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omission_bias
The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions (omissions). People tend to feel more responsible and more guilty for bad outcomes they actively caused than for equally bad outcomes they allowed to happen through inaction.
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children because they fear side effects from the vaccine (action) more than the identical risk from the disease (inaction), even when the disease risk is actually higher.
A bystander who witnesses a colleague being publicly humiliated by a manager stays silent, feeling less guilty than they would if they had said something hurtful themselves — even though their silence enables the same harm.
A financial advisor chooses not to rebalance a client's portfolio when warning signs appear, reasoning that doing nothing feels less risky than making an active move — even though inaction exposes the client to the same potential loss.
Binary (yes/no) questions an LLM must answer to identify this aspect:
Is there a choice between acting (commission) and not acting (omission)?
Type: binaryIs inaction preferred even when it leads to equal or worse outcomes than action?
Type: binaryIs the preference for inaction driven by the perception that harm from action is worse than equal harm from inaction?
Type: binaryThe tendency to judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions (omissions). People tend to feel more responsible and more guilty for bad outcomes they actively caused than for equally bad outcomes they allowed to happen through inaction.
Commission feels like a deliberate choice with clear personal responsibility, while omission feels passive and spread across circumstances. The moral weight assigned to acts vs. omissions is asymmetric.
Compare the expected outcomes of action and inaction on equal terms. Judge both by their consequences rather than by whether they involve active intervention.
Medical decisions (treatment vs. watchful waiting), vaccine hesitancy, trolley-problem-style moral dilemmas, and regulatory inaction.
Use these tools to detect, analyze, or train this aspect.