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Outcome bias

Judging the quality of a decision mainly by how it turned out.

Published 04 August 2026Updated 04 August 2026

Outcome bias confuses a good result with a good decision process and a bad result with a bad process. Evaluate what was knowable at the time, the probabilities considered, and whether the process was sound before the outcome became known.

Sources

Debiasing Decisions: Improved Decision Making With a Single Training Intervention

Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences / 2015 / Paper

Longitudinal experiments testing video and game-based debiasing interventions.