option-paralysis

Option Paralysis

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Option Paralysis is a cognitive phenomenon characterized by the overwhelming feeling when faced with numerous choices. It often stems from information overload and the fear of regretting decisions. This can lead to missed opportunities and heightened stress. Coping strategies include limiting choices and setting priorities. Real-world examples include online shopping and career decisions with multiple options.

Definition and Overview

  • Option Paralysis, also known as choice overload or decision fatigue, is a cognitive phenomenon in which individuals are overwhelmed by the abundance of choices available to them.
  • It occurs when the sheer number of options makes decision-making difficult and can lead to anxiety, stress, and even avoidance of making choices.

Key Concepts and Elements

  • Abundance of Choices:
    • Option paralysis arises when individuals are presented with a multitude of choices in various aspects of life, such as consumer products, career paths, or lifestyle decisions.
  • Decision Complexity:
    • The complexity of the decisions involved can exacerbate option paralysis. Decisions that have a significant impact on one’s life or involve numerous variables can be particularly overwhelming.
  • Information Overload:
    • Individuals experiencing option paralysis often struggle to process the vast amount of information associated with each choice.
    • Information overload can lead to mental fatigue and a sense of being unable to make an informed decision.

Causes and Triggers

  • Consumer Culture:
    • Living in a consumer-driven society, individuals are bombarded with countless product choices, leading to shopping-related option paralysis.
  • Digital Age:
    • The internet and online shopping have expanded the number of choices available for everything from clothing to travel destinations, exacerbating option paralysis.
  • Fear of Missing Out (FOMO):
    • The fear of missing out on a better option can lead individuals to explore every choice thoroughly, contributing to decision fatigue.

Signs and Symptoms

  • Procrastination:
    • Individuals experiencing option paralysis may delay decisions indefinitely, avoiding the need to choose.
  • Anxiety and Stress:
    • Anxiety and stress can arise from the fear of making the wrong choice or the pressure to make the “best” choice.
  • Decision Avoidance:
    • Some individuals resort to decision avoidance, opting to let others decide or choosing the default option to avoid the stress of making a choice.

Impact and Consequences

  • Reduced Satisfaction:
    • Ironically, having more choices does not necessarily lead to greater satisfaction. Option paralysis can result in less satisfaction with the chosen option due to doubts and regrets.
  • Impaired Decision Quality:
    • Decision fatigue can impair the quality of decisions made under option paralysis, as individuals may resort to arbitrary or irrational choices.
  • Wasted Time and Energy:
    • Overanalyzing and exploring numerous options can consume a significant amount of time and mental energy, often with little payoff in terms of better outcomes.

Overcoming Option Paralysis

  • Set Decision Criteria:
    • Establish clear criteria for decision-making to narrow down choices.
    • Identify the most important factors to consider in making the decision.
  • Limit Options:
    • Actively reduce the number of options under consideration. Focus on a manageable subset of choices.
  • Prioritize:
    • Rank options based on their alignment with your values and priorities.
    • This helps in making trade-offs and selecting the most suitable choice.
  • Time Constraints:
    • Set specific time limits for making decisions. This prevents excessive contemplation and forces action.
  • Trust Your Instincts:
    • Trust your gut feeling or intuition. Sometimes, instincts can guide you toward a decision that aligns with your preferences.

Examples and Real-World Scenarios

  • Shopping for Electronics:
    • When purchasing a new smartphone or laptop, consumers are often inundated with numerous models, specifications, and features, leading to option paralysis.
  • Career Choices:
    • Graduates entering the job market may feel overwhelmed by the variety of career options available to them, making it challenging to choose a path.
  • Online Dating:
    • In the realm of online dating, individuals may struggle with option paralysis when presented with numerous potential matches and profiles.

Overcoming Option Paralysis:

  • Embrace Imperfection: Understand that there may not always be a single “perfect” choice.
  • Time Constraints: Set time limits for decision-making to avoid prolonged indecision.
  • Practice Decision-Making: Developing decision-making skills through practice can reduce option paralysis.

