The enhancement of cognitive brain functions by means of technology has become a reality. Recent research has demonstrated that various pharmaceuticals can have—at least modest—performance-enhancing effects in healthy individuals (for reviews, see Repantis et al., 2010; Husain and Mehta, 2011). In line with these findings, the off-label use of pharmacological substances like methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin-^®) or modafinil (e.g., Provigil-^®) seems to be prevalent, in particular among students (Herman-Stahl et al., 2007; Smith and Farah, 2011; Dietz et al., 2013), and professionals in very responsible jobs like physicians (Franke et al., 2013). It has even been argued that the use of such substances might become an implicit requirement for individuals in certain professions (e.g., Maslen et al., in press). Non-pharmacological methods of cognitive enhancement (CE), such as gene therapy or neural implants, could become more widely used in the future (Bostrom and Sandberg, 2009). Even though there is considerable use of CE, recent research shows that the general public has strongly negative attitudes regarding the introduction and use of CE (for a review, see Schelle et al., 2014).

In this article, we argue that these concerns are partly driven by pervasive cognitive biases. A bias is a systematic deviation from a standard of rationality (Baron, 2005), an error frequently committed by the human mind. We use the definition of “rationality” common in cognitive science, referring to normative models of accurate belief formation (Foley, 1987; Audi, 2001) and optimal decision-making in order to achieve one’s goal (Dawes, 1998). (Ir)rationality is therefore relative to the goal of having accurate beliefs or to goals in general. Thus, while some cognitive patterns may be suboptimal with regard to a particular goal, they may be perfectly optimal with regard to another. For illustration, consider “status quo bias”, which we will address in the following section. If, upon reflection, an agent consciously and stably places some intrinsic value on the status quo, then in no sense can the agent be said to irrationally prefer the status quo (i.e., to make a cognitive mistake in doing so). However, the available evidence suggests that human agents do not, upon reflection, intrinsically care about the status quo, or at least to a significantly lesser degree than their immediate intuitions would have it: the experiments documenting our intuitive status quo preference (e.g., Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988) are interesting because they reveal a fact about our intuitive decision-making which our reflection disapproves of and is thus irrational. Also, nearly all action-guiding moral theories have an account of when the status quo should be modified, which is why the general bias towards it will tend to bring about suboptimal moral outcomes (c.f. Bostrom and Ord, 2006). Furthermore, if by “moral” decision-making we mean decision-making that is optimal from an “altruist” or “impartial” perspective, then non-related goals such as status quo preservation will lead to irrationality, too. Hence, it is justifiable to classify the status quo bias and the other biases we are discussing below as, indeed, biases.

The aim of this paper is to offer a new perspective on the debate about CE by identifying cognitive biases that affect our common intuitions and moral reactions. We will first give a rough overview of the academic debate and the public’s view of CE and then discuss a number of potential biases that are likely to influence widespread judgments about CE.

In the academic debate about CE, opinions of critics (often bioconservatives) and supporters (often transhumanists) are quite sharply divided. Critics often question its medical safety, considering the potential side effects and unknown long-term health risks (Healey and Rayner, 2008). Critics also see CE as a threat to human autonomy (Habermas, 2003), authenticity (Elliott, 2004) humility and solidarity (Sandel, 2004) and equality and fairness (Fukuyama, 2004). Proponents, on the other hand, focus on the potential positive aspects and potentials of CE. For instance, Savulescu (2006) points out that the introduction of CE could help decrease unfair natural differences in abilities. Bostrom (2008) emphasizes the enormous positive leverage effect that CE could generate in the future. He speculates that a 1% increase in all scientists’ cognitive performance “would amount to an indirect contribution equal to 100,000 times what the average scientist contributes” (p. 2). Others note that CE is not relevantly different from traditional forms of enhancement, such as information technology (Harris, 2010).

Recent research reviewing the general public’s attitudes towards CE has shown that lay people share many of the critics’ concerns about CE (Schelle et al., 2014). Participants from samples of students or parents, for example, fear that safety is not ensured (Forlini and Racine, 2012; Partridge et al., 2013). They think that CE could lead to peer pressure and thus undermine our autonomous decisions (Forlini and Racine, 2009). Also, they worry that unequal distribution of CE would result in an unfair advantage of a privileged few (Fitz et al., 2013). These views are often reflected in exaggerated reports by the media and might even lead to severe aversive social consequences for users (Faulmüller et al., 2013). The Guardian, for example, has described CE substances as “capitalism’s wonder-pills”, which “turn you into the closest human approximation there is to a machine” (Mahdawi, 2012).

