under-valuing alternative approaches. “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
Less-is-better effect The tendency to prefer a smaller set to a larger set judged separately, but not jointly.
Look-elsewhere effect An apparently statistically significant observation may have actually arisen by chance because of the size of the parameter space to be searched.
Loss aversion The disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it.[70] (see also Sunk cost effects and endowment effect).
Mere exposure effect The tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them.[71]
Money illusion The tendency to concentrate on the nominal value (face value) of money rather than its value in terms of purchasing power.[72]
Moral credential effect The tendency of a track record of non-prejudice to increase subsequent prejudice.
Negativity bias or Negativity effect Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories.[73][74] (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).[75]
Neglect of probability The tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.[76]
Normalcy bias The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.
Not invented here Aversion to contact with or use of products, research, standards, or knowledge developed outside a group. Related to IKEA effect.
Observer-expectancy effect When a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect).
Omission bias The tendency to judge harmful actions (commissions) as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful inactions (omissions).[77]
Optimism bias The tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes (see also wishful thinking, valence effect, positive outcome bias).[78][79]
Ostrich effect Ignoring an obvious (negative) situation.
Outcome bias The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
Overconfidence effect Excessive confidence in one’s own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as “99% certain” turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.[5][80][81][82]
Pareidolia A vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant, e.g., seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing non-existent hidden messages on records played in reverse.
Pessimism bias The tendency for some people, especially those suffering from depression, to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening to them.
Placebo effect The belief that a medication works—even if merely a placebo.
Planning fallacy The tendency to underestimate task-completion times.[68]
Post-purchase rationalization The tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was good value.
Pro-innovation bias The tendency to have an excessive optimism towards an invention or innovation’s usefulness throughout society, while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses.
Projection bias The tendency to overestimate how much our future selves share one’s current preferences, thoughts and values, thus leading to sub-optimal choices.[83][84][74]
Pseudocertainty effect The tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.[85]
Reactance The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice (see also Reverse psychology).
Reactive devaluation Devaluing proposals only because they purportedly originated with an adversary.
Recency illusion The illusion that a phenomenon one has noticed only recently is itself recent. Often used to refer to linguistic phenomena; the illusion that a word or language usage that one has noticed only recently is an innovation when it is in fact long-established (see also frequency illusion).
Regressive bias A certain state of mind wherein high values and high likelihoods are overestimated while low values and low likelihoods are underestimated.[5][86][87][unreliable source?]
Restraint bias The tendency to overestimate one’s ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.
Rhyme as reason effect Rhyming statements are perceived as more truthful. A famous example being used in the O.J Simpson trial with the defense’s use of the phrase “If the gloves don’t fit, then you must acquit.”
Risk compensation / Peltzman effect The tendency to take greater risks when perceived safety increases.
Selection bias The tendency to notice something more when something causes us to be more aware of it, such as when we buy a car, we tend to notice similar cars more often than we did before. They are not suddenly more common – we just are noticing them more. Also called the Observational Selection Bias.
Selective perception The tendency for expectations to affect perception.
Semmelweis reflex The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm.[31]
Sexual overperception bias / sexual underperception bias The tendency to over-/underestimate sexual interest of another person in oneself.
Social comparison bias The tendency, when making decisions, to favour potential candidates who don’t compete with one’s own particular strengths.[88]
Social desirability bias The tendency to over-report socially desirable characteristics or behaviours in oneself and under-report socially undesirable characteristics or behaviours.[89]
Status quo bias The tendency to like things to stay relatively the same (see also loss aversion, endowment effect, and system justification).[90][91]
Stereotyping Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.
Subadditivity effect The tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.[92]
Subjective validation Perception that something is true if a subject’s belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.
Surrogation Losing sight of the strategic construct that a measure is intended to represent, and subsequently acting as though the measure is the construct of interest.
Survivorship bias Concentrating on the people or things that “survived” some process and inadvertently overlooking those that didn’t because of their lack of visibility.
Time-saving bias Underestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively low speed and overestimations of the time that could be saved (or lost) when increasing (or decreasing) from a relatively high speed.
Third-person effect Belief that mass communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves.
Parkinson’s law of triviality The tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Also known as bikeshedding, this bias explains why an organization may avoid specialized or complex subjects, such as the design of a nuclear reactor, and instead focus on something easy to grasp or rewarding to the average participant, such as the design of an adjacent bike shed.[93]
Unit bias The standard suggested amount of consumption (e.g., food serving size) is perceived to be appropriate, and a person would consume it all even if it is too much for this particular person.[94]
Weber–Fechner law Difficulty in comparing small differences in large quantities.
Well travelled road effect Underestimation of the duration taken to traverse oft-traveled routes and overestimation of the duration taken to traverse less familiar routes.
Women are wonderful effect A tendency to associate more positive attributes with women than with men.
Zero-risk bias Preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.
Zero-sum bias A bias whereby a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another).

