Perceiving outcomes as determined by external forces: The role of event construal in attenuating the outcome bias

•People view the same decision as better when it leads to positive outcomes than negative outcomes.•Identified source of bias: failure to appreciate that outcomes are in part determined by external forces.•Thinking of person–environment interactions as events rather than choices or actions reduces the outcome bias.

People view the same decision as better when it is followed by a positive outcome than by a negative outcome, a phenomenon called the outcome bias. Based on the idea that a key cause of the outcome bias is people’s failure to appreciate that outcomes are in part determined by external forces, three studies tested a novel method to reduce the outcome bias. Experiment 1 showed that people who construed a person’s interactions with the environment as events rather than as actions or choices were less susceptible to the outcome bias in a medical decision making task. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that people who recalled past events rather than actions or choices exhibited lower outcome bias in a risky decision making task and in an ethical judgment task. These findings indicate that an event construal helps people appreciate the role of external factors in causing outcomes.