We believe that the common concerns about CE are justified at least to some extent, and a greater scientific understanding of CE is required in order to draw confident conclusions (Maslen et al., 2014). Most importantly, long-term safety of CE is not currently ensured (c.f. Husain and Mehta, 2011) and is being called into question (e.g., Urban and Gao, 2014). Nevertheless, we speculate that the public’s views on CE are negatively biased. While the involved biases do not necessarily undermine any specific argument for or against CE—these would need to be evaluated on their philosophical and scientific merits—they might partially explain the general opposition to CE as well as the selective focus on certain arguments and exaggeration of their relative weight. It is not unusual for human cognition to selectively search for certain classes of arguments and systematically neglect or undervalue certain others (c.f. Kunda, 1990 on “motivated reasoning”)—a bias that might affect the judgments of both opponents and proponents of CE. Biases may lead people to come up with a set of arguments that expresses sound considerations but is significantly incomplete or weighted wrongly. We thus propose that in order to fully explain prevalent opposition to CE, it is necessary to look into the role biases play in the CE context. Awareness of these biases is a precondition of rational public debate about CE, which in turn is needed for developing and establishing optimal social and legal regulations.

Empirical research into biases over the last four decades has shown that human reasoning is very prone to systematic irrational patterns, i.e., cognitive biases (e.g., Tversky and Kahneman, 1974), especially when the subject matter is as complex, novel, abstract and ideologically loaded as is the use and regulation of CE (Cosmides and Tooby, 1992; Kahan et al., 2013). We argue that a number of cognitive biases well-documented in psychology and behavioral economics partly explain prevalent negative attitudes towards CE. While we believe that attitudes towards CE are predominantly negatively biased, there may also be biases leading us to irrationally favor CE. We will indicate some biases likely to affect judgments about CE and illustrate why and how they may be impairing our judgments in this context. Thus, our aim is to suggest several hypotheses about potential irrational sources of the prevalent (negative or positive) attitudes towards CE. Some of the biases on our below list have been studied in behavioral economics, such as status quo bias, loss aversion, risk aversion, scope insensitivity. The others—omission bias, nature bias, and optimistic bias—have been addressed more in psychology and philosophy. Our application of the knowledge about biases to the CE debate is comparatively novel, as is the application to ethical issues in general. We hope to offer a valuable perspective as a contribution to more rational public debate on controversial ethical issues involving new practices or technologies. Since ethical questions often involve high stakes, this endeavor can be expected to yield important results for public ethical debate.

We have aimed to offer and motivate the perspective that biases are likely to impair judgments about CE, mostly in the negative direction. We are aware that the above list of biases is incomplete and speculative and hope that empirical research will further elaborate on our suggestions. It must be emphasized that “biases” often do provide sensible decisional rules of thumb—after all, many of them seem to have proven to be successful heuristics for our evolutionary ancestors. However, the practical scope of this argument is very limited first because our current environment is different from our evolutionary environment, and second because the metaphorical goals of our genes that have been served by some “bias-heuristics” need not coincide with our goals (Stanovich, 2004). Nevertheless, the existence of such biases cannot alone undermine the soundness of any objection to CE. But they can explain why people, including policy makers, may take an unreflective or one-sided position on such debates. More generally, many of our moral intuitions about controversial practices are likely to be influenced by such cognitive biases. Not only do we require psychological interventions such as remedial heuristics, we require good ethical argument and relevant scientific evidence to identify which of our moral intuitions are justified, and which are not.

We believe the CE debate would benefit from research investigating the role cognitive biases play in judgments about CE and from the subsequent development of techniques that help people judge the relevant issues in a less biased way. These techniques should be simple heuristics (Larrick, 2004) that are easily applicable in the context of CE. Bostrom and Ord (2006) Reversal Test or Savulescu (2007) Loss/Gain Heuristic are examples of such heuristics. Psychological research could test whether people’s attitudes towards CE change after applying de-biasing techniques, i.e., by being made aware of the biases potentially impairing their judgments. If they do change, we have reason to assume that cognitive biases play a role in the current attitudes towards CE.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.