The aim of this Master Thesis is to integrate cognitive biases in a general model of human psychological functioning which apparently have not been done before.
The model consists of three psychological constructs. The first of these constructs is cognitive bias, which is a collection of different psychological phenomena located in an intersection between economics and psychology. Besides a definition of cognitive bias part 1 includes a brief overview of the history of cognitive biases involving heuristics, the rationality debate and dual-process theory. This is followed by describing a selection of cognitive biases, consisting of hindsight bias, illusion of control, optimism bias, overconfidence effect, fundamental attribution error and false consensus effect. To be included in this selection the phenomena is judged to be a part of everyday life as well as it has to be well-documented. The research makes it evident that humans have tendencies to: think that they knew it all along, think that they are more in control than they actually are, be too optimistic, be to confident, to judge other people by their actions and ignore the circumstances, and to judge other people’s normalcy in terms of one’s own standards.
The second construct is self-esteem. The notion of self-esteem is complex therefore part 2 will provide an understanding of what it is and where it comes from. Furthermore concepts such as high-/low-, implicit-/explicit- and as state-/trait- self-esteem will be included.
Last but not least tankevirksomhed appear as the third construct of the model. The primary purpose of using the concept tankevirksomhed is to mark a practical distinction between cognitive bias and the remaining part of cognition. Part 3will thus focus on imagination, attributional style, inner dialogue, mental habits and patterns of thought. It is also in this part findings contradicting the above will be presented. These findings are based on self-esteem, depression and induced mood.
Part 4 offers new perspectives on the concepts of cognitive bias and high- and low self-esteem, which includes a critique and an introduction to new concepts namely inferiority and other-centrism. Briefly stated other-centrism can be considered the reverse of ego-centrism. Following this part 4 will consider the three hypotheses 1.self-esteem and tankevirksomhed influences cognitive biases, 2. cognitive biases and self-esteem influences tankevirksomheden, and 3. tankevirksomheden and cognitive biases influence self-esteem. This will be done by drawing on relevant findings and arguments presented in the previous parts. Finally an illustration and description of the model provides an answer to the problem of definition.