Social biases

Most of these biases are labeled as attributional biases.

Name Description
Actor-observer bias The tendency for explanations of other individuals’ behaviors to overemphasize the influence of their personality and underemphasize the influence of their situation (see also Fundamental attribution error), and for explanations of one’s own behaviors to do the opposite (that is, to overemphasize the influence of our situation and underemphasize the influence of our own personality).
Authority bias The tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion.[95]
Cheerleader effect The tendency for people to appear more attractive in a group than in isolation.[96]
Defensive attribution hypothesis Attributing more blame to a harm-doer as the outcome becomes more severe or as personal or situational similarity to the victim increases.
Egocentric bias Occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would credit them with.
Extrinsic incentives bias An exception to the fundamental attribution error, when people view others as having (situational) extrinsic motivations and (dispositional) intrinsic motivations for oneself
False consensus effect The tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.[97]
Forer effect (aka Barnum effect) The tendency to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. For example, horoscopes.
Fundamental attribution error The tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior[74] (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).[75]
Group attribution error The biased belief that the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole or the tendency to assume that group decision outcomes reflect the preferences of group members, even when information is available that clearly suggests otherwise.
Halo effect The tendency for a person’s positive or negative traits to “spill over” from one personality area to another in others’ perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype).[98]
Illusion of asymmetric insight People perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers’ knowledge of them.[99]
Illusion of external agency When people view self-generated preferences as instead being caused by insightful, effective and benevolent agents.
Illusion of transparency People overestimate others’ ability to know them, and they also overestimate their ability to know others.
Illusory superiority Overestimating one’s desirable qualities, and underestimating undesirable qualities, relative to other people. (Also known as “Lake Wobegon effect”, “better-than-average effect”, or “superiority bias“.)[100]
Ingroup bias The tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups.
Just-world hypothesis The tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just, causing them to rationalize an otherwise inexplicable injustice as deserved by the victim(s).
Moral luck The tendency for people to ascribe greater or lesser moral standing based on the outcome of an event.
Naïve cynicism Expecting more egocentric bias in others than in oneself.
Naïve realism The belief that we see reality as it really is – objectively and without bias; that the facts are plain for all to see; that rational people will agree with us; and that those who don’t are either uninformed, lazy, irrational, or biased.
Outgroup homogeneity bias Individuals see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups.[101]
Self-serving bias The tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests (see also group-serving bias).[102]
Shared information bias Known as the tendency for group members to spend more time and energy discussing information that all members are already familiar with (i.e., shared information), and less time and energy discussing information that only some members are aware of (i.e., unshared information).[103]
System justification The tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest. (See also status quo bias.)
Trait ascription bias The tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior, and mood while viewing others as much more predictable.
Ultimate attribution error Similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.
Worse-than-average effect A tendency to believe ourselves to be worse than others at tasks which are difficult.[104]

Memory errors and biases

Main article: List of memory biases

In psychology and cognitive science, a memory bias is a cognitive bias that either enhances or impairs the recall of a memory (either the chances that the memory will be recalled at all, or the amount of time it takes for it to be recalled, or both), or that alters the content of a reported memory. There are many types of memory bias, including:

