Which bias posits that harm from an action is judged worse than harm from inaction with the same outcome?

• A. Omission Bias
• B. Moral Credential Effect
• C. Risk Compensation
• D. Temporal Discounting

Answer: (A)

Omission bias is the idea that harm caused by an action is judged worse than harm caused by inaction, even when the outcomes are the same. This bias comes from how people perceive responsibility: taking an action implies you actively caused the harm, while choosing not to act is seen as avoiding responsibility, even if the result is identical. In decision making and moral judgments, this leads people to prefer abstaining from action to prevent being seen as the cause of harm, even when inaction would produce the same negative outcome. For example, in medical or safety scenarios, letting a bad outcome occur by not acting can be judged less harshly than causing it through an action, influencing choices and judgments. The other options describe different psychological effects—Moral Credential Effect relates to feeling licensed to misbehave after doing good deeds; Risk Compensation is about altering behavior in response to perceived safety; Temporal Discounting involves devaluing future outcomes relative to immediate ones—so they don’t capture the specific tendency described here.