plan-continuation bias

the tendency of people to continue with an original course of action that is no longer viable. An example would be an airline pilot who unexpectedly encounters bad weather at the scheduled destination but decides to land anyway rather than divert to another location. Plan-continuation bias appears to be particularly strong toward the end of the activity and has been theorized to result from the interaction of such factors as cognitive load, task demands, and social influences. See also entrapment.

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Psychology term of the day

May 9th 2024

best fit

the theoretical pattern that best accounts for the relationships among variables in a data set. For example, a regression equation having the best fit to sample data is the one that minimizes differences between observed and predicted values. On a scatterplot, a line of best fit provides a visual depiction of this pattern, allowing extrapolation to values not part of the original data set. It is important to note that the best-fitting pattern is not necessarily the one that generated the observed data, as other patterns not considered may provide a superior fit.