Wishful Thinking
We believe what we want to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be true.
Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine rather than by appealing to evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire. Wishful thinking has been identified in contexts ranging from investment decisions to medical self-diagnosis, war planning, and electoral prediction.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life Medical Self-Diagnosis People with symptoms of serious illness convince themselves the symptoms are benign and delay medical consultation.
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.
Alex thinks the rash on his arm is just a minor irritation and will go away, despite it growing larger over the past week.
Lisa sees a news report about a product recall but thinks, 'That won't affect my car, mine is fine.' She doesn't check the list of affected models.
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
Get Debias on Google Play