Unpacking principle: Providing a more detailed description of an event increases its judged probability.
Vertical line failure: Commonly known as “thinking inside the box,” an inflexible diagnostic approach that emphasizes economy, efficacy, and utility.
Zebra retreat: The tendency to not consider a particular disease because of its unfamiliarity.
Playing the odds: The tendency in ambiguous presentations to opt for a benign diagnosis on the basis that it is significantly more likely than a serious one.
Posterior Probability: Occurs when a physician’s estimate for the likelihood of disease is unduly influenced by what has gone on before for a particular patient.
Visceral bias: The influence of affective sources of error on decision making.
Yin-Yang out: The tendency to believe that nothing further can be done to illuminate any definitive diagnosis so that the physician is let out of further diagnostic effort.
Premature closure: Focusing excessively on one disease because of one characteristic finding.