Cognitive biases
Reviewing Past Decisions to Counter Projection Bias
Client assumes they will feel, want, and need in the future what they feel, want, and need now, leading to choices that serve their present self and trap their future self.
Projection bias is the tendency to assume your future self will have the same preferences and emotional needs as you do right now. Someone in acute anxiety chooses a major life change to relieve it, not seeing that the relief will not make the life change a good fit. Someone in love makes a commitment assuming the feeling will sustain the relationship.
This directive has the client review past decisions in light of how they actually felt afterward, to calibrate their own bias pattern.
Reviewing Past Decisions to Counter Projection Bias
Choose three decisions you made in the past two years that felt important at the time.
For each one, write: What did I believe would happen after I made this choice? How did I expect to feel? What did I expect would be different?
Then write: What actually happened? What did I feel? What surprised me?
Look for the gap. Did you expect the relief to be bigger and last longer? Did you expect the change to fix something it did not fix? Did you expect to feel differently than you actually did?
What pattern do you see? What do you tend to project onto the future?
Now, think about a choice you are facing right now. What do you believe will happen? What are you expecting to feel?
Write down your projection. Now write: I have been wrong about this before. I expected [this], but what actually happened was [that]. So I should assume that my current projection might also be incomplete.
What information do you need that you are missing? What could you ask someone who has made this choice? What can you test before committing fully?
This is not about paralyzing yourself with doubt. It is about deciding more clearly.
Generated with Rapport7 — rapport7.com