A recent study adds to our understanding of the relationship between dopamine release and decision-making processes. The researchers discovered that when dopamine is released, decisions are made faster but are less accurate. These findings support the notion that dopamine regulates decision thresholds during reinforcement learning. Dopamine has been linked to several aspects of reward learning…
Author: D.C.Demetre
The anchoring bias effect, also known as the anchoring effect, is a cognitive bias that influences decision-making and judgment. It occurs when people rely too heavily on the first piece of information they encounter, known as the anchor, and subsequently adjust their evaluations and predictions based on this reference point. This heuristics causes a distortion…
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction or expectation that influences events in a way that directly or indirectly causes the belief or expectation to come true. Simply putting a label to someone or something can influence perception and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. A self-fulfilling prophecy can have either positive or negative consequences. One negative self-fulfilling…
Overconfidence has long been acknowledged as a serious problem in judgment and decision-making. Overconfidence, also known as confidence bias, can even foster delusional thinking, which is common in people with schizophrenia. “Overconfidence occurs when individuals subjectively assess their aptitude to be higher than their objective accuracy [and] has long been recognized as a critical problem…
Rutgers researchers argue that facts matter and explain why beliefs are more reasonable than they appear, even when politics and science are at odds with the truth, conspiracy theories are on the rise, and disinformation is widespread. In the study, researchers analyzed previous research and developed a new scientific framework that, according to the researchers,…
Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science have discovered in unprecedented detail how the brains of male and female mice react differently to stress. The findings may lead to a better understanding of health conditions affected by chronic stress, such as anxiety, depression, and even obesity and diabetes, and pave the way for personalized treatments…
Degeneration of dopamine-producing neurons is widely regarded as the initial cause of Parkinson’s disease. But a new study from Northwestern Medicine researchers challenges the belief. The new research suggests that synaptic dysfunction in neurons precedes neurodegeneration by causing dopamine deficits. “Based on these findings, we hypothesize that targeting dysfunctional synapses before the neurons are degenerated…
The Illusory Truth Effect is a cognitive bias in which people tend to believe that a statement is true if they have encountered it before. The phenomenon happens whether the interval between repetitions is minutes, weeks, or even months. Furthermore, the effect is independent of the source of the remarks and occurs even when participants…
Repetition priming is the enhancement of a behavioural response when stimuli are given repeatedly. Accuracy or reaction time improvements might occur when the repeated stimuli are either the same or similar to the preceding stimuli. It has been demonstrated that these improvements are cumulative, so that as the number of repetitions increases, responses become progressively…