Name Description
Bizarreness effect Bizarre material is better remembered than common material.
Choice-supportive bias In a self-justifying manner retroactively ascribing one’s choices to be more informed than they were when they were made.
Change bias After an investment of effort in producing change, remembering one’s past performance as more difficult than it actually was.[105][unreliable source?]
Childhood amnesia The retention of few memories from before the age of four.
Conservatism or Regressive bias Tendency to remember high values and high likelihoods/probabilities/frequencies as lower than they actually were and low ones as higher than they actually were. Based on the evidence, memories are not extreme enough.[86][87]
Consistency bias Incorrectly remembering one’s past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour.[106]
Context effect That cognition and memory are dependent on context, such that out-of-context memories are more difficult to retrieve than in-context memories (e.g., recall time and accuracy for a work-related memory will be lower at home, and vice versa).
Cross-race effect The tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying members of a race other than their own.
Cryptomnesia A form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination, because there is no subjective experience of it being a memory.[105]
Egocentric bias Recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g., remembering one’s exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as bigger than it really was.
Fading affect bias A bias in which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly than the emotion associated with positive events.[107]
False memory A form of misattribution where imagination is mistaken for a memory.
Generation effect (Self-generation effect) That self-generated information is remembered best. For instance, people are better able to recall memories of statements that they have generated than similar statements generated by others.
Google effect The tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines.
Hindsight bias The inclination to see past events as being more predictable than they actually were; also called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect.
Humor effect That humorous items are more easily remembered than non-humorous ones, which might be explained by the distinctiveness of humor, the increased cognitive processing time to understand the humor, or the emotional arousal caused by the humor.[108]
Illusion of truth effect That people are more likely to identify as true statements those they have previously heard (even if they cannot consciously remember having heard them), regardless of the actual validity of the statement. In other words, a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one.
Illusory correlation Inaccurately remembering a relationship between two events.[5][67]
Lag effect The phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of time in a single session. See also spacing effect.
Leveling and sharpening Memory distortions introduced by the loss of details in a recollection over time, often concurrent with sharpening or selective recollection of certain details that take on exaggerated significance in relation to the details or aspects of the experience lost through leveling. Both biases may be reinforced over time, and by repeated recollection or re-telling of a memory.[109]
Levels-of-processing effect That different methods of encoding information into memory have different levels of effectiveness.[110]
List-length effect A smaller percentage of items are remembered in a longer list, but as the length of the list increases, the absolute number of items remembered increases as well. For example, consider a list of 30 items (“L30”) and a list of 100 items (“L100”). An individual may remember 15 items from L30, or 50%, whereas the individual may remember 40 items from L100, or 40%. Although the percent of L30 items remembered (50%) is greater than the percent of L100 (40%), more L100 items (40) are remembered than L30 items (15).[111][further explanation needed]
Misinformation effect Memory becoming less accurate because of interference from post-event information.[112]
Modality effect That memory recall is higher for the last items of a list when the list items were received via speech than when they were received through writing.
Mood-congruent memory bias The improved recall of information congruent with one’s current mood.
Next-in-line effect People taking turns speaking in a group tend to have diminished recall for the words of others[clarify] who spoke immediately before them.[113]
Part-list cueing effect That being shown some items from a list and later retrieving one item causes it to become harder to retrieve the other items.[114]
Peak-end rule That people seem to perceive not the sum of an experience but the average of how it was at its peak (e.g., pleasant or unpleasant) and how it ended.
Persistence The unwanted recurrence of memories of a traumatic event.[citation needed]
Picture superiority effect The notion that concepts that are learned by viewing pictures are more easily and frequently recalled than are concepts that are learned by viewing their written word form counterparts.[115][116][117][118][119][120]
Positivity effect (Socioemotional selectivity theory) That older adults favor positive over negative information in their memories.
Primacy effect, recency effect & serial position effect That items near the end of a sequence are the easiest to recall, followed by the items at the beginning of a sequence; items in the middle are the least likely to be remembered.[121]
Processing difficulty effect That information that takes longer to read and is thought about more (processed with more difficulty) is more easily remembered.[122]
Reminiscence bump The recalling of more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than personal events from other lifetime periods.[123]
Rosy retrospection The remembering of the past as having been better than it really was.
Self-relevance effect That memories relating to the self are better recalled than similar information relating to others.
Source confusion Confusing episodic memories with other information, creating distorted memories.[124]
Spacing effect That information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a long span of time rather than a short one.
Spotlight effect The tendency to overestimate the amount that other people notice your appearance or behavior.
Stereotypical bias Memory distorted towards stereotypes (e.g., racial or gender).
Suffix effect Diminishment of the recency effect because a sound item is appended to the list that the subject is not required to recall.[125][126]
Suggestibility A form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.
Tachypsychia When time perceived by the individual either lengthens, making events appear to slow down, or contracts.[127]
Telescoping effect The tendency to displace recent events backward in time and remote events forward in time, so that recent events appear more remote, and remote events, more recent.
Testing effect The fact that you more easily remember information you have read by rewriting it instead of rereading it.[128]
Tip of the tongue phenomenon When a subject is able to recall parts of an item, or related information, but is frustratingly unable to recall the whole item. This is thought to be an instance of “blocking” where multiple similar memories are being recalled and interfere with each other.[105]
Travis Syndrome Overestimating the significance of the present.[129] It is related to the enlightenment Idea of Progress and chronological snobbery with possibly an appeal to novelty logical fallacy being part of the bias.
Verbatim effect That the “gist” of what someone has said is better remembered than the verbatim wording.[130] This is because memories are representations, not exact copies.
von Restorff effect That an item that sticks out is more likely to be remembered than other items.[131]
Zeigarnik effect That uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than completed ones.

