For your final project, you will conduct research on Cognitive Errors and Biases. This assignment has two parts. First, you will create a 17-slide PowerPoint presentation to illustrate the various errors and biases you found through your research. Then, you will write a 500-word discussion paper about your own intellectual development regarding errors and biases. Both parts of this assignment should be submitted for the final project. See below for detailed instructions.
Part 1: PowerPoint Presentation On Cognitive Errors and Biases
Read pages 113-133 of your text, which discuss cognitive and perceptual errors in thinking. Search for online sources (at least 4 reliable, respectable, and trustworthy sources). You will collect information about cognitive errors. All biases, prejudices, disproportionate fears, irrational expectations, etc., are cognitive errors.
You should introduce such errors IN GENERAL in your presentation but also use them in your personal essay.
Children display much more of such errors and are less aware of them than adults, although adults also lack insight into such errors, mostly (that is, their own errors because we can often spot such issues in other people). In any case, most of us, as we grow up, start to discover/catch our cognitive errors and, in many cases, correct them to various degrees. Magical thinking, fallacies, self-fulfilling prophecies, ‘Irrational Beliefs’ (as well as irrational beliefs), religious and political extremism, sexism, ageism, racism (and other biases, including — very importantly — confirmation bias), anger, hatred, dread, panic, extreme suspicion, extreme greed, conspiracy theories, etc. are all cognitive errors. Even simple mistakes in logic (even without biases or emotions) are cognitive errors. Once again: cognitive errors are related to thinking/information processing.
Here is what your slide layout should look like.
Slide 1: Title slide
Slides 2 through 16: Specific Cognitive Errors and Biases
Slide 17: References (at least four)
Part 2: Discussion Paper
You will answer the following questions about your own intellectual development regarding cognitive errors and biases (see my description of those above) in an essay (at least 500 words):
1. Discuss those of your biases of which you became aware through your intellectual development over time.
2.. Do you make judgments and decisions differently now than you did at an earlier point in your life? Please provide examples of how errors/biases influenced your judgments/decisions you made at an earlier point in your life.
3. Discuss a recent judgment/decision that you made and explain how this judgment/decision is different from what you would have made at an earlier time based on the errors/biases you could not recognize at an earlier time.