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The Psychology of Human Misjudgment (Athlete Edition)
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What’s up athletes!
This week I’m going a bit long.
A lot of my writing starts the same way: somewhere in the middle of a long run or spinning away on the trainer in a cold garage. And as someone who does ultras… that’s a lot of time alone with my thoughts. Most of the time I’m recording audio notes or typing with sweaty hands to capture thoughts on training plans, mindset work, and the next email.
The past few weeks I’ve been reading (and rereading) a blog post about Charlie Munger. He was the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett’s closest partner. If you don’t know who those people are, it’s all good, that’s not the point.
The point is: Munger was an above average thinker. And in 1995, he gave a talk at Harvard called The Psychology of Human Misjudgment. Since then, he has revised that talk into a list of 25 tendencies or patterns of bias that shape how we make decisions.
Here’s the link if you want the original: https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/
As a thought experiment, I decided to rewrite those 25 tendencies through the lens of endurance athletes. I’ll list his definitions and give it the endurance athlete interpretation.
Take your time with this one. Read it all the way through. Reread it if you want. There’s a lot to unpack.
My hope is that it gives you more self-awareness, not just for how you train, but for how you chase goals in general.
1.Reward & Punishment Super response
Incentives shape behavior more than we want to admit.
Rewards pull us in, and fear/punishment pushes us just as hard. When incentives are misaligned, they can override good judgment.
Athlete example: You start training for the praise, the Strava kudos, or the fear of “falling behind,” and suddenly the plan becomes secondary to the dopamine.
What to do instead: Build incentives around process metrics (sleep, consistency, RPE discipline, fueling practice) and hide the reward traps (leaderboards, constant posting).
2. Liking/Loving
When we like someone or something, we unconsciously give it extra credibility and minimize its flaws. Affection makes us less critical and more compliant.
Athlete example: You love a workout, so you assume it’s right for you, even when your body is quietly disagreeing.
What to do instead: Ask yourself, “What outcome is this improving, and what would tell me it’s not working?”
3. Disliking/Hating
Dislike makes us unfairly dismiss information and exaggerate negatives. We look for reasons to reject what we already don’t want to do.
Athlete example: You hate the treadmill, strength work, or nutrition tracking, so you convince yourself it’s “not necessary,” even when it’s exactly what would move you forward.
What to do instead: Start with the minimum effective dose. 15 minutes per week grows to three times per week quickly.
4. Doubt avoidance
Uncertainty is uncomfortable, so we rush to conclusions just to feel settled. This creates snap decisions that feel “certain” but aren’t actually well reasoned.
Athlete example: You jump to a new plan, new shoes, or a new race because uncertainty feels worse than making a rushed decision.
What to do instead: Add a 48-hour rule before making big changes. Run a short experiment (2 weeks) before overhauling anything.
5. Inconsistency avoidance
We resist changing our minds because it threatens our identity and past decisions. It’s easier to defend the old story than revise it.
Athlete example: You keep doing the same training approach because admitting it isn’t working would mean admitting you were wrong.
What to do instead: Build monthly audits into your plan. Learn to be comfortable with the idea that change is expected, not a failure.
6. Curiosity
Curiosity helps us learn and improve, but it can also stall execution. Learning feels productive even when it replaces doing.
Athlete example: You keep learning (podcasts, studies, new gear) but you also use curiosity as a socially acceptable way to procrastinate doing the boring basics.
What to do instead: For every new input, you define a practical change you’ll test this week.
7. Kantian Fairness
We expect fairness and reciprocity: “If I do the work, I deserve the outcome.” When reality doesn’t match effort, it creates anger or confusion.
Athlete example: You believe training should “reward effort,” so when you do everything right and still have a bad race, it feels personal and unfair.
What to do instead: Separate execution goals from outcome goals. Review races by controllables first (pacing, fueling, decisions).
8. Envy/Jealousy
Comparing ourselves to others can trigger resentment and distorted self-evaluation. Jealousy turns someone else’s result into a measure on our self-worth.
Athlete example: Someone else’s PR or podium makes you rewrite your own story: “Maybe I’m not built for this,” instead of “They’re on their timeline, I’m on mine.”
What to do instead: Ask yourself, “What are they consistently doing that I can adopt?”
9. Reciprocation
We feel pressure to repay favors and match concessions. This can override what’s rational because we don’t want to seem ungrateful or selfish.
Athlete example: Your training partner does your favorite route, so you do their brutal hill loop… even if it doesn’t fit your session.
What to do instead: Agree that workouts follow the goal, not the group. Take turns on easy days, not key sessions.
10. Influence from simple association
Our brains transfer emotions from one thing to another just because they’re linked in memory. Association gets mistaken for causation.
Athlete example: You bonk once on a certain workout, and now your brain labels it “bad,” even if it wasn’t the true cause.
What to do instead: Change one variable at a time (fuel, pacing, heat) and collect data before banning anything.
11. Pain Avoiding Psychological Denial
When the truth is uncomfortable, we downplay it, delay it, or pretend it isn’t happening. Denial reduces emotional pain but comes at a long-term cost.
Athlete example: You ignore warning signs of fatigue, soreness or mood swings because admitting you need rest feels like admitting weakness.
What to do instead: Use objective “red flags” (sleep, HRV/RHR trend, RPE, mood) that trigger an automatic downshift.
