People care more about being right than avoiding mistakes, study finds

Conventional wisdom says the best predictions are the ones that minimize mistakes, but new research suggests that is not necessarily how people see it.

A study published in Management Science has found that when people make or evaluate predictions, they care more about the possibility of being exactly right than about reducing the size of potential errors.

In many cases, people prefer predictions that increase the chance of a perfect outcome, even if doing so creates a greater risk of larger mistakes. ...