The brain’s way of protecting your favourite beliefs — even when they’re wrong.
Confirmation bias is what happens when the brain looks for evidence that supports what it already believes — and ignores, downplays, or explains away anything that challenges it.
It’s a built-in feature of human thinking.
How your brain cuts corners and calls it thinking.
A heuristic is your brain’s way of saying:
“That looks close enough — let’s go with it.”
It’s a mental shortcut. A lazy estimate. A rule-of-thumb that saves energy, skips nuance, and gets you to a conclusion fast — whether it’s correct or not.
It’s the reason you:
Social mimicry is what happens when people copy the behaviour, beliefs, or preferences of others — not because they’ve thought it through, but because everyone else seems to be doing it.
It’s the human version of, “Well, if they’re jumping off a bridge…”
Of course, no one ever admits to it.
Because Thinking for Yourself Is Just Too Exhausting.
Tribalism is the brain’s lazy shortcut to feeling safe, smart, and superior — all without the burden of actually understanding anything.
Your brain’s habit of handing out its own baggage like party favours.
Projection is what happens when your brain takes something uncomfortable inside you — a thought, a fear, a bit of unflattering emotional gunk — and flings it onto someone else like it’s their problem.
Cognitive Dissonance: When the Brain Can’t Face Its Own Reflection Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that arises when a person’s actions, beliefs, or values are in conflict — a kind of psychological static where the mind quietly realises, “I can’t be right about everything I think I am.” Rather than accept this contradiction, the […]
Naïve Realism: Or, “I’m Not Biased, Everyone Else Is Just an Idiot” Naïve realism is the delightful psychological delusion that one’s personal view of the world is objective truth, and anyone who disagrees must be: It’s your brain looking at the messy, complex chaos of life and saying, “Hmm yes, I’ve got this all figured […]
Motivated reasoning is what happens when the brain, instead of being a noble truth-seeking machine, turns into a spineless yes-man wearing a clown suit. It doesn’t care about facts. It cares about feelings. Comfort. Ego. Being right, even when it’s dead wrong.
Your brain’s talent for connecting dots that don’t belong together.
Classical conditioning is what happens when the brain links two things — not because they make sense together, but because they just keep showing up at the same time.
It’s how a dog learns to salivate at the sound of a bell, because the bell always meant food.
It’s how a human flinches at an email notification, because it usually means more work or a passive-aggressive crisis.
Also known as: Let’s not bother with thinking at all, shall we?
Habitual thinking is what happens when the brain stops asking questions and just runs whatever script it used yesterday.
And the day before.
And the day before that.
It’s not thinking.
It’s mental muscle memory — like making tea and forgetting if you’ve already boiled the kettle.