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ethics
You judge inaction more leniently than harmful action.
The omission bias is the tendency to view harmful inaction as less morally wrong than harmful action with the same outcome.
If you fail to act and someone suffers, you feel less responsible than if you took a direct action that resulted in the same harm. You favor a status quo where the blame is harder to trace.
You often choose the safer, less ethical path of doing nothing.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Ritov and Baron, 1992, Omission Bias
- What the check found
- The definition is accurate and the seminal study by Ritov and Baron is correctly identified. The distinction between omission bias and status quo bias is conceptually maintained in academic literature.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.