Common theoretical causes of some cognitive biases

A 2012 Psychological Bulletin article suggested that at least eight seemingly unrelated biases can be produced by the same information-theoretic generative mechanism that assumes noisy information processing during storage and retrieval of information in human memory.[5]

Individual differences in decision making biases

People do appear to have stable individual differences in their susceptibility to decision biases such as overconfidence, temporal discounting, and bias blind spot.[134] That said, these stable levels of bias within individuals are possible to change. Participants in experiments who watched training videos and played debiasing games showed medium to large reductions both immediately and up to three months later in the extent to which they exhibited susceptibility to six cognitive biases: anchoring, bias blind spot, confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, projection bias, and representativeness.[135]

Debiasing

Debiasing is the reduction of biases in judgment and decision making through incentives, nudges, and training. Cognitive bias mitigation and cognitive bias modification are forms of debiasing specifically applicable to cognitive biases and their effects.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Further References

Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P.. (2003). Common Method Biases in Behavioral Research: A Critical Review of the Literature and Recommended Remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879
DOI URL
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Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D.. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9
DOI URL
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Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A.. (1996). On the reality of cognitive illusions.. Psychological Review

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.103.3.582
DOI URL
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Oechssler, J., Roider, A., & Schmitz, P. W.. (2009). Cognitive abilities and behavioral biases. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2009.04.018
DOI URL
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Griffiths, T. L., Chater, N., Kemp, C., Perfors, A., & Tenenbaum, J. B.. (2010). Probabilistic models of cognition: exploring representations and inductive biases. Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2010.05.004
DOI URL
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Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F.. (2008). On the Relative Independence of Thinking Biases and Cognitive Ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.4.672
DOI URL
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Hallion, L. S., & Ruscio, A. M.. (2011). A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Cognitive Bias Modification on Anxiety and Depression. Psychological Bulletin

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/a0024355
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Gigerenzer, G.. (1991). How to make Cognitive Illusions Disappear: Beyond “Heuristics and Biases”. European Review of Social Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/14792779143000033
DOI URL
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Roiser, J. P., Elliott, R., & Sahakian, B. J.. (2012). Cognitive mechanisms of treatment in depression. Neuropsychopharmacology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1038/npp.2011.183
DOI URL
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Haselton, M. G., Nettle, D., & Andrews, P. W.. (2015). The Evolution of Cognitive Bias. In The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1002/9780470939376.ch25
DOI URL
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Haselton, M. G., & Nettle, D.. (2006). The paranoid optimist: An integrative evolutionary model of cognitive biases. Personality and Social Psychology Review

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_3
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Croskerry, P.. (2003). The importance of cognitive errors in diagnosis and strategies to minimize them. Academic Medicine

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1097/00001888-200308000-00003
DOI URL
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Bertrand, M., & Morse, A.. (2011). Information Disclosure, Cognitive Biases, and Payday Borrowing. Journal of Finance

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2011.01698.x
DOI URL
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Ioannidis, J. P. A., Munafò, M. R., Fusar-Poli, P., Nosek, B. A., & David, S. P.. (2014). Publication and other reporting biases in cognitive sciences: Detection, prevalence, and prevention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2014.02.010
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Montibeller, G., & von Winterfeldt, D.. (2015). Cognitive and Motivational Biases in Decision and Risk Analysis. Risk Analysis

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/risa.12360
DOI URL
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Douglas, C., Bateson, M., Walsh, C., Bédué, A., & Edwards, S. A.. (2012). Environmental enrichment induces optimistic cognitive biases in pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2012.02.018
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Greenwald, A. G.. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history. American Psychologist

