Case file
Normalcy Bias
- Filed under
- Not Enough Meaning
The charge
Normalcy bias is underestimating the possibility and impact of disaster because the present still feels normal.
How it operates
A familiar baseline suppresses updating until threats are already hard to ignore.
Logged incidents
- Incident 01
A company delays incident-response preparation because it has never had a major breach.
- Incident 02
A city ignores flood planning after several quiet years.
- Incident 03
Leadership postpones layoffs until cash is almost gone.
What to watch for
Ask: What if the future is not a continuation of the recent past?
Recommended action
Use premortems, scenario planning, and drills for low-frequency high-impact events.
Known associates
- Mental AccountingMental accounting is treating money or resources differently based on arbitrary labels instead of on total…
- Appeal to ProbabilityAppeal to probability fallacy is assuming that because something could happen or is plausible, it probably…
- Murphy's Law (as cognitive bias)As a cognitive bias, Murphy's Law is the tendency to overexpect that things will go wrong, often in chains,…
- Zero-Sum ThinkingZero-sum bias is assuming one person's or group's gain must come at another's expense, even when mutual gain…
- Survivorship BiasSurvivorship bias is drawing lessons from the cases that remain visible while missing the failures that…
- Subadditivity EffectSubadditivity effect is assigning higher total probability when a broad category is unpacked into specific…
Source of record