Case file
Projection Bias
- Filed under
- Not Enough Meaning
The charge
Projection bias is assuming your future self or other people will want what you want right now.
How it operates
Current feelings and preferences are vivid and hard to mentally discount.
Logged incidents
- Incident 01
A hungry buyer over-orders snacks.
- Incident 02
A PM loves power-user features and assumes mainstream users do too.
- Incident 03
A morning-person manager schedules 8 a.m. workshops for everyone.
What to watch for
Ask: Would this still seem right if my mood, energy, or context changed?
Recommended action
Add cooling-off periods and test decisions on users in different states or segments.
Known associates
- Sunk Cost FallacyEasily confusedWe continue a failing course of action because we have already invested time, money, or effort in it.
- Optimism BiasEasily confusedWe expect our future to go better than base rates justify, especially for risks, timelines, and outcomes…
- Overconfidence EffectEasily confusedPeople's confidence in their judgments often exceeds their actual accuracy, especially for predictions,…
- 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.
Source of record