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.35.7.603
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Bateson, M., Desire, S., Gartside, S. E., & Wright, G. A.. (2011). Agitated honeybees exhibit pessimistic cognitive biases. Current Biology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.05.017
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Peters, E. R., Moritz, S., Schwannauer, M., Wiseman, Z., Greenwood, K. E., Scott, J., … Garety, P. A.. (2014). Cognitive biases questionnaire for psychosis. Schizophrenia Bulletin

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1093/schbul/sbs199
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Hoppe, E. I., & Kusterer, D. J.. (2011). Behavioral biases and cognitive reflection. Economics Letters

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2010.11.015
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Marshall, J. A. R., Trimmer, P. C., Houston, A. I., & McNamara, J. M.. (2013). On evolutionary explanations of cognitive biases. Trends in Ecology and Evolution

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2013.05.013
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Croskerry, P., Singhal, G., & Mamede, S.. (2013). Cognitive debiasing 1: Origins of bias and theory of debiasing. BMJ Quality and Safety

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1136/bmjqs-2012-001712
DOI URL
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Das, T. K., & Teng, B. S.. (1999). Cognitive biases and strategic decision processes: An integratwe perspective. Journal of Management Studies

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/1467-6486.00157
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Gudmundsson, S. V., & Lechner, C.. (2013). Cognitive biases, organization, and entrepreneurial firm survival. European Management Journal

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.emj.2013.01.001
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Tavistock institute for human relations

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ia800203.us.archive.org/12/items/Tavistock_201601/Coleman_John_-_The_Tavistock_Institute_of_Human_Relations.pdf

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations or TIHR is a British not-for-profit organisation which applies social science to contemporary issues and problems. It was initiated in 1946, when it developed from the Tavistock Clinic, and was formally established as a separate entity in September 1947.More at Wikipedia

References

Neumann, J. E.. (2005). Kurt lewin at the tavistock institute. Educational Action Research

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/09650790500200271
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Social engineering

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The next million years by Charles Galton Darwin

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Sir Charles Galton Darwin, KBE, MC, FRS was an English physicist who served as director of the National Physical Laboratory during the Second World War. He was the son of the mathematician George Howard Darwin and a grandson of Charles Darwin. More at Wikipedia

Hormonal modification

“Another type of discovery may be connected with hormones, those internal chemical secretions which so largely regulate the operations of the human body. The artificial use of hormones has already been shown to have profound effects on the behaviour of animals, and it seems quite possible that hormones, or perhaps drugs, might have similar effects on man. For example, there might be a drug, which, without other harmful effects, removed the urgency of sexual desire, and so reproduced in humanity the status of workers in a beehive. Or there might be another drug that produced a permanent state of contentment in the recipient—after all alcohol does something like this already, though it has other disadvantages and is only temporary in its effects. A dictator would certainly welcome the compulsory administration of the “contentment drug” to his subjects.” p183

Oligarchical monopoly

“Widespread wealth can never be common in an overcrowded world, and so in most countries of the future the government will inevitably be autocratic or oligarchic; some will give good government and some bad, and the goodness or badness will depend much more on the personal merits of the rulers than it does in a more democratic country.” p.194

Normative government

“To think of it as possible at other times is a misunderstanding of the function of government in any practical sense of the term. If the only things that a government was required to do were what everybody, or nearly everybody, wanted, there would be no need for the government to exist at all, because the things would be done anyhow; this would be the impracticable ideal of the anarchist. But if there are to be starving margins of population in most parts of the world, mere benevolence cannot suffice. There would inevitably be ill feeling and jealousy between the provinces, with each believing that it was not getting its fair share of the good things, and in fact, it would be like the state of affairs with which we are all too familiar. If then there is ever to be a world government, it will have to function as government do now, in the sense that it will have to coerce a minority – and indeed it may often be a majority – into doing things they do not want to.” p.191

THE NEXT MILLION YEARS
BY
CHARLES GALTON DARWIN
The_Next_Million_Years
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  • George Pember Darwin (1928–2001) worked developing computers, and then (1964) married Angela Huxley, daughter of David Bruce Huxley. She was also a granddaughter of the writer Leonard Huxley and a great-granddaughter of Thomas Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog”.