Case Studies

  • Grocery Shopping: When faced with numerous brands, flavors, and package sizes for everyday items like cereal or toothpaste, shoppers may find it challenging to make a quick decision.
  • Travel Planning: Researching and choosing from a wide array of destinations, accommodations, and activities while planning a vacation can be overwhelming.
  • Streaming Services: With the abundance of content on streaming platforms, deciding what movie or TV show to watch can take longer than the viewing itself.
  • Social Media: Scrolling through endless social media posts, articles, and videos can make it difficult to choose what to engage with, leading to decision fatigue.
  • Mobile Apps: App stores offer a multitude of apps for various purposes, making it daunting for users to select the best one for their needs.
  • Wedding Planning: The wedding industry offers an extensive range of options for venues, dresses, menus, and decor, making wedding planning a potentially overwhelming process.
  • Tech Gadgets: When purchasing electronics or gadgets, consumers may be inundated with features, specifications, and models, causing hesitation in making a choice.
  • Restaurant Delivery Apps: Food delivery apps can present users with an extensive list of restaurants and cuisines, making it challenging to decide what to order.
  • Book Selection: In bookstores or online marketplaces, readers may struggle to choose a book from countless titles, genres, and authors.
  • Fashion Shopping: The fashion industry introduces new clothing collections frequently, offering consumers a vast selection of clothing items and styles to choose from.

Key Highlights

  • Definition: Option Paralysis, also known as choice overload, refers to the psychological phenomenon where individuals experience difficulty making decisions when presented with an extensive array of options.
  • Overwhelming Choices: It occurs when the number of available choices becomes overwhelming, leading to anxiety, stress, and decision fatigue.
  • Consumer Behavior: Choice overload is often observed in consumer decision-making, where individuals struggle to select products or services from a wide range of available options.
  • Decision Fatigue: Constantly evaluating numerous choices can deplete mental energy, resulting in decision fatigue and potentially poorer decision quality.
  • Impact on Satisfaction: Research suggests that having too many options can reduce overall satisfaction with the chosen item or service, as individuals may continually question if they made the right decision.
  • Marketing and Sales: Marketers and businesses must be mindful of choice overload as it can lead to consumers delaying or avoiding decisions, impacting sales and marketing strategies.
  • Nudging and Simplification: To mitigate choice overload, businesses may employ strategies like product bundling, curated selections, or providing clear recommendations to simplify decision-making.
  • Online Environments: The internet and e-commerce platforms have amplified choice overload due to the vast array of products and services available online.
  • Personalization: Tailoring choices based on individual preferences and past behavior can help reduce choice overload by presenting options that are more relevant to the individual.
  • Balancing Variety and Simplicity: Achieving a balance between offering variety and preventing choice overload is crucial for businesses and organizations to enhance the decision-making experience of their customers.

