Case file
Impact Bias
- Filed under
- Not Enough Meaning
The charge
Impact bias is overestimating how intense and how long your future emotional reaction to an event will be.
How it operates
People focus on the focal event and underweight adaptation and the many other things life will contain.
Logged incidents
- Incident 01
A founder thinks a failed launch will demoralize the team for a year.
- Incident 02
A candidate assumes rejection will crush confidence indefinitely.
- Incident 03
A buyer expects a new office to transform daily happiness.
What to watch for
Ask: How long did similar events affect me or others in the past, really?
Recommended action
Use affective-forecasting reference classes and reminders about adaptation.
Known associates
- Telescoping EffectTelescoping effect is misremembering when past events happened, often pulling distant events closer and…
- Rosy RetrospectionRosy retrospection is remembering past experiences as better than they felt at the time.
- Hindsight BiasHindsight bias is the tendency to feel, after an outcome is known, that it was predictable all along.
- Outcome BiasOutcome bias is judging the quality of a decision mainly by its result instead of by the information and…
- Moral LuckMoral luck is judging people differently for similar choices because luck changed the eventual outcome.
- DeclinismDeclinism is seeing the past as better than it was and the future as likely worse than it will be.
Source of record