Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts · chapter 3 · id thinking-in-bets-c3-04-separating-decision-quality-fr

“Separating decision quality from outcome quality is essential -- a good decision can produce a bad outcome and vice versa -- because luck and hidden information intervene between decisions and results.”

holdsconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending

Receipts

Baron & Hershey (1988), 'Outcome bias in decision evaluation'DOI registry: valid

Subjects rated the quality of a decision as higher when the outcome was favorable, even when outcome information was irrelevant to decision quality.

Billings et al., University of Alberta, 'A Tool for the Direct Assessment of Poker Decisions'source alive

A player can play extremely well and still lose over an extended period of time, just by bad luck. The signal-to-noise ratio in poker results is low.

International Review of Social Psychology (2023), replication of Baron & Hersheysource alive

A pre-registered replication (N=692) confirmed the outcome bias effect using a between-subjects design, extending the original within-subjects finding.

This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.