Psychologists say the worst time to make a long-term decision is in the middle of a dramatic crisis like the pandemic because a powerful mental bias called the availability bias makes it very difficult to step outside of the moment.
As a leader, understanding the availability bias is the key to minimizing its potentially damaging impact.
Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, and his research partner, Amos Tversky, identified what they called the “availability heuristic.” It simply means that we form a picture of the world based on examples, events, and experiences that come readily to our mind.
If everything you see, read, and hear is bad, then you’re more likely to expect the future will be bad, too. The problem, according to Kahneman in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, is that events we experience vividly today do not provide the most useful information to make wise decisions about your future.