After the death of his first wife, Leonard married Rosalind Bruce (1890–1994), and had two further sons. The elder of these was David Bruce Huxley (1915-1992), whose daughter Angela Huxley married George Pember Darwin, son of the physicist Sir Charles Galton Darwin (and thus a great-grandson of Charles Darwin married a great-granddaughter of Thomas Huxley). The younger son (1917-2012) was the Nobel Prize winner, physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huxley_family


Further References

Fancher, R. E.. (2009). Scientific Cousins: The Relationship Between Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. American Psychologist

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/a0013339
DOI URL
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Gillham, N. W.. (2001). Sir Francis Galton and the Birth of Eugenics. Annual Review of Genetics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1146/annurev.genet.35.102401.090055
DOI URL
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Galton, D. J., & Galton, C. J.. (1998). Francis Galton: And eugenics today. Journal of Medical Ethics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1136/jme.24.2.99
DOI URL
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Galton, F.. (1985). Essays in eugenics. The History of hereditarian thought ; 16

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1038/064659b0
DOI URL
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Harper, P.. (2002). A life of Sir Francis Galton. From African exploration to the birth of eugenics. Human Genetics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1086/374096
DOI URL
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Magnello, M. E.. (2013). Galton’s Law of Ancestral Heredity. In Brenner’s Encyclopedia of Genetics: Second Edition

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-374984-0.00060-7
DOI URL
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Bulmer, M.. (2003). Francis Galton: Pioneer of Heredity and Biometry. Journal of Heredity

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1086/521468
DOI URL
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Sandall, R.. (2008). Sir Francis Galton and the roots of eugenics. Society

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/s12115-008-9058-8
DOI URL
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Liu, Y.. (2008). A new perspective on Darwin’s Pangenesis. Biological Reviews

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-185X.2008.00036.x
DOI URL
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Galton, D. J.. (2005). Eugenics: Some lessons from the past. Reproductive BioMedicine Online

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/S1472-6483(10)62222-5
DOI URL
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Jeynes, W. H.. (2011). Race, racism, and Darwinism. Education and Urban Society

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0013124510380723
DOI URL
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Champkin, J.. (2011). Francis Galton centenary. Significance

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-9713.2011.00507.x
DOI URL
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Orwell’s unpublished preface to Animal Farm

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The Freedom of the Press
Orwell’s Proposed Preface to ‘Animal Farm’

Excerpt
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written down until about the end of 1943. By the time when it came to be written it was obvious that there would be great difficulty in getting it published (in spite of the present book shortage which ensures that anything describable as a book will ‘sell’), and in the event it was refused by four publishers. Only one of these had any ideological motive. Two had been publishing anti-Russian books for years, and the other had no noticeable political colour. One publisher actually started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements he decided to consult the Ministry of Information, who appear to have warned him, or at any rate strongly advised him, against publishing it. Here is an extract from his letter:

I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to Animal Farm. I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think… I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill-advised to publish at the present time. If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs[*]. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.

* It is not quite clear whether this suggested modification is Mr… ’s own idea, or originated with the Ministry of Information; but it seems to have the official ring about it. [Orwell’s Note]

This kind of thing is not a good symptom. Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship (except security censorship, which no one objects to in war time) over books which are not officially sponsored. But the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

Any fairminded person with journalistic experience will admit that during this war official censorship has not been particularly irksome. We have not been subjected to the kind of totalitarian ‘co-ordination’ that it might have been reasonable to expect. The press has some justified grievances, but on the whole the Government has behaved well and has been surprisingly tolerant of minority opinions. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you arc not allowed to criticise the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own. Hardly anyone will print an attack on Stalin, but it is quite safe to attack Churchill, at any rate in books and periodicals. And throughout five years of war, during two or three of which we were fighting for national survival, countless books, pamphlets and articles advocating a compromise peace have been published without interference. More, they have been published without exciting much disapproval. So long as the prestige of the USSR is not involved, the principle of free speech has been reasonably well upheld. There are other forbidden topics, and I shall mention some of them presently, but the prevailing attitude towards the USSR is much the most serious symptom. It is, as it were, spontaneous, and is not due to the action of any pressure group.

