Why do we think our current preferences will remain the same in the future?

The 

Projection Bias

, explained.
Bias

What is Projection Bias?

The projection bias is a self-forecasting error where we overestimate how much our future selves will share the same beliefs, values and behaviors as our current selves, causing us to make short-sighted decisions.

The image illustrates "Projection Bias" with a graph showing how the amount of leftover food increases as hunger at the time of ordering rises, moving from a "Zone of Overeating" to "Fridge Capacity" and finally to the "Zone of Giving Food Away," with a stick figure holding a "Pizza Shop" menu.

Where this bias occurs

Imagine that you are starving and go to the grocery store to get some food. You might load up your cart with heaps of snacks: chips, chocolate, pizza, crackers. You get home, pop the pizza in the oven and start eating some other things you bought while it cooks. When the pizza is done, you realize you’re not hungry anymore. How can that be — you were starving! Now you have all this junk food that you don’t even want anymore. 

That’s the projection bias at play. In this classic scenario, we predict how hungry we were going to be while we are in a hungry state, causing us to make decisions that do not consider that our future selves, once no longer hungry, would not feel the same. We project our current state of hunger into our predictions of how much we could eat later and as a result waste money and food. The popular phrase, “having eyes bigger than your stomach”, is really about our current vision for our future self being inaccurate.

Related Biases

Sources

  1. Lahiri, A. (2020). The Great Indian Demonetization. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 34(1), 55-74. 
  2. Loewenstein, G., O’Donoghue, T., & Rabin, M. (2003). Projection bias in predicting future utility. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4), 1209-1248. https://doi.org/10.1162/003355303322552784
  3. Conlin, M., O’Donoghue, T., & Vogelsang, T. J. (2007). Projection Bias in Catalog Orders. The American Economic Review, 97(4). 
  4. Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(8), 917–927. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.36.8.917
  5. Central Test. (2022, July 27). Recruiters: Are you aware of these 5 cognitive biases? Central Test. https://www.centraltest.com/blog/recruiters-are-you-aware-these-5-cognitive-biases
  6. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, May 21). Smoking cessation: Fast facts. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cessation/smoking-cessation-fast-facts/index.html
  7. Murray et al. (2010). The Effect of Weather on Consumer Spending. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 17(6), 512-20. 
  8. Gilbert et al. (2002). The future is now: Temporal correction in affective forecasting. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 88(1), 430-444. 
  9. Busse, M. R., Pope, D. G., Pope, J. C., & Silva-Risso, J. (2015). The psychological effect of weather on car purchases*. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(1), 371-414. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qju033
  10. Kaufmann, M. (2017). Projection bias in effort choices. In progress. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4011-2.0

About the Authors

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Dan Pilat

Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.

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Dr. Sekoul Krastev

Sekoul is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. A decision scientist with a PhD in Decision Neuroscience from McGill University, Sekoul's work has been featured in peer-reviewed journals and has been presented at conferences around the world. Sekoul previously advised management on innovation and engagement strategy at The Boston Consulting Group as well as on online media strategy at Google. He has a deep interest in the applications of behavioral science to new technology and has published on these topics in places such as the Huffington Post and Strategy & Business.

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