Outcome bias

Outcome bias is a cognitive bias which refers to the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of judging it based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Tell me about
your mother
Psychology
For our next session...
  • Cognitive biases
  • Mental health
  • Superstition
  • Famed psychologists
Popping into your mind
v - t - e

For example, in one scenario, a real estate agent fails to disclose to the customers the high probability of the basement of the house flooding. This risk exists at the time of his decision not to tell his customers, regardless of whether there actually is a flooding later or not. Therefore, this decision should be viewed negatively in both cases. However, in reality the agent will in most cases be viewed much more negatively if the basement is actually flooded. While this is emotionally understandable, purely logically it should not make a difference. This example also portrays how outcome bias is much more likely in case of negative events. [1]

Outcome bias might be mistaken for hindsight bias. The difference is that hindsight bias describes a situation where the "correct" choice at the time of the decision seems obvious later on (with the benefit of hindsight), while it really was not at the time.

References
  1. Francesca Gino, Don A. Moore, Max H. Bazerman. (2009) No harm, no foul: The outcome bias in ethical judgments. Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 08-080
This psychology-related article is a stub.
You can help RationalWiki by expanding it.
This article is issued from Rationalwiki. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.