The impact of cognitive biases on professional decision-making: A review of four occupational areas

The author reviewed the research on the impact of cognitive biases on professional decision-making in four occupational areas (management, finance, law, and medicine). Two main findings emerged. First, the literature reviewed shows that professionals in these four areas are prone to cognitive biases. Framing, overconfidence, and anchoring are the most recurrent biases over the areas covered. Second, the level of evidence supporting the claim that cognitive biases impact professional decision-making differs across the areas covered. Research in finance relied primarily upon secondary data while research in medicine and law relied mainly upon primary data from vignette studies (both levels of evidence are found in management). Two research gaps are highlighted. The first one is a potential lack of ecological validity of the findings from vignette studies, which are numerous. The second is the neglect of individual differences in cognitive biases, which might lead to the false idea that all professionals are susceptible to biases, to the same extent. To address that issue, we suggest that reliable, specific measures of cognitive biases (which items are adapted to the context in which a particular decision is made) need to be improved or developed.