The art of cognitive blindspots is like wearing glasses that hide parts of your view, you don’t even realize something’s missing.
Imagine you’re playing hide-and-seek in a big room. You look all around, but you always miss the person hiding behind the couch, not because they're sneaky, but because you never check there. That's a cognitive blindspot, it’s when your brain skips over something important without you noticing.
Like a Puzzle with Missing Pieces
Think of your brain as a puzzle solver. Most of the time, it puts pieces together really well. But sometimes, it misses a piece entirely, like when you’re so focused on finding the red ball that you don’t see the blue one right next to it. That’s a cognitive blindspot in action.
Why It Happens
Sometimes your brain is just too busy or too sure of what it already knows. Like when you wear mismatched socks and never notice, until someone points it out! Your brain skips over that detail because it's used to seeing one sock, not two different ones.
Cognitive blindspots are everywhere, in games, in school, even in big decisions. But once you know they’re there, you can start looking for them too!
Examples
- A student fails a test but thinks they did well because they only remember the questions they got right.
- You argue with your friend about a movie, both convinced you're right, even though neither saw the same scenes.
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See also
- How bees use swarm intelligence to make decisions?
- Gambler's Fallacy Explained: Think You're Owed A Win?
- How being poor leads to poor decisions?
- How Do Countries Decide Whether to Go to War?
- How Confirmation Bias Affects Decision Making | Yale SOM?