The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions. On one controversial issue after another the Russian viewpoint has been accepted without examination and then publicised with complete disregard to historical truth or intellectual decency. To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky. This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia. In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favoured by the Russians and libelled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so. A particularly glaring case was that of Colonel Mihailovich, the Jugoslav Chetnik leader. The Russians, who had their own Jugoslav protege in Marshal Tito, accused Mihailovich of collaborating with the Germans. This accusation was promptly taken up by the British press: Mihailovich’s supporters were given no chance of answering it, and facts contradicting it were simply kept out of print. In July of 1943 the Germans offered a reward of 100,000 gold crowns for the capture of Tito, and a similar reward for the capture of Mihailovich. The British press ‘splashed’ the reward for Tito, but only one paper mentioned (in small print) the reward for Mihailovich: and the charges of collaborating with the Germans continued. Very similar things happened during the Spanish civil war. Then, too, the factions on the Republican side which the Russians were determined to crush were recklessly libelled in the English leftwing [sic] press, and any statement in their defence even in letter form, was refused publication. At present, not only is serious criticism of the USSR considered reprehensible, but even the fact of the existence of such criticism is kept secret in some cases. For example, shortly before his death Trotsky had written a biography of Stalin. One may assume that it was not an altogether unbiased book, but obviously it was saleable. An American publisher had arranged to issue it and the book was in print — 1 believe the review copies had been sent out — when the USSR entered the war. The book was immediately withdrawn. Not a word about this has ever appeared in the British press, though clearly the existence of such a book, and its suppression, was a news item worth a few paragraphs.

It is important to distinguish between the kind of censorship that the English literary intelligentsia voluntarily impose upon themselves, and the censorship that can sometimes be enforced by pressure groups. Notoriously, certain topics cannot be discussed because of ‘vested interests’. The best-known case is the patent medicine racket. Again, the Catholic Church has considerable influence in the press and can silence criticism of itself to some extent. A scandal involving a Catholic priest is almost never given publicity, whereas an Anglican priest who gets into trouble (e.g. the Rector of Stiffkey) is headline news. It is very rare for anything of an anti-Catholic tendency to appear on the stage or in a film. Any actor can tell you that a play or film which attacks or makes fun of the Catholic Church is liable to be boycotted in the press and will probably be a failure. But this kind of thing is harmless, or at least it is understandable. Any large organisation will look after its own interests as best it can, and overt propaganda is not a thing to object to. One would no more expect the Daily Worker to publicise unfavourable facts about the USSR than one would expect the Catholic Herald to denounce the Pope. But then every thinking person knows the Daily Worker and the Catholic Herald for what they are. What is disquieting is that where the USSR and its policies are concerned one cannot expect intelligent criticism or even, in many cases, plain honesty from Liberal [sic — and throughout as typescript] writers and journalists who are under no direct pressure to falsify their opinions. Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed. This rule has been almost universally observed since 1941, but it had operated, to a greater extent than is sometimes realised, for ten years earlier than that. Throughout that time, criticism of the Soviet régime from the left could only obtain a hearing with difficulty. There was a huge output of anti-Russian literature, but nearly all of it was from the Conservative angle and manifestly dishonest, out of date and actuated by sordid motives. On the other side there was an equally huge and almost equally dishonest stream of pro-Russian propaganda, and what amounted to a boycott on anyone who tried to discuss all-important questions in a grown-up manner. You could, indeed, publish anti-Russian books, but to do so was to make sure of being ignored or misrepresented by nearly me whole of the highbrow press. Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ‘not done’. What you said might possibly be true, but it was ‘inopportune’ and played into the hands of this or that reactionary interest. This attitude was usually defended on the ground that the international situation, and me urgent need for an Anglo-Russian alliance, demanded it; but it was clear that this was a rationalisation. The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards me USSR, and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on me wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in me purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in me Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.

But now to come back to this book of mine. The reaction towards it of most English intellectuals will be quite simple: ‘It oughtn’t to have been published.’ Naturally, those reviewers who understand the art of denigration will not attack it on political grounds but on literary ones. They will say that it is a dull, silly book and a disgraceful waste of paper. This may well be true, but it is obviously not me whole of the story. One does not say that a book ‘ought not to have been published’ merely because it is a bad book. After all, acres of rubbish are printed daily and no one bothers. The English intelligentsia, or most of them, will object to this book because it traduces their Leader and (as they see it) does harm to the cause of progress. If it did me opposite they would have nothing to say against it, even if its literary faults were ten times as glaring as they are. The success of, for instance, the Left Book Club over a period of four or five years shows how willing they are to tolerate both scurrility and slipshod writing, provided that it tells them what they want to hear.

