Using Cognitive Biases in the Teaching of Introduction of Politics

Abstract

Understanding how individuals make decisions is an increasingly important topic in today’s political world. Teaching political science students different cognitive biases and how they impact decision making is important. This paper discusses eight cognitive biases taught in an Introduction to Politics course. Students were pre-tested and post-tested on their self-reported biases and their perceptions of the bias of another person who they disagree with. Our findings show that while students increase their own understanding of their self-bias, they become more aware of the bias of the other person. We discuss the importance of these findings for teaching cognitive bias in the political science classroom as well as education and other social science classrooms and call for more attention to this important teaching theme.