Bias in human judgement under uncertainty?

The claim is frequently made that human judgement and reasoning are vulnerable to cognitive biases. Such biases are assumed to be inherent in that they are attributed to the nature of the mental processes that produce judgement. In this paper, we review the psychological evidence for this claim in the context of the debate concerning human judgemental competence under uncertainty. We consider recent counter-arguments which suggest that the evidence for cognitive biases may be dependent on observations of performance on inappropriate tasks and by comparisons with inappropriate normative standards. We also consider the practical implications for the design of decision support systems.