Cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational

I have heard the word ”Bias“ for long, but I did not know that there are different types of bias. Recently I have read an article, called ” the 12 cognitive bias that prevent you from being rational“.

Cognitive bias is an appropriate judgment of people toward given circumstance due to missing information, social attribution, cultural and believe. This kind of bias sometimes leads us to make some arbitrarily decision or action. For the further details of the article you can see the link below.
http://io9.com/5974468/the-most-common-cognitive-biases-that-prevent-you-from-being-rational 




Last week, I read though those 12 cognitive bias, but I am interested in “Bandwagon Effect”. In the Bandwagon Effect- people tend to decide and act on something regardless to their own preference and believe, but based the majority because they do not to feel alone. For example, Mr A, before going to meet his friends, he prefers to see an action movie, but once he meets his friends, majority of them prefer to see romance movie, then he would say, Ok! Romance movie is fine. This is to tell us that his decision for going for the romance movie against his own preference and desire. Another example is when you are in a company yearly staff promotion meeting, the meeting facilitator asks all participants to vote for a colleague to be promoted, when majority of participants vote for him/her because they believe he or she is nice, then you also vote for him even though you found that he is not nice to you. You have to vote for him even though you do not like him but because you do not want to be alone.

In my opinion, the kind of effect has major impacts to society; sometimes it becomes society trend, for example, when majority of people believe that drinking beer helps to improve your social connection,  then an individual who wants to make wider networks start to drink. In fact, it is not always true, sometimes without drinking beer you still can make wider networks or connection in society.

In conclusion, bandwagon effect is rational in some circumstance, since it helps you to be saved from being isolated person, but when it comes to unnecessary circumstance, it is better to carefully consider and be honest to your own heart and judgment rather than flow into the crowd.