What is the projection bias?

It is assuming your future self will have the same preferences, emotions, and states as your current self — projecting today’s mood, appetite, or tastes onto tomorrow, which leads to choices your future self regrets.

What is an example of the projection bias?

Shopping while hungry and overbuying, because you project current hunger onto your future appetite. The same happens with mood, energy, and tastes when we plan as if today’s state will persist.

How do you counter the projection bias?

Plan for a future self in a different state than you’re in now, avoid big decisions during strong temporary states, and remember how much your preferences have already changed over time.

Projection bias

Decision-making

The projection bias is the tendency to assume your future self will share your current preferences, emotions, and states. We project today’s mood, hunger, or values onto tomorrow — and so make choices our future self regrets.

Why it happens

It is hard to simulate a state you’re not currently in, so the present state dominates the forecast. Hungry, you imagine wanting more food later; calm, you can’t imagine future anger; today’s tastes feel permanent. The current self’s "now" overwrites the future self’s likely reality.

Examples

Grocery shopping hungry and buying far more than you’ll want to eat.
Assuming a hobby you love now will excite you identically in ten years.
Booking an ambitious schedule for a future week as if you’ll have today’s energy.

How to counter it

Make plans for your future self assuming their state will differ from yours now.
Don’t make lasting decisions in a strong temporary state (hungry, angry, infatuated).
Recall how much your past preferences have already changed — they will again.

The deeper point

It is why your future self so often feels like a stranger who inherited your decisions: you keep designing their life around your current mood, then they live it in a different one. Good planning treats the future self as a real, different person.

Frequently asked

What is the projection bias?: It is assuming your future self will have the same preferences, emotions, and states as your current self — projecting today’s mood, appetite, or tastes onto tomorrow, which leads to choices your future self regrets.
What is an example of the projection bias?: Shopping while hungry and overbuying, because you project current hunger onto your future appetite. The same happens with mood, energy, and tastes when we plan as if today’s state will persist.
How do you counter the projection bias?: Plan for a future self in a different state than you’re in now, avoid big decisions during strong temporary states, and remember how much your preferences have already changed over time.

Hyperbolic discounting Optimism bias Empathy gap Overconfidence effect Second-order thinking Circle of competence

Editorial synthesis © ReadGlobe 2026, drawing on Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, the Tversky–Kahneman research program, and the primary cognitive-science literature. · Last reviewed 2026-05-29.