Memory Biases: How Cognitive Bias Impacts Decision Making - Essay Sample

Introduction

The way someone may remember an event may, in turn, be biased for a number of reasons and thus makes one make biased decisions, and this is all due to memory. Cognitive bias can be defined as an error in the system of the thinking process that affects the judgements and decisions that people usually make. Cognitive biases are sometimes an attempt by someone's brain trying to simplify processing of information, for instance when one is trying to make decisions and judgements about the world one would like to think they are objective capable and logical by evaluating and taking in information that is available to a person (Ambler, 2009). The purpose of this paper is to write an observational journal on the already gathered advertisements and compare them to approaches in social sciences that may be relevant to these advertisements.

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Having to write an observational journal which is a peer-reviewed journal, and for the paper learning the social sciences that will be done through a viewpoint on research body of digital environments. In the first ad, "Dermablend Professional Foundation" wherein one of the photo the lady looks discoloured or burnt but in the other she looks scar-free with no markings on her skin. This picture at first was an exaggeration to an extent seeing someone discoloured and then because of using a particular creme they magically got healed of burn scars on their face, which was impractical. The second poster looks like a big and noisy bus in India where the only calm person is the guy in the suit, and this is an advertisement on "Airwaves" (a kind of mints or gum).

This picture is trying to reflect that even in the worst conditions in the world, as displayed by the man in the suit he is calm also though in a loud, overcrowded and dirty environment and it's all because of a couple of mints, this too is not plausible and mostly misses the mark (Poels, 2006). The third portrait shows a riot and is of a group known as "Chariot India" this is not well shown what it is supposed to be advertised, but it looks like an airline ad with the caption, 'customized individual travel plans' (on the right bottom corner). There are also the words "you do stupid things in a group" plastered boldly signifying that even in all the chaos you need the right airline to use for your travels.

The last advertisement shows a man drinking with himself in a bar, and the man is none other than Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter. The tagline reads, "would you have a drink with you?" and he is promoting an alcoholic vodka with the name of the drink being "Stoli", this is the most traditional way of improving one's product, and it's still very much useful using a known celebrity to do it, with emphasis on having a drink alone which is acceptable too. Finally, in cognitive biases one may make wrong judgements and poor decisions but think that your making intelligent decisions, with the thought of considering every option when making a decision one would take a lot of time when one is even contemplating in making the simplest of decisions like in the riot poster where you are told to work as an individual and not to make all decisions in a group.

References

Ambler, T., & Burne, T. (1999). The impact of the effect on the memory of advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 39, 25-34.

Poels, K., & Dewitte, S. (2006). How to capture the heart? Reviewing 20 years of emotion measurement in advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 46(1), 18-37.