Decisions are judged by how they turned out rather than by what was knowable when they were made.
Baron and Hershey's 1988 studies: the same surgical decision was rated as better when the patient survived. It is why organisations that punish outcomes rather than process teach people to avoid documented risk-taking.
In practice
- A driver who took a risk on a blind bend and arrived safely is called confident; the same manoeuvre ending in a scrape is called reckless.
- An investment judged reckless after a loss and shrewd after a gain was the same decision made on the same information.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- The catalogue of predictable errors