90 checked facts

Decision-making

Everything on this site about decision-making — each one naming the study behind it.

You align your views to minimize conflict within groups.
Groupthink occurs when the desire for harmony or conformity in a decision-making group results in an irrational or dys…
You trust vague descriptions that seem specifically about you.
A 1948 experiment showed that people rate generic personality assessments as highly accurate when they believe they ar…
Your memories ignore the duration of your past experiences.
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP).…
You take action even when it is useless.
In high-pressure situations, people often prefer any action over doing nothing, even if inaction is safer.…
You finish books you hate because you started them.
The sunk cost fallacy predisposes you to continue an endeavor based on past investments.…
Your ability to make good choices erodes by evening.
Decision fatigue suggests that quality of judgment declines after repeated choices, a phenomenon famously illustrated …
You value a small reward today over more tomorrow.
Hyperbolic discounting shows that as a reward becomes more distant, its subjective value drops sharply.…
Asking yourself why you like something makes you like it less.
A 1993 study showed that analyzing your own preferences can lead to choices that decrease your long-term satisfaction …
You falsely believe you predicted the outcome.
Hindsight bias causes you to view events as inevitable after they have occurred.…
You value an object more because you own it.
The endowment effect describes a persistent discrepancy between willingness-to-accept (WTA) and willingness-to-pay (WT…
You think your happiness depends on one specific circumstance.
Focalism is the tendency to overestimate the extent to which one specific event will impact your long-term emotional s…
You want what you are told you cannot have.
Psychological reactance is a motivational state that occurs when your freedom to choose is threatened or eliminated.…
You feel more attraction when your heart rate is high.
The misattribution of arousal causes you to interpret unrelated physical excitement as romantic interest.…
You reach different conclusions depending on how options are presented.
The framing effect describes how your decision-making shifts based on whether an outcome is described in terms of gain…
Your mind is trapped by the first number you hear.
The anchoring effect causes individuals to rely too heavily on the initial piece of information offered when making su…
You value items more just because they are rare.
A 1975 study showed that participants rated cookies as more desirable when they were presented in a nearly empty jar.…
You assume your future self will have your current desires.
Projection bias is the tendency to overestimate how much your future preferences will align with your present state.…
You remember the intensity of an experience, not duration.
The peak-end rule explains how you evaluate past events based on their most intense moment and their ending.…
You keep finishing the book you dislike reading.
The tendency to follow through on an investment is often driven by the cost already incurred.…
You choose the option based on how it is described.
The framing effect describes how the presentation of information influences your perception of the risks and rewards i…
You interpret early information as a fixed anchor.
The anchoring bias describes how the first number or piece of data you receive heavily influences all subsequent estim…
You are more troubled by almost winning than losing.
Counterfactual thinking explains why a bronze medalist is often happier than a silver medalist.…
You unconsciously prefer items that share your own initials.
In a 2002 study, researchers proposed that people are disproportionately likely to live in cities or pursue careers th…
Your ability to make sound choices depletes throughout the day.
While the 2011 Danziger study identified a correlation between judicial rulings and meal breaks, the 'decision fatigue…
You ignore the context while fixating on the outcome.
Focalism causes you to overestimate how much a single event will influence your future happiness.…
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 out…
You reject good ideas because you did not create them.
The 'not-invented-here' bias causes people to devalue external solutions in favor of internal ones.…
You consume more when portion sizes are labeled as units.
The unit bias explains why people eat or use more when a quantity is presented as a single item.…
One new purchase triggers a cycle of constant upgrades.
The Diderot effect describes how a single acquisition often leads to a spiral of consumption.…
You accept the pre-selected option far too often.
In Germany (opt-in), 12% of the population have registered as donors, while in Austria (opt-out), 99% are classified a…
You keep reading this book because you started.
Investing time or money in a failing venture makes you paradoxically more likely to continue investing further.…
Your choice depends entirely on how options are phrased.