FrameworkDescriptionWhen to Apply
Decision Fatigue– Decision Fatigue: Option paralysis can result from decision fatigue, where individuals become mentally exhausted from making repeated choices. Understanding decision fatigue helps individuals recognize when they may be experiencing overwhelm and take steps to mitigate its effects. Interventions may involve simplifying choices, prioritizing decisions, and scheduling breaks to replenish mental energy and reduce the risk of option paralysis.– Recognizing and mitigating mental exhaustion from decision-making through simplifying choices or prioritizing decisions, in high-pressure environments or decision-intensive tasks where decision fatigue is common, in implementing breaks or relaxation techniques that replenish mental energy, in adopting approaches that promote well-being and resilience through decision fatigue management principles.
Limited Information Processing– Limited Information Processing: Option paralysis can occur when individuals are overwhelmed by too much information and struggle to process it effectively. Understanding limited information processing helps individuals identify strategies for managing information overload and making decisions more efficiently. Interventions may involve chunking information, setting decision criteria, and seeking input from trusted sources to filter and prioritize options, reducing the cognitive load associated with decision-making.– Managing information overload and making decisions more efficiently through chunking information or setting decision criteria, in complex decision-making processes or information-intensive tasks where cognitive load is high, in implementing input from trusted sources that help filter and prioritize options, in adopting approaches that improve decision quality and speed through limited information processing principles.
Decision-Making Frameworks– Decision-Making Frameworks: Option paralysis can be mitigated through the use of decision-making frameworks that provide structure and guidance for making choices. Understanding decision-making frameworks helps individuals break down decisions into manageable steps and weigh the pros and cons of different options systematically. Interventions may involve using frameworks such as SWOT analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and decision trees to clarify decision criteria, evaluate alternatives, and reduce uncertainty in decision-making.– Clarifying decision criteria and evaluating alternatives systematically using decision-making frameworks like SWOT analysis or decision trees, in strategic planning or problem-solving situations where clarity is essential, in implementing cost-benefit analysis techniques that weigh the pros and cons of different options, in adopting approaches that facilitate decision-making and reduce uncertainty through decision-making framework principles.
Set Decision Deadlines– Set Decision Deadlines: Option paralysis can be alleviated by setting deadlines for making decisions, which helps prevent prolonged deliberation and encourages action. Understanding the importance of decision deadlines helps individuals prioritize choices and avoid getting stuck in analysis paralysis. Interventions may involve establishing clear timelines, setting decision milestones, and using time management techniques to create a sense of urgency and momentum in decision-making processes.– Creating a sense of urgency and momentum in decision-making through setting clear deadlines or milestones, in situations where prolonged deliberation or analysis paralysis is a risk, in implementing time management techniques that prioritize choices and actions, in adopting approaches that foster accountability and decisiveness through decision deadline principles.
Elimination by Aspects– Elimination by Aspects: Option paralysis can be addressed through the elimination by aspects technique, where individuals systematically eliminate options based on specific criteria. Understanding elimination by aspects helps individuals narrow down choices and focus on the most important decision criteria. Interventions may involve identifying key decision factors, ranking options based on these factors, and eliminating options that do not meet minimum criteria, streamlining the decision-making process and reducing the cognitive burden of evaluating multiple options.– Narrowing down choices and focusing on key decision criteria through elimination by aspects technique, in situations where decision complexity or option overload is a challenge, in implementing decision factors that prioritize options based on specific criteria, in adopting approaches that streamline decision-making and reduce cognitive burden through elimination by aspects principles.
Satisficing– Satisficing: Option paralysis can be mitigated through the satisficing approach, where individuals choose the first option that meets their minimum criteria rather than seeking the optimal solution. Understanding satisficing helps individuals make decisions more quickly and efficiently by accepting good-enough outcomes rather than striving for perfection. Interventions may involve setting decision thresholds, identifying acceptable solutions, and focusing on achievable goals to avoid getting bogged down in endless deliberation.– Accepting good-enough outcomes and avoiding perfectionism through satisficing approach, in situations where seeking the optimal solution leads to prolonged deliberation, in implementing decision thresholds that identify acceptable solutions, in adopting approaches that prioritize efficiency and effectiveness through satisficing principles.
Use of Heuristics– Use of Heuristics: Option paralysis can be reduced through the use of heuristics, which are mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that simplify decision-making processes. Understanding heuristics helps individuals make judgments and choices more efficiently by relying on past experience and intuition. Interventions may involve using heuristics such as availability, anchoring, and similarity to quickly evaluate options and make decisions based on limited information, reducing the cognitive effort required for complex decision-making tasks.– Making judgments and choices more efficiently through the use of heuristics like availability or anchoring, in situations where cognitive load is high or time is limited, in implementing decision-making shortcuts that rely on past experience and intuition, in adopting approaches that promote quick and effective decision-making through heuristic principles.
Delegate Decision-Making Authority– Delegate Decision-Making Authority: Option paralysis can be mitigated by delegating decision-making authority to individuals or teams with relevant expertise and knowledge. Understanding the benefits of delegation helps distribute decision-making responsibilities and empower others to make choices autonomously. Interventions may involve clarifying decision criteria, providing guidance and support, and trusting delegated individuals or teams to make informed decisions, freeing up resources and reducing the burden of decision-making on individuals experiencing option paralysis.– Distributing decision-making responsibilities and empowering others through delegation, in situations where individuals or teams have relevant expertise and knowledge, in implementing guidance and support mechanisms that facilitate informed decision-making, in adopting approaches that promote autonomy and accountability through decision-making delegation principles.
Utilize Decision Support Tools– Utilize Decision Support Tools: Option paralysis can be alleviated by leveraging decision support tools that provide insights, analysis, and recommendations to aid decision-making processes. Understanding the role of decision support tools helps individuals access relevant information and evaluate options more effectively. Interventions may involve using tools such as decision matrices, software algorithms, and predictive analytics to streamline decision-making, reduce uncertainty, and increase confidence in choices, improving decision quality and speed.– Accessing relevant information and evaluating options more effectively through decision support tools like decision matrices or predictive analytics, in complex decision-making processes where uncertainty is high, in implementing software algorithms that streamline decision-making processes, in adopting approaches that enhance decision quality and speed through decision support tool principles.
Limit Choice Architecture– Limit Choice Architecture: Option paralysis can be mitigated through choice architecture interventions that limit the number of options presented to individuals. Understanding choice architecture principles helps design decision environments that guide individuals towards better choices by reducing decision complexity. Interventions may involve offering fewer options, simplifying decision interfaces, and providing default choices to help individuals overcome option paralysis and make decisions more confidently.– Reducing decision complexity and promoting better choices through choice architecture interventions, in decision environments where option overload is a concern, in implementing default choices that simplify decision-making processes, in adopting approaches that guide individuals towards confident decisions through choice architecture principles.
Practice Decision-Making Skills– Practice Decision-Making Skills: Option paralysis can be addressed through regular practice and honing of decision-making skills, which helps individuals become more adept at making choices under uncertainty. Understanding the importance of decision-making skills development helps individuals build confidence and resilience in decision-making processes. Interventions may involve decision-making simulations, case studies, and role-playing exercises to provide opportunities for skill development and experimentation, enabling individuals to navigate option paralysis more effectively and make better decisions.– Building confidence and resilience in decision-making through regular practice and skill development, in educational or professional settings where decision-making is critical, in implementing decision-making simulations or role-playing exercises that provide hands-on experience, in adopting approaches that promote continuous improvement and adaptability through decision-making skills development principles.

