Case file
Pessimism bias
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- Not Enough Meaning
The charge
Pessimism bias is expecting worse outcomes than the evidence justifies.
How it operates
Threat detection and loss aversion skew forecasts toward negative outcomes.
Logged incidents
- Incident 01
A startup prices plans as if every quarter will miss.
- Incident 02
A PM avoids a bold experiment because backlash feels almost certain.
- Incident 03
A job seeker never applies because rejection feels inevitable.
What to watch for
Ask: What is my base-rate forecast if I remove fear from the estimate?
Recommended action
Do calibration training and produce best-case, base-case, and worst-case ranges.
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