Cognitive Bias In Social Comparisons

The cognitive bias in social comparison is the phenomenon of the individual to show overconfidence and lacking confidence. Researchers usually call this phenomenon as "Better-than-average" effect and "Worse-than- average"effect. This thesis probes the mechanism of cognitive bias on decision-making process and outcome, as well as the internal psychological mechanism, on the basis of the reasons of cognitive bias in social comparison. Cognitive bias was proved and the researchers explained this phenomenon in the previous study.The investigators have probed the reason of cognitive bias in the period of the 1980's and have put forward self-enhancement theory, differential weighting theory and differential information theory.Based on previous research, the article chooses university students to probe the reason of cognitive bias with the impact of judgment and decision-making by 3 series of experiments. The preparatory study tests the cognitive bias influence on the different task type and information through different life events and observability. The second study investigates the cognitive bias influence on different task type and information by both sides strength, also the decision-making intention. The last study controls the difficulty of 10-item trivia quiz and the time to explore the internal psychological mechanism, as well as the impact on decision-making. The results are as follows:(1) Different type problem lead different cognitive bias;(2) Different type problem and information jointly affect cognitive bias and occur interaction;(3) Cognitive bias affects the individual decision-making and behavior;(4) When a task is easier than expected, people will believe that they are better than others.(5) When a task is more difficult than expected, people will believe that they areworse than others.