Connected Thinking Frameworks

Convergent vs. Divergent Thinking

convergent-vs-divergent-thinking
Convergent thinking occurs when the solution to a problem can be found by applying established rules and logical reasoning. Whereas divergent thinking is an unstructured problem-solving method where participants are encouraged to develop many innovative ideas or solutions to a given problem. Where convergent thinking might work for larger, mature organizations where divergent thinking is more suited for startups and innovative companies.

Critical Thinking

critical-thinking
Critical thinking involves analyzing observations, facts, evidence, and arguments to form a judgment about what someone reads, hears, says, or writes.

Biases

biases
The concept of cognitive biases was introduced and popularized by the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Biases are seen as systematic errors and flaws that make humans deviate from the standards of rationality, thus making us inept at making good decisions under uncertainty.

Second-Order Thinking

second-order-thinking
Second-order thinking is a means of assessing the implications of our decisions by considering future consequences. Second-order thinking is a mental model that considers all future possibilities. It encourages individuals to think outside of the box so that they can prepare for every and eventuality. It also discourages the tendency for individuals to default to the most obvious choice.

Lateral Thinking

lateral-thinking
Lateral thinking is a business strategy that involves approaching a problem from a different direction. The strategy attempts to remove traditionally formulaic and routine approaches to problem-solving by advocating creative thinking, therefore finding unconventional ways to solve a known problem. This sort of non-linear approach to problem-solving, can at times, create a big impact.

Bounded Rationality

bounded-rationality
Bounded rationality is a concept attributed to Herbert Simon, an economist and political scientist interested in decision-making and how we make decisions in the real world. In fact, he believed that rather than optimizing (which was the mainstream view in the past decades) humans follow what he called satisficing.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

dunning-kruger-effect
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a task overestimate their ability to perform that task well. Consumers or businesses that do not possess the requisite knowledge make bad decisions. What’s more, knowledge gaps prevent the person or business from seeing their mistakes.

Occam’s Razor

occams-razor
Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.

Lindy Effect

lindy-effect
The Lindy Effect is a theory about the ageing of non-perishable things, like technology or ideas. Popularized by author Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the Lindy Effect states that non-perishable things like technology age – linearly – in reverse. Therefore, the older an idea or a technology, the same will be its life expectancy.

Antifragility

antifragility
Antifragility was first coined as a term by author, and options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragility is a characteristic of systems that thrive as a result of stressors, volatility, and randomness. Therefore, Antifragile is the opposite of fragile. Where a fragile thing breaks up to volatility; a robust thing resists volatility. An antifragile thing gets stronger from volatility (provided the level of stressors and randomness doesn’t pass a certain threshold).

