Master Your Thinking — Cognitive Biases Academy
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Cognitive Biases Academy
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190+ Cognitive Biases in 66 Languages
Master Your Thinking
See reality more clearly and make better decisions. Explore 190+ cognitive biases to understand why the mind misjudges, and what you can do about it.
A free social-impact project in 66 languages, with one target: a billion people who can catch their own thinking going wrong.
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What is a cognitive bias?
A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking: a mental shortcut that helped our ancestors decide fast and now quietly distorts everyday judgment. This library covers 190+ of them in plain language — where each one comes from, and how to catch it in yourself.
Every entry ends with its primary sources. That comes to more than 1,800 academic references across the 190 articles.
Reviewed by Volodymyr Zhukov
Last reviewed August 2026
The 10% Rule
It only takes 10% of us.
In 2011, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center modelled how an idea travels through a network. Under 10% committed believers it stalls — reaching the majority would take longer than the universe has existed. Cross 10% and the majority follows fast.
Apply that to how we think. If one person in ten can name a cognitive bias out loud and refuses to make decisions on one, the other nine adjust. Not because anyone argued them into it, but because sloppy reasoning stops going unchallenged.
So that is the plan. One billion people through a free course on how the mind misjudges. We are heading the other way at the moment: confidence keeps outrunning knowledge, and most people have never been told their brain misfires by design. Ten percent is what turns that around.
Source: Xie et al., “Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities”, Physical Review E 84, 011130 (2011).
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Ten people in a hundred. That is the whole threshold: past it, a way of thinking stops being a minority position and becomes the default.
10%
of a population is the tipping point for an unshakable belief<br>Xie et al., Physical Review E, 2011
1 billion<br>people we want to take the course
66<br>languages, and every article is free to read
Categories
Bias Categories
Browse biases by category to understand different aspects of human decision making.
Or see the full list of all cognitive biases<br>→
01
Too much information
5 patterns
We notice things already primed in memory or repeated often
Bizarre, funny, visually-striking, or anthropomorphic things stick out more
We notice when something has changed
We are drawn to details that confirm our existing beliefs
We notice flaws in others more easily than flaws in ourselves
02
Not enough meaning
6 patterns
We find stories and patterns even in sparse data
We fill in characteristics from stereotypes, generalities, and prior histories
We imagine things and people we're familiar with or fond of as better
We simplify probabilities and numbers to make them easier to think about
We think we know what other people are thinking
We project our current mindset and assumptions onto the past and future
03
Need to act fast
4 patterns
To act, we must be confident we can make an impact and feel what we do is important
To stay focused, we favor the immediate, relatable thing in front of us
To get things done, we tend to complete things we've invested time and energy in
To avoid mistakes, we aim to preserve autonomy and group status, and avoid irreversible decisions
04
What should we remember?
5 patterns
We store memories differently based on how they were experienced
We reduce events and lists to their key elements
We discard specifics to form generalities
We edit and reinforce some memories after the fact
We favor simple-looking options and complete information over complex, ambiguous options
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