Which concept is illustrated by punishing a drunk driver more severely when death occurs than a drunk driver who gets lucky and kills no one?

• A. Outcome bias
• B. Planning fallacy
• C. Availability heuristic
• D. Base rate neglect

Answer: (A)

Outcome bias is the tendency to judge the quality of a decision by its final result rather than by the information and reasoning available at the time the decision was made. In this scenario, two drunk drivers take a similar risk, but the one ending in death is punished more harshly simply because the outcome was worse. The evaluation is swayed by the consequence instead of the decision process and risk assessment that occurred before the outcome. This is not about planning accuracy, how easily the outcome comes to mind, or ignoring base rates of events; those other concepts describe different biases.