Omission bias

What it is

Judging harm caused by action as worse than equal harm caused by inaction.

Related

• Status quo bias bias
  Doing nothing keeps things as they are and feels less blameworthy.
• Action bias bias
  These are a pair: a bias toward acting, and a bias against the harm of acting.
• Fear of regret bias
  Harm from acting stings more than harm from not acting, so we avoid acting.

Appears in

• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly#44: Omission bias

References

• Wikipedia: Omission bias en.wikipedia.org
• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: List of cognitive biases en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: Cognitive bias codex en.wikipedia.org

More in “Deciding and acting: incentives, loss and commitment”