Systems Thinking

systems-thinking
Systems thinking is a holistic means of investigating the factors and interactions that could contribute to a potential outcome. It is about thinking non-linearly, and understanding the second-order consequences of actions and input into the system.

Vertical Thinking

vertical-thinking
Vertical thinking, on the other hand, is a problem-solving approach that favors a selective, analytical, structured, and sequential mindset. The focus of vertical thinking is to arrive at a reasoned, defined solution.

Maslow’s Hammer

einstellung-effect
Maslow’s Hammer, otherwise known as the law of the instrument or the Einstellung effect, is a cognitive bias causing an over-reliance on a familiar tool. This can be expressed as the tendency to overuse a known tool (perhaps a hammer) to solve issues that might require a different tool. This problem is persistent in the business world where perhaps known tools or frameworks might be used in the wrong context (like business plans used as planning tools instead of only investors’ pitches).

Peter Principle

peter-principle
The Peter Principle was first described by Canadian sociologist Lawrence J. Peter in his 1969 book The Peter Principle. The Peter Principle states that people are continually promoted within an organization until they reach their level of incompetence.

Straw Man Fallacy

straw-man-fallacy
The straw man fallacy describes an argument that misrepresents an opponent’s stance to make rebuttal more convenient. The straw man fallacy is a type of informal logical fallacy, defined as a flaw in the structure of an argument that renders it invalid.

Streisand Effect

streisand-effect
The Streisand Effect is a paradoxical phenomenon where the act of suppressing information to reduce visibility causes it to become more visible. In 2003, Streisand attempted to suppress aerial photographs of her Californian home by suing photographer Kenneth Adelman for an invasion of privacy. Adelman, who Streisand assumed was paparazzi, was instead taking photographs to document and study coastal erosion. In her quest for more privacy, Streisand’s efforts had the opposite effect.

Heuristic

heuristic
As highlighted by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer in the paper “Heuristic Decision Making,” the term heuristic is of Greek origin, meaning “serving to find out or discover.” More precisely, a heuristic is a fast and accurate way to make decisions in the real world, which is driven by uncertainty.

Recognition Heuristic

recognition-heuristic
The recognition heuristic is a psychological model of judgment and decision making. It is part of a suite of simple and economical heuristics proposed by psychologists Daniel Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer. The recognition heuristic argues that inferences are made about an object based on whether it is recognized or not.

Representativeness Heuristic

representativeness-heuristic
The representativeness heuristic was first described by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The representativeness heuristic judges the probability of an event according to the degree to which that event resembles a broader class. When queried, most will choose the first option because the description of John matches the stereotype we may hold for an archaeologist.

Take-The-Best Heuristic

take-the-best-heuristic
The take-the-best heuristic is a decision-making shortcut that helps an individual choose between several alternatives. The take-the-best (TTB) heuristic decides between two or more alternatives based on a single good attribute, otherwise known as a cue. In the process, less desirable attributes are ignored.

Bundling Bias

bundling-bias
The bundling bias is a cognitive bias in e-commerce where a consumer tends not to use all of the products bought as a group, or bundle. Bundling occurs when individual products or services are sold together as a bundle. Common examples are tickets and experiences. The bundling bias dictates that consumers are less likely to use each item in the bundle. This means that the value of the bundle and indeed the value of each item in the bundle is decreased.

Barnum Effect

barnum-effect
The Barnum Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals believe that generic information – which applies to most people – is specifically tailored for themselves.

First-Principles Thinking

first-principles-thinking
First-principles thinking – sometimes called reasoning from first principles – is used to reverse-engineer complex problems and encourage creativity. It involves breaking down problems into basic elements and reassembling them from the ground up. Elon Musk is among the strongest proponents of this way of thinking.

Ladder Of Inference

ladder-of-inference
The ladder of inference is a conscious or subconscious thinking process where an individual moves from a fact to a decision or action. The ladder of inference was created by academic Chris Argyris to illustrate how people form and then use mental models to make decisions.

Goodhart’s Law

goodharts-law
Goodhart’s Law is named after British monetary policy theorist and economist Charles Goodhart. Speaking at a conference in Sydney in 1975, Goodhart said that “any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.” Goodhart’s Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Six Thinking Hats Model

six-thinking-hats-model
The Six Thinking Hats model was created by psychologist Edward de Bono in 1986, who noted that personality type was a key driver of how people approached problem-solving. For example, optimists view situations differently from pessimists. Analytical individuals may generate ideas that a more emotional person would not, and vice versa.