The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say ‘Yes’. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, ‘How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?’, and the answer more often than not will be ‘No’, In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organised societies endure. But freedom, as Rosa Luxembourg [sic] said, is ‘freedom for the other fellow’. The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: ‘I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way. Both capitalist democracy and the western versions of Socialism have till recently taken that principle for granted. Our Government, as I have already pointed out, still makes some show of respecting it. The ordinary people in the street-partly, perhaps, because they are not sufficiently interested in ideas to be intolerant about them-still vaguely hold that ‘I suppose everyone’s got a right to their own opinion.’ It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.

One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. The most ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of: but by holding heretical opinions they ‘objectively’ harmed the régime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations. The same argument was used to justify the quite conscious lying that went on in the leftwing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish civil war. And it was used again as a reason for yelping against habeas corpus when Mosley was released in 1943.

These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists. Soon after the suppressed Daily Worker had been reinstated, I was lecturing to a workingmen’s college in South London. The audience were working-class and lower-middle class intellectuals — the same sort of audience that one used to meet at Left Book Club branches. The lecture had touched on the freedom of the press, and at the end, to my astonishment, several questioners stood up and asked me: Did I not think that the lifting of the ban on the Daily Worker was a great mistake? When asked why, they said that it was a paper of doubtful loyalty and ought not to be tolerated in war time. I found myself defending the Daily Worker, which has gone out of its way to libel me more than once. But where had these people learned this essentially totalitarian outlook? Pretty certainly they had learned it from the Communists themselves! Tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England, but they are not indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by conscious effort. The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous. The case of Mosley illustrates this. In 1940 it was perfectly right to intern Mosley, whether or not he had committed any technical crime. We were fighting for our lives and could not allow a possible quisling to go free. To keep him shut up, without trial, in 1943 was an outrage. The general failure to see this was a bad symptom, though it is true that the agitation against Mosley’s release was partly factitious and partly a rationalisation of other discontents. But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?

It is important to realise that the current Russomania is only a symptom of the general weakening of the western liberal tradition. Had the MOI chipped in and definitely vetoed the publication of this book, the bulk of the English intelligentsia would have seen nothing disquieting in this. Uncritical loyalty to the USSR happens to be the current orthodoxy, and where the supposed interests of the USSR are involved they are willing to tolerate not only censorship but the deliberate falsification of history. To name one instance. At the death of John Reed, the author of Ten Days that Shook the World — first-hand account of the early days of the Russian Revolution — the copyright of the book passed into the hands of the British Communist Party, to whom I believe Reed had bequeathed it. Some years later the British Communists, having destroyed the original edition of the book as completely as they could, issued a garbled version from which they had eliminated mentions of Trotsky and also omitted the introduction written by Lenin. If a radical intelligentsia had still existed in Britain, this act of forgery would have been exposed and denounced in every literary paper in the country. As it was there was little or no protest. To many English intellectuals it seemed quite a natural thing to do. And this tolerance or [sic = of?] plain dishonesty means much more than that admiration for Russia happens to be fashionable at this moment. Quite possibly that particular fashion will not last. For all I know, by the time this book is published my view of the Soviet régime may be the generally-accepted one. But what use would that be in itself? To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.

I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech — the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don’t convince me and that our civilisation over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice. For quite a decade past I have believed that the existing Russian régime is a mainly evil thing, and I claim the right to say so, in spite of the fact that we are allies with the USSR in a war which I want to see won. If I had to choose a text to justify myself, I should choose the line from Milton:

By the known rules of ancient liberty.

The word ancient emphasises the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals arc visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice. An example of this is the failure of the numerous and vocal English pacifists to raise their voices against the prevalent worship of Russian militarism. According to those pacifists, all violence is evil, and they have urged us at every stage of the war to give in or at least to make a compromise peace. But how many of them have ever suggested that war is also evil when it is waged by the Red Army? Apparently the Russians have a right to defend themselves, whereas for us to do [so] is a deadly sin. One can only explain this contradiction in one way: that is, by a cowardly desire to keep in with the bulk of the intelligentsia, whose patriotism is directed towards the USSR rather than towards Britain. I know that the English intelligentsia have plenty of reason for their timidity and dishonesty, indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they justify themselves. But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it. In our country — it is not the same in all countries: it was not so in republican France, and it is not so in the USA today — it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect: it is to draw attention to that fact that I have written this preface.

Psychopolitics

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