By Yiler Huang
Outcome bias is a bias that causes us to judge the decency or correctness of a decision based on its outcome instead of the reasons why this decision was made at the first place. One imaginary example could be: one day you tripped someone on the street for no reason, and it turned out the person who was triped was being chased by the police and you stopped him and helped the police officers. Even though the outcome was good, it still doesn’t mean tripping someone for no reason is justified.
In the late 15th century Christopher Columbus became one of the first European recorded to find the land of America by sailing in the opposite direction to China. If he had not discovered America, he would probably be thought of as a fool because it is extremely dangerous to sail in an unknown area on the sea with the technology they had back then, but instead, he was deemed a very important historical figure due to his discovery of America.
The last example is from my parents. My mom purchases scammy health products a lot, and she told me that she bought them because she thinks they are effective. Even though these products might make her feel more healthy and have seemingly positive results, it does not justify the lack of consideration before buying products from suspicious sources.