Case file
Restraint Bias
- Filed under
- Not Enough Meaning
The charge
Restraint bias is overestimating your ability to resist temptation, stay calm, or stick to rules in the heat of the moment.
How it operates
Self-control feels stronger in the abstract than it does under real cues and pressure.
Logged incidents
- Incident 01
A trader skips hard risk limits because he expects to stay rational live.
- Incident 02
A shopper keeps junk food at home assuming moderation will be easy.
- Incident 03
A team launches without freeze rules believing scope creep will stay under control.
What to watch for
Ask: Am I trusting future willpower more than the environment I am creating?
Recommended action
Use precommitment, implementation intentions, and temptation-proof environments.
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