Prospective outcome bias: Incurring (unnecessary) costs to achieve outcomes that are already likely.

How do people decide whether to incur costs to increase their likelihood of success? In investigating this question, we offer a theory called prospective outcome bias. According to this theory, people tend to make decisions that they expect to feel good about after the outcome has been realized. Because people expect to feel best about decisions that are followed by successes-even when the decisions did not cause those successes-they will pay...