In the 1981 study, 72% of participants chose a certain outcome of saving 200 out of 600 lives over a risky option with…
You believe your effort influences random outcomes.
A 1975 study found people bet more on lottery tickets when they selected the numbers themselves.…
You judge the quality of a choice by its outcome.
Outcome bias is the tendency to evaluate the intelligence of a decision based on the final result rather than the qual…
You prefer things to stay exactly as they are.
Status quo bias describes a preference for the current state of affairs, even when changing it would provide a clear a…
A third option changes what you choose entirely.
A 1982 study found that adding a clearly inferior third option increases the likelihood that people will choose the or…
You feel a frantic need to move during static crises.
The 2007 study by Bar-Eli et al. demonstrates that goalkeepers choose to jump to the side even though staying in the c…
You assume your future self will share your current desires.
The 2003 paper by Loewenstein, O'Donoghue, and Rabin established the theoretical framework for 'projection bias' that …
Your self-control is exhausted by simple mental math.
In a 1999 study, participants who were asked to memorize a seven-digit number were about 1.5 times more likely to choo…
You feel a frantic urge to act during uncertainty.
In a study of professional soccer penalty kicks, goalkeepers were statistically more likely to dive left or right than…
Your ability to make good choices erodes all day.
A 2011 study observed that judges granted fewer favorable decisions as a decision session progressed, with rates retur…
You ignore information that challenges your existing beliefs.
A 1979 study found that participants discounted evidence that contradicted their opinions while accepting flawed evide…
You think your past self knew more than it did.
A 1975 study by Baruch Fischhoff demonstrated that knowing an outcome significantly impairs the ability to accurately …
You value immediate satisfaction more than future success.
Delay discounting is the tendency to prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards. Hyperbolic discou…
Confidence is often a poor proxy for actual competence.
The overconfidence effect is the tendency for people to overestimate the accuracy of their own knowledge and the succe…
You persist in bad decisions because of past costs.
The sunk cost fallacy describes the tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has …
You do not remember an experience by its total duration.
A 1996 study showed that retrospective evaluations of pain are determined by the peak intensity and the final moment.…
You prefer a sure gain, even when a gamble pays more.
The pseudocertainty effect leads people to choose an outcome perceived as certain over a probabilistic one, even when …
You consistently overestimate your ability to handle immediate temptation.
The restraint bias is a pattern where individuals overestimate their self-control and consequently put themselves in s…
You judge past decisions by their results, not their logic.
The outcome bias causes people to retrospectively evaluate a decision as poor if the result was unfavorable, even if t…
You think your future self will share your current tastes.
The projection bias is your systematic failure to predict how your future preferences will change based on your curren…
You value the things you own more than identical objects.
The mere ownership effect demonstrates that merely possessing an item increases its perceived value significantly.…
You judge how likely something is by your memory.
The ease with which examples come to mind determines your probability assessment.…
You prioritize immediate satisfaction over long-term gain every time.
People often choose a smaller, immediate reward over a larger, delayed one, but their preferences frequently reverse i…
You hold losing investments far longer than winning ones.
A 1985 study found that investors are significantly more likely to sell a stock that has gained value than one that ha…
Random numbers influence your estimate of an unknown value.
A 1974 experiment demonstrated that participants' estimates for geopolitical statistics were significantly skewed by a…
You are statistically likely to choose the pre-selected option.
A 2003 study of organ donation found that countries with an opt-out policy had nearly 100% participation compared to 1…
Your brain ignores most of an experience to save energy.
In a 1996 study, participants judged the total unpleasantness of a colonoscopy based heavily on the peak discomfort an…
You are a terrible judge of your future self.
A 2003 study found that people systematically underestimate how much their future preferences will change based on the…
You avoid the unknown even when it offers rewards.
Ambiguity aversion describes the tendency to prefer options with known probabilities over options with unknown probabi…
Your choice changes when an irrelevant option appears.
The decoy effect occurs when your preference between two choices shifts after a third, inferior option is introduced.…
You decide based on how data is phrased.
