SIMULATING COGNITIVE BIAS IN INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENTS: A FRAMEWORK FOR USING BEHAVIOURAL SIMULATION GAMES AS EDUCATIONAL TOOLS

Cognitive biases, systematic patterns of deviation from rational judgment, are well documented in psychological research, yet teaching people to recognise and resist them remains a genuinely unsolved problem. Traditional instruction, lectures explaining a bias and giving textbook examples, has been shown repeatedly to produce weak and short-lived improvement, in part because bias operates automatically and unconsciously, in exactly the moments a learner is not consciously applying what they were taught. This paper proposes a framework for designing interactive simulation games that let a user experience a cognitive bias operating on their own decisions in real time, rather than only reading a description of it, and argues that this experiential approach addresses a specific weakness in conventional bias education. The paper reviews the psychological foundation for this approach, proposes a concrete design framework mapping specific game mechanics to specific biases, discusses the technical architecture required to build and evaluate such a system, and examines the genuine limitations and ethical questions this kind of simulation raises. The paper concludes that interactive simulation is not a guaranteed cure for cognitive bias, but it is a substantially better-matched tool for the problem than passive instruction, and outlines what a rigorous implementation would actually require.