A voter follows the news closely but consistently seeks out only media sources that support her existing political views, dismisses evidence that contradicts her position, and interprets ambiguous information as supporting her preferred candidate.
Which of the following cognitive biases best explains this pattern of behavior?
The availability heuristic
The representativeness heuristic
Hindsight bias
Confirmation bias
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An engineer has always solved structural problems by reinforcing existing supports. When presented with a new design challenge that could be solved more efficiently by removing a support entirely, she keeps attempting to add reinforcements despite repeatedly failing.
Which of the following best explains the engineer's difficulty?
Mental set
Functional fixedness
The representativeness heuristic
Confirmation bias
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Following a series of widely publicized shark attacks, a coastal community sees a dramatic decline in beach attendance, even though statistical data show that the annual probability of being attacked by a shark is approximately 1 in 3.75 million.
Which of the following cognitive biases best explains the community's overestimation of this risk?
Confirmation bias
The representativeness heuristic
The availability heuristic
Hindsight bias
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