Survivorship Bias - Definition
Written by Jason Gordon
Updated at January 7th, 2021
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What is Survivorship Bias?
Survivorship bias is a type of selection and cognitive bias that occurs when survival is used as a metric for making vital decisions. That is, it is an error that occurs when people or things that survived certain processes and stages are given attention and those that did not are ignored. Survivorship bias can lead to wrong conclusions and selections.
Back to: Management & Organizational Behavior
A Little More on What is Survivorship Bias
Survivorship bias is both a selection and logical (cognitive) error that occurs when survival is used as a singular factor for determining the success of a thing or making conclusions.
Survivorship bias often occurs when the historical data, past successes, and general attributes of a person, fund, or thing is considered in a selection process.