Bias and fallacy quiz
Twelve everyday scenarios — can you spot the cognitive bias or logical fallacy in each? Every answer comes with a plain explanation. Nothing you enter is saved.
Scenario 1
A used-car listing says “Was $18,000 — now $14,500!” You start thinking of $14,500 as a bargain before checking what similar cars actually sell for.
Scenario 2
After seeing several news stories about shark attacks, a friend decides swimming at the beach is too dangerous — without ever looking up how often attacks actually happen.
Scenario 3
Convinced a new coworker is careless, you notice every typo they make but don’t register the many reports they get exactly right.
Scenario 4
You paid for a nonrefundable series of cooking classes. Halfway through you dislike them and have better uses for those evenings, but you keep going “so the money isn’t wasted.”
Scenario 5
Asked for a range she is 90% sure contains her project’s finish date, a manager says “between March 3 and March 5.” The project finishes in May.
Scenario 6
In a book club, someone argues the novel’s ending feels rushed. Another member replies, “You barely read anything, so why would we trust your opinion?”
Scenario 7
A roommate suggests splitting the cleaning chores on a schedule. The other replies, “So you think I’m a slob who never cleans anything?”
Scenario 8
“Either we buy the most expensive laptop on the market, or we’ll be stuck with a machine that breaks within a month.”
Scenario 9
“If we let one customer return an item after 30 days, soon everyone will return everything and the store will go out of business.”
Scenario 10
In an advertisement, a famous chef explains that one brand of car tires is the safest on the road.
Scenario 11
After two rainy weekends at a lake, a family decides the lake “always” has bad weather.
Scenario 12
A team wore new matching socks to Saturday’s game and won, so the coach insists everyone wear them to every game.
How it works
- Covers five well-studied biases (anchoring, availability, confirmation, sunk cost, overconfidence) and seven common fallacies (ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, slippery slope, appeal to authority, hasty generalization, post hoc).
- Scenarios are original and hypothetical; explanations restate our Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies guides.
How to read it
Real arguments are messier than quiz questions. Treat these labels as prompts for better questions, not verdicts — many arguments that resemble a fallacy turn out to be reasonable, and a flawed argument doesn’t make its conclusion false.
The full explanation is in our guide: Seven Common Logical Fallacies and How to Spot Them.