In Strategy Safari Mintzberg reports a nice table from a book by Spyros Makridakis Forecasting, Planning and Strategy for the 21st Century.

The table summarizes nicely the scientific literature on how biases influence decision making. These biases have obvious consequences for strategy making.

Search for supportive evidence: Willingness to gather facts which lead toward certain conclusions and to disregard other facts which threaten them

Inconsistency: Inability to apply the same decision criteria in similar situations

Conservatism: Failure to change ( or changing slowly) one’s own mind in light of new information evidence

Recency: The most recent events dominate those in the less recent past, which are downgraded or ignored

Availability: Reliance upon specific events easily recalled from memory, to the exclusion of other pertinent information

Anchoring: Predictions are unduly influenced by initial information which is given more weight in the forecasting process

Illusory correlations: Belief that patterns are evident and/or two variables are casually related when they are not

Selective perception: People tend to see problems in terms of their own background and experience

Regression effect: Persistent increases [in some phenomenon] might be due to random reasons which, if true, would [raise] the chance of [subsequent] decrease. Alternatively, persistent decreases might [raise] the chances of [subsequent] increases

Attribution of success and failure: Success is attributed to one’s skills while failures to bad luck, or someone else’ s error. This inhibits learning as it does not allow recognition of one’s mistakes

Optimism, wishful thinking: People’s preferences for future outcomes affect their forecasts of such outcomes

Underestimating uncertainty: Excessive optimism, illusory correlation, and the need to reduce anxiety result in underestimating future uncertainty