Turkey illusion

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The turkey illusion is the tendency to assume that a trend will continue without expecting sudden breaks or reversals.

What it means and how it works

This bias arises from reliance on inductive reasoning and the heuristic that recent patterns are indicative of future outcomes, leading to insufficient consideration of structural shifts or rare events.

The term originates from the analogy of a turkey that, being fed every day, comes to expect continued feeding and is surprised when the trend abruptly ends (e.g., at Thanksgiving). In cognitive psychology, it describes a bias where individuals extrapolate recent continuity into the future, underweighting the possibility of abrupt changes.

Why it matters

Understanding the turkey illusion helps explain failures in forecasting across domains such as finance, climate science, and public policy, where assuming continuity can lead to inadequate preparation for disruptive events.

The verified research on this pattern supports the following:

• The turkey illusion refers to the tendency to assume that a trend will continue without sudden breaks.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding 1: Some confuse the turkey illusion with simple optimism bias; however, it specifically concerns expectation of trend continuity rather than general positive outlook. Others mistakenly view it as a statistical error, whereas it is a cognitive heuristic.