Reactive Devaluation
We devalue proposals simply because they come from an adversary or opponent.
Reactive devaluation is a cognitive bias where proposals are devalued if they appear to come from an antagonist. In negotiation and politics, proposals that would be accepted from a neutral party are rejected when they originate from the opposing side. This was demonstrated by Lee Ross and colleagues who found that people rated the same arms reduction proposal lower when told it came from the Soviet Union rather than an unspecified source.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Politics Peace Proposal A peace proposal evaluated positively when attributed to a neutral country is dismissed as a trick when participants are told it actually came from their adversary nation.
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.
At a community meeting, a known troublemaker suggests a cost-saving measure. The board chair dismisses it without discussion, calling it impractical.
When a proposal to reduce their team's budget comes from a rival department head, the manager immediately dismisses it as a bad idea without reading the details.
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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