Mandela Effect

mandela-effect
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remembers an event differently from how it occurred. The Mandela effect was first described in relation to Fiona Broome, who believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s. While Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and died 23 years later, Broome remembered news coverage of his death in prison and even a speech from his widow. Of course, neither event occurred in reality. But Broome was later to discover that she was not the only one with the same recollection of events.

Crowding-Out Effect

crowding-out-effect
The crowding-out effect occurs when public sector spending reduces spending in the private sector.

Bandwagon Effect

bandwagon-effect
The bandwagon effect tells us that the more a belief or idea has been adopted by more people within a group, the more the individual adoption of that idea might increase within the same group. This is the psychological effect that leads to herd mentality. What in marketing can be associated with social proof.

Moore’s Law

moores-law
Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years. This observation was made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 and it become a guiding principle for the semiconductor industry and has had far-reaching implications for technology as a whole.

Disruptive Innovation

disruptive-innovation
Disruptive innovation as a term was first described by Clayton M. Christensen, an American academic and business consultant whom The Economist called “the most influential management thinker of his time.” Disruptive innovation describes the process by which a product or service takes hold at the bottom of a market and eventually displaces established competitors, products, firms, or alliances.

Value Migration

value-migration
Value migration was first described by author Adrian Slywotzky in his 1996 book Value Migration – How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Value migration is the transferal of value-creating forces from outdated business models to something better able to satisfy consumer demands.

Bye-Now Effect

bye-now-effect
The bye-now effect describes the tendency for consumers to think of the word “buy” when they read the word “bye”. In a study that tracked diners at a name-your-own-price restaurant, each diner was asked to read one of two phrases before ordering their meal. The first phrase, “so long”, resulted in diners paying an average of $32 per meal. But when diners recited the phrase “bye bye” before ordering, the average price per meal rose to $45.

Groupthink

groupthink
Groupthink occurs when well-intentioned individuals make non-optimal or irrational decisions based on a belief that dissent is impossible or on a motivation to conform. Groupthink occurs when members of a group reach a consensus without critical reasoning or evaluation of the alternatives and their consequences.

Stereotyping

stereotyping
A stereotype is a fixed and over-generalized belief about a particular group or class of people. These beliefs are based on the false assumption that certain characteristics are common to every individual residing in that group. Many stereotypes have a long and sometimes controversial history and are a direct consequence of various political, social, or economic events. Stereotyping is the process of making assumptions about a person or group of people based on various attributes, including gender, race, religion, or physical traits.

Murphy’s Law

murphys-law
Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy’s Law was named after aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy. During his time working at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949, Murphy cursed a technician who had improperly wired an electrical component and said, “If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it.”

Law of Unintended Consequences

law-of-unintended-consequences
The law of unintended consequences was first mentioned by British philosopher John Locke when writing to parliament about the unintended effects of interest rate rises. However, it was popularized in 1936 by American sociologist Robert K. Merton who looked at unexpected, unanticipated, and unintended consequences and their impact on society.

Fundamental Attribution Error

fundamental-attribution-error
Fundamental attribution error is a bias people display when judging the behavior of others. The tendency is to over-emphasize personal characteristics and under-emphasize environmental and situational factors.

Outcome Bias

outcome-bias
Outcome bias describes a tendency to evaluate a decision based on its outcome and not on the process by which the decision was reached. In other words, the quality of a decision is only determined once the outcome is known. Outcome bias occurs when a decision is based on the outcome of previous events without regard for how those events developed.

Hindsight Bias

hindsight-bias
Hindsight bias is the tendency for people to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were. The result of a presidential election, for example, seems more obvious when the winner is announced. The same can also be said for the avid sports fan who predicted the correct outcome of a match regardless of whether their team won or lost. Hindsight bias, therefore, is the tendency for an individual to convince themselves that they accurately predicted an event before it happened.

Read Next: Biases, Bounded Rationality, Mandela Effect, Dunning-Kruger Effect, Lindy Effect, Crowding Out Effect, Bandwagon Effect.

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