Table 2 Affective biases relevant for bioethics listed in alphabetical order with explanations and an indication for what type of bioethics this bias may be most relevant to assess
Affective bias | Definition/short description | Type of bioethics |
|---|---|---|
Affective forecasting | The tendency to let present emotional states and conceptions to be projected to future events | A, EA, CEC |
Aversion to risk, uncertainty, or ambiguity | The tendency to let the fear of risk, uncertainty, or ambiguity influence decision-making | A, EA, (ELS), CEC |
Compassion fade | The tendency to be more compassionate towards few identifiable victims than towards many anonymous ones, which is related to identifiability bias (bias towards caring more for the identified) | A, EA, CEC |
Empathy gap | The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others | A, EA, CEC |
Exaggerated expectation | The tendency to expect or predict more extreme outcomes than those that actually happen | A, EA, CEC, PEC |
Identifiability bias | The inclination to focus on identified persons (or issues) and give them priority. Related to the “singularity effect” | A, EA, ER, CEC |
Impact bias | The tendency to overestimate the impact of a future event | A, EA, CEC |
Loss aversion | The perceived disadvantage of giving up an item is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it | A, EA, CEC |
Omission bias | The tendency to judge harmful actions (commissions) as worse than equally harmful inactions (omissions) | A, EA,d, CEC |
Optimism bias | The tendency to overestimating the probability and beneficence of favorable outcomes and to those of underestimate of undesirable outcomes (this is related to other biases, such as wishful thinking, the valence effect, positive outcome bias, and pro-innovation bias) | A, EA, CEC |
Pessimism bias | The tendency to overestimate the probability and negative consequences of negative outcomes or things happening | A, EA, CEC |
Projection bias | The inclination to think that others have the same attitude, belief, or priority that one has oneself, even when this is unlikely | A, EA, CEC |
Prominence effect | The tendency that one dominant factor determines the decision-makers’ preferences. This relates to what has been called the scope neglect, scope insensitivity, and opportunity cost neglect | A, ER, EA, ELS, CEC, PEC |
Pseudo-certainty effect | The tendency to make risk-averse decisions for positive expected outcomes and risk-seeking for expected negative outcomes | A, EA, CEC |
Salience bias | The tendency to focus on items that are emotionally more prominent or striking and ignore those that are less so | A, EA, CEC |
Yuck factor | The tendency to react to events, things, persons, or groups of persons based on disgust | A, ER, EA, ELS, CEC, PEC |