In their 1981 paper, Tversky and Kahneman demonstrated that the framing of outcomes as gains or losses influences pref…
You continue painful projects to avoid admitting loss.
Individuals invest more time and resources into a failing project simply because they have already invested in it.…
You judge harmful inaction as less severe than action.
Research indicates that people rate harmful consequences resulting from inaction as more acceptable than identical har…
Your ability to make sound decisions erodes throughout the day.
A 2011 study of over 1,000 judicial rulings found that parole boards were significantly more likely to grant favorable…
You retroactively invent reasons to prefer your choice.
A 2007 study found that people misremember the features of rejected options to make their chosen one seem superior.…
Your initial estimate is a trap you set.
A 1974 study showed that people's final estimates for unknown quantities are heavily skewed by the first arbitrary num…
You fear risk more when the outlook is positive.
People show a strong preference for certainty when a positive outcome is likely, even when a riskier option offers a h…
You believe you have finally finished changing your personality.
In a 2013 study of 7,500 adults, participants consistently underestimated how much their personality, values, and pref…
The pain of losing is stronger than the joy of winning.
Prospect theory demonstrates that losses are weighted more heavily than equivalent gains, a phenomenon known as loss a…
You continue losing ventures because of the investment already made.
A 1985 study found that people are more likely to continue investing in a failing project if they have already committ…
You value money differently depending on where it came from.
A 1985 study found that people treat funds differently—and are more likely to spend 'windfall' gains—even when the amo…
You feel more in control when you participate in luck.
In a 1975 study, participants perceived a game based entirely on chance as a skill-based challenge simply because they…
You assess risks as lower because you feel good.
A 2000 study demonstrated that affective evaluation of an activity, influenced by information framing, causes inverse …
You seek useless information just to feel more certain.
A body of research in judgment and decision-making, discussed in Jonathan Baron's 1988 book Thinking and Deciding, ind…
A third option changes which of two items you prefer.
A 1982 study demonstrated that adding a clearly inferior third option makes a more expensive or premium item appear mo…
You assume your future self wants what you want now.
A 2003 theoretical paper by Loewenstein, O'Donoghue, and Rabin formalized the concept of 'projection bias,' building o…
You are convinced the outcome was predictable all along.
A 1975 study found that people consistently overestimate their ability to have foreseen an event once they know how it…
You would not notice if your life changed suddenly.
A 2005 experiment demonstrated that people fail to identify when their expressed preferences are switched by an experi…
The first number you hear dictates your future estimates.
A 1974 study showed that initial, irrelevant numbers significantly bias subsequent numerical estimations.…
You judge decisions by the result, not the process.
A 1988 study found that observers rate a high-risk decision as more intelligent if it leads to success than if it resu…
Thinking about an object makes its importance grow.
In a 1998 study published in Psychological Science, Schkade and Kahneman demonstrated that people fall victim to a 'fo…
You subconsciously prefer the letters in your own name.
While Pelham et al. (2002) published findings suggesting implicit egotism, those results have been widely criticized f…
Ease of memory leads us to overestimate rare events.
A 1973 study showed that people judge the frequency of an event by how easily they can recall examples from memory.…
Moving to a warmer climate rarely improves long-term happiness.
A 1998 survey found that while Midwesterners expected Californians to be happier, there was no significant difference …
You can be convinced you chose the rejected option.
In a 2005 study, 75% of participants failed to notice when researchers swapped their preferred photograph for the one …
Doing a good deed makes us more likely to cheat later.
A 2010 study found that participants who bought green products were more likely to lie and steal in a subsequent task.…
Having too many choices makes us buy nothing.
A 2000 study found that while 24 choices of jam attracted more onlookers, only 3% bought any, compared to 30% when off…
We overvalue things simply because we helped build them.
A 2011 study showed that participants valued self-assembled furniture as highly as items built by experts.…
Your memory of an event ignores its duration.
In a landmark 1996 study, patients rated a longer, painful medical procedure as less unpleasant simply because the fin…