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decision making
You judge the morality of an action by its success.
Observers systematically rate the quality of a decision based on whether it produced a positive or negative outcome.
If a risky strategy yields a profit, people praise it as 'brilliant.' If the same strategy yields a loss, the same people condemn it as 'reckless.' You are evaluating the luck, not the logic.
Results are a poor judge of character.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Baron and Hershey (1988), Outcome Bias in Decision Evaluation
- What the check found
- The claim accurately reflects the core finding of the seminal 1988 paper, although the 'supporting text' provided is an interpretive summary rather than a direct quote from the source.
- 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.