Case file
Outcome Bias
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- Not Enough Meaning
The charge
Outcome bias is judging the quality of a decision mainly by its result instead of by the information and process available when it was made.
How it operates
Outcomes are concrete and emotional, while decision quality is less visible and harder to assess.
Logged incidents
- Incident 01
A company praises a reckless acquisition because the market rescued it.
- Incident 02
A PM is blamed for a failed experiment despite sound reasoning.
- Incident 03
A salesperson gets rewarded for a deal closed through unhealthy discounting.
What to watch for
Ask: Would I still call this a good decision if luck had gone the other way?
Recommended action
Use a decision-quality checklist that evaluates the process ex ante, not just the outcome ex post.
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.
- 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.
- Impact BiasImpact bias is overestimating how intense and how long your future emotional reaction to an event will be.
Source of record