Focusing effect
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The focusing effect (or focusing illusion) is a cognitive bias that occurs when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event, causing an error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
People focus on notable differences, excluding those that are less conspicuous, when making predictions about happiness or convenience. For example, when people were asked how much happier they believe Californians are compared to Midwesterners, Californians and Midwesterners both said Californians must be considerably happier, when, in fact, there was no difference between the actual happiness rating of Californians and Midwesterners. The bias lies in that most people asked focused on and overweighed the sunny weather and ostensible easy-going lifestyle of California and devalued and underated other aspects of life and determinants of happiness, such as low crime rates and safety from natural disasters like earthquakes (both of which large parts of California lack). They also failed to take into account that our minds have a tendency to revert to the standard and adapt to pleasure and pain[citation needed]. The impact of adaptation is constantly undervalued in decision forecasts[citation needed], with a few exceptions (e.g. patients with clinical depression often do not adapt to their depressed states[citation needed]).
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[edit] References
Del Missier, F., Ferrante, D., & Costantini, E. (2007). Focusing effects in predecisional information acquisition. Acta Psychologica, 125, 155-174.
Schkade, D. A., & Kahneman, D. (1998). Does living in California make people happy? A focusing illusion in judgments of life satisfaction. Psychological Science, 9, 340-346.
