Heuristic of the Day: Zero-Risk Bias

We are all familiar with “money-back guarantees”, but did you know this is a powerful strategy that builds trust and speaks to our human cognitive biases? It is a no-brainer for retailers.

Zero-Risk Bias is a tendency to prefer eliminating a small risk over reducing a larger risk. Between 2 risk-reducing options, people generally prefer the option that reduces risk to zero even if the other option reduces the risk by a larger amount.??

Like many cognitive biases, the origin of Zero-Risk Bias can be traced to a need for certainty, closure, and security. When applied to decision-making, it appears that people tend to prefer guarantees over high probability.?

Eliminating a risk may also reduce the cognitive burden of making future decisions by getting an entire problem out of the way before worrying about other problems. Effectively, the Zero-Risk Bias is a mental shortcut to secure a gain or reward with the least number of mental calculations.

Decision-making under risk populates many fields like public health, business, finance, and security, which means the wrong choice can have dire consequences. Let’s hack Zero-Risk Bias and make smarter choices.

Read more about Zero-Risk Bias at the Heuristics Science Insitute: https://newristics.com/heuristics-biases/zero-risk-bias

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