Ostrich Effect
We tend to avoid information we know will be negative.
The ostrich effect is the cognitive bias of avoiding information perceived as potentially unpleasant or hurtful. The term comes from the popular myth that ostriches bury their heads in the sand to avoid perceived danger. Financial investors who check their portfolios less frequently during market downturns than during upturns are exhibiting the ostrich effect. The effect suggests that ignorance is sometimes preferred over painful knowledge.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life Medical Test Avoidance People at genetic risk for diseases delay getting tested because the knowledge of a positive result feels more threatening than uncertainty.
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.
An investor avoids checking their portfolio during a market downturn, choosing ignorance over the anxiety of seeing unrealized losses, because not looking at the declining balance feels less distressing than confronting the financial reality directly.
A homeowner who suspects mold is growing behind a wall avoids testing, because the possibility that the wall is fine feels more reassuring than the discovery of a health hazard requiring remediation and significant expense.
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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