 Perceiving outcomes as determined by external forces: The role of event construal in attenuating the outcome biasKrishna Savani and Dan King Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2015, vol. 130, issue C, 136-146 Abstract: People view the same decision as better when it is followed by a positive outcome than by a negative outcome, a phenomenon called the outcome bias. Based on the idea that a key cause of the outcome bias is people’s failure to appreciate that outcomes are in part determined by external forces, three studies tested a novel method to reduce the outcome bias. Experiment 1 showed that people who construed a person’s interactions with the environment as events rather than as actions or choices were less susceptible to the outcome bias in a medical decision making task. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that people who recalled past events rather than actions or choices exhibited lower outcome bias in a risky decision making task and in an ethical judgment task. These findings indicate that an event construal helps people appreciate the role of external factors in causing outcomes. Keywords: Outcome bias; Event; Agency; Choice; Construal (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:130:y:2015:i:c:p:136-146 DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2015.05.002 Access Statistics for this article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes is currently edited by John M. Schaubroeck More articles in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes from Elsevier |
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