Cognitive biases

[Andrew Lockley]

I'm interested to discover whether anyone has done any work on
systematically investigating the role of various cognitive biases in
perceptions of geoengineering.

Here's a full list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Ones which seem particularly relevant to the consideration of CE are
(in alpha order):

Ambiguity effect - The tendency to avoid options for which missing
information makes the probability seem "unknown"
Bandwagon effect- The tendency to do (or believe) things because many
other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd
behavior
Omission bias - The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or
less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions)
Neglect of probability - The tendency to completely disregard
probability when making a decision under uncertainty [relevant to
termination shock?]
Normalcy bias - The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which
has never happened before.
Planning fallacy - The tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
Pro-innovation bias - The tendency to have an excessive optimism
towards an invention or innovation's usefulness throughout society,
while often failing to identify its limitations and weaknesses.
Reactive devaluation - Devaluing proposals only because they
purportedly originated with an adversary [eg ETC and others' stance on
CE].
Status quo bias - The tendency to like things to stay relatively the
same (see also loss aversion, endowment effect, and system
justification)
Zero-risk bias - Preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a
greater reduction in a larger risk.

Others which may be relevant are (in alpha order):

Availability cascade - A self-reinforcing process in which a
collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its
increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long
enough and it will become true")
Conservatism (Bayesian) - The tendency to revise one's belief
insufficiently when presented with new evidence.
Curse of knowledge - When better-informed people find it extremely
difficult to think about problems from the perspective of
lesser-informed people
Empathy gap - The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength
of feelings, in either oneself or others.
Exaggerated expectation - Based on the estimates, real-world evidence
turns out to be less extreme than our expectations (conditionally
inverse of the conservatism bias)
Framing effect - Drawing different conclusions from the same
information, depending on how that information is presented [already
discussed extensively]
Identifiable victim effect - The tendency to respond more strongly to
a single identified person at risk than to a large group of people at
risk.
Illusory correlation - Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between
two unrelated events.
Mere exposure effect - The tendency to express undue liking for things
merely because of familiarity with them
Optimism bias - The tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating
favorable and pleasing outcomes (see also wishful thinking, valence
effect, positive outcome bias)
Parkinson's Law of Triviality - The tendency to give disproportionate
weight to trivial issues. Also known as bikeshedding, this bias
explains why an organization may avoid specialized or complex
subjects, such as the design of a nuclear reactor, and instead focus
on something easy to grasp or rewarding to the average participant,
such as the design of an adjacent bike shed.
Risk compensation / Peltzman effect - The tendency to take greater
risks when perceived safety increases.