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Choice Supportive Bias
What Is Choice Supportive Bias?
In Critical Thinking, Choice Supportive Bias is overly protecting an early choice or decision. It also sees people giving too much weight to ideas that support the early choice and underrating ideas that contest it.
Easy Definition of Choice Supportive Bias
Don't defend a decision or exaggerate how good it was just because you made it. Either of those would be Choice Supportive Bias.
Academic Definition of Choice Supportive Bias
Choice Supportive Bias is the tendency for a decision-maker to defend his own decision or to later rate it better than it was simply because he made it.
An Example of Choice Supportive Bias
I told you it was the right decision

However, as soon as he was captured, the White House was not slow in using this to win support for the decision to go to war. Of course, capturing Saddam was never part of that decision. Their effort to lever it in as evidence to defend the decision to go to war was an example of Choice Supportive Bias.
A Practical Application for Choice Supportive Bias
Admit you got it wrong earlier and limit the damage

It took me half of the next day arguing with myself to accept it was a mess. I spent that half of the day arguing that it would look okay once the rest was done, talking up the oil's wood-preservation attributes and convincing myself that it didn't look too milky. I was looking for evidence to support my decision to use a relatively expensive clear varnish over a cheaper colored one. Luckily, a more objective assessment of the decking situation saved me hours of work. Once I realised I was suffering from Choice Supportive Bias, I only had to sand the half I'd ruined back to the bare wood.
This is a common theme with biases:
"Being aware of a bias (including knowing its name) helps you counter it."
"Being aware of a bias (including knowing its name) helps you counter it."
Another Practical Application for Choice Supportive Bias
Don't defend bad decisions. Keep checking whether a decision was good

Nobody likes to be accused of poor judgement, so defending decisions is a natural thing to do. Knowing not to defend a bad decision is important, but it's only half of what is required. The decisions and assumptions that influence your work should be routinely tested. Analysts are taught to bear this in mind:
"The fatal tendency of mankind to stop thinking about something when a decision has been made is the cause of half their errors."
(British philosopher J.S. Mill, 1806–1873)
Decisions are good. They help you move forward, but they should not be blindly defended or assumed to be forever correct once made.
(British philosopher J.S. Mill, 1806–1873)
Summary of Choice Supportive Bias
If you think someone is overly defending a past decision just to protect their self-esteem or trying to boost their self-esteem by exaggerating the value of a past decision, tell them they are not being objective and their actions are steeped in Choice Supportive Bias.- Do you disagree with something on this page?
- Did you spot a typo?
- Do you know a bias or fallacy that we've missed?