Consistency Bias
We incorrectly remember our past attitudes as resembling our current ones.
Consistency bias is the tendency to incorrectly remember one's past attitudes and behavior as resembling one's present attitudes and behavior. When people change their minds or behaviors, they often fail to update their memory of their prior state, assuming they always felt and thought as they do now. This makes self-assessment of personal growth difficult and distorts historical self-narratives.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life Political Conversion A person who changed their political views from conservative to liberal in their 30s misremembers their earlier political positions as being more moderate than they actually were, unconsciously revising history to smooth the narrative of their identity.
Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.
Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.
After his friend's divorce, David remarks, 'I could see that coming. I never thought they were a good match.' In reality, he had attended their wedding and toasted to their perfect compatibility.
A driver rates their own skills as above average despite having been in two accidents in the past year, because the overconfidence effect leads most people to overestimate their abilities relative to objective benchmarks and peer performance.
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
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