12. Excessive Self-Regard
We consistently overrate our competence, discipline, and resilience. Ego makes us believe we’re the exception to normal limits.
Athlete example: “I can handle more.” “I recover fast.” “I’m different.”
What to do instead: Put guardrails in place (max weekly increases, sessions per week). Listen to your body over your ego.
13. Overoptimism
We underestimate risks and overestimate how smoothly things will go. This bias makes plans fragile because they ignore real-world variability.
Athlete example: You plan your build like nothing will go wrong: no travel, no illness, no work deadlines. Then act shocked when reality shows up.
What to do instead: Have a short list of fallback workouts for busy days.
14. Deprival super reaction
Loss feels bigger than gain, so we overreact to setbacks. A small set back can trigger panic and irrational “make up for it” behavior.
Athlete example: A missed workout (or a “bad” week) feels catastrophic, so you overcorrect with panic miles and turn one small loss into a bigger one.
What to do instead: Never “make up” intensity. Return to the next scheduled session and rebuild momentum with consistency.
15. Social proofs
We take cues from the audience, assuming popularity equals correctness. Group behavior can replace independent thinking.
Athlete example: Everyone’s doing doubles, tempo twice a week, or a 20-mile-long run so you assume you should too, even if their context isn’t yours.
What to do instead: Anchor to your constraints: available time, injury history, and race demands. If it doesn’t match, it’s not “better,” it’s just different.
16. Contrast mis reaction
We judge things relative to what we just experienced, not on absolute terms. Contrast skews perception of effort, difficulty, and value.
Athlete example: An “easy” run feels terrible right after intervals, or a 7:30 pace feels slow next to PR pace, so you mislabel effort and intensity.
What to do instead: Use internal metrics first (RPE, breathing, HR) and ignore pace comparisons across different contexts.
17. Stress influence
Stress changes how we think, feel, and perform, often narrowing attention and increasing reactivity. Under stress, we default to habits, not wisdom.
Athlete example: Work stress and sleep debt don’t just affect mood. They change physiology and decision-making, making you train harder when you should train simpler.
What to do instead: Create guardrails. When sleep is low or life stress is high, intensity drops and volume becomes optional.
18. Availability mis-weighing
We over emphasize information that’s loud, recent, or memorable, and underweight the boring base rates.
Athlete example: You remember the one time you crushed a hard session and forget the ten times it dug a hole, so you overweight the memorable “win.”
What to do instead: Take note of how you feel 24–48 hours after key sessions. Let the patterns, not highlights, drive training decisions.
19. Use-It-or-Lose-It
Skills and capabilities degrade without maintenance. Without practice, competence becomes theoretical instead of automatic.
Athlete example: Swim feel, downhill economy, fueling practice, pacing discipline. If you don’t rehearse it, race day exposes it.
What to do instead: Practice race specific skills with intention on a routine basis.
20. Drug mis-influence
Substances can distort perception, impulse control, recovery, and mood. Even common ones can quietly shift decision-making.
Athlete example: Caffeine, sleep aids, pain meds. What you put in your body can hijack recovery and consistency without you noticing.
What to do instead: Standardize when your approach on key training sessions. Avoid anything new close to race day.
21. Senescence mis-influence
Aging can reduce certain capacities and increase recovery cost, though its highly individual. Ignoring age realities leads to preventable breakdowns.
Athlete example: As you age, you can still improve, but the cost of “training like you’re 25” rises. Recovery becomes part of the plan, not an afterthought.
What to do instead: Prioritize durability: strength training, sleep, spacing hard days, and longer warm-ups become part of the plan.
22. Authority mis-influence
We tend to defer to authority figures even when their guidance doesn’t fit our situation. Authority can short-circuit critical thinking.
Athlete example: A coach, influencer, or elite athlete says, “this is the way,” and you follow, even if your history, schedule, or physiology doesn’t match.
What to do instead: Ask yourself, “What problem does this solve?” and “What version of this advice applies to me?”
23. Twaddle
People produce endless low-value talk that feels informative but isn’t. Noise crowds out signal and can create false confidence.
Athlete example: Too many forums, too many opinions, too much debate. You mistake training chatter for training progress.
What to do instead: Limit your sources. Stick to 1–2 trusted sources and spend the saved time on sleep, meal prep, mobility, or actual training.
24. Reason respecting
We’re more likely to comply when given a “reason,” even if it’s weak. Explanations create buy-in, not necessarily accuracy.
Athlete example: If someone says, “this boosts VO₂max” or “this burns fat,” you accept it without asking if it’s the right reason for your goal.
What to do instead: Look for specificity: “How, how much, for whom, and at what cost?” If the answer is unclear, think of it as optional.
25. Lollapalooza
The biggest errors happen when multiple biases reinforce each other at the same time. Stacked tendencies create extreme outcomes and blown-up decisions.
Athlete example: Social proof + overoptimism + inconsistency avoidance + stress = the classic overtraining spiral.
What to do instead: Seek outside perspective. A weekly review + a trusted person/coach who can call out stacked bias before it becomes an injury or burnout.
If you made it this far, it’s likely you identified a pattern or tendency that mirrors some of your behaviors (I know I have several). If you can learn which of these tend to sabotage your training, then it’s likely you’ll become a better athlete and harder to derail.
Hit reply and let me know which of these stand out to you. I’m genuinely curious. Odds are, the one you don’t want to admit is the one worth working on.
Schedule a consultation call.
