Optimism bias

What it is

Expecting good outcomes to be more likely, and bad ones less likely, for ourselves than for others.

Related

• Overconfidence effect bias
  Overconfidence is about how right we are; optimism bias is about how well things will go for us.
• Planning fallacy bias
  Expecting things to go well makes plans too rosy.
• Hedonic treadmill bias
  We overestimate how much better things will make us feel and for how long.
• Wishful thinking fallacy
  Wishful thinking is optimism bias at the level of beliefs: expecting the outcome we prefer.
• House-money effect bias
  Early wins make risks feel smaller than they are.
• Strategic misrepresentation bias
  Deliberate overselling is easier when we also half-believe it.

Appears in

• Munger's 25 standard causes of human misjudgment#13: Overoptimism tendency

References

• Wikipedia: Optimism bias en.wikipedia.org
• Munger's 25 standard causes of human misjudgment fs.blog
• Wikipedia: List of cognitive biases en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: Cognitive bias codex en.wikipedia.org

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