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  • Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Overcoming the Outcome Bias: Making Intentions Matter

By: Ovul Sezer, Ting Zhang, Francesca Gino and Max Bazerman
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Abstract

People often make the well-documented mistake of paying too much attention to the outcomes of others’ actions while neglecting information about the original intentions leading to those outcomes. In five experiments, we examine interventions aimed at reducing this outcome bias in situations where intentions and outcomes are misaligned. Participants evaluated an individual with fair intentions leading to unfavorable outcomes, an individual with selfish intentions leading to favorable outcomes, or both individuals jointly. Contrary to our initial predictions, participants weighed others’ outcomes more—not less—when these individuals were evaluated jointly rather than separately (Experiment 1). Consequently, separate evaluators were more intention-oriented than joint evaluators when rewarding and punishing others (Experiment 2a) and assessing the value of repeated interactions with these individuals in the future (Experiment 2b). Third-party recommenders were less outcome-biased in allocating funds to investment managers when making separate evaluations relative to joint evaluations (Experiment 3). Finally, raising the salience of intentions prior to discovering outcomes helped joint evaluators overcome the outcome bias, suggesting that joint evaluation made attending to information about intentions more difficult (Experiment 4). Our findings bridge decision-making research on the outcome bias and management research on organizational justice by investigating the role of intentions in evaluations.

Keywords

Outcome Bias; Intentions; Joint Evaluation; Judgment; Separate Evaluation; Goals and Objectives; Prejudice and Bias; Judgments; Performance Evaluation; Outcome or Result

Citation

Sezer, Ovul, Ting Zhang, Francesca Gino, and Max Bazerman. "Overcoming the Outcome Bias: Making Intentions Matter." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 137 (November 2016): 13–26.
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About The Authors

Ting Zhang

Organizational Behavior
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Francesca Gino

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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Max H. Bazerman

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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More from the Authors
  • Decision Leadership: Empowering Others to Make Better Choices By: Don A. Moore and Max H. Bazerman
  • Managing a Polarized Workforce: How to Foster Debate and Promote Trust By: Julia A. Minson and Francesca Gino
  • The Errors of Experts: When Expertise Hinders Effective Provision and Seeking of Advice and Feedback By: Ting Zhang, Kelly Harrington and Elad Sherf
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