Additive Bias

Additive bias is the tendency for people to solve a problem or improve a situation by adding a new element to it, such as an extra step, component or feature, more readily than they consider removing or subtracting an existing element, even in cases where subtraction would produce a better outcome. The engineering researcher Leidy Klotz demonstrated the pattern through a series of laboratory experiments in which participants given a problem to solve consistently favored adding something over taking something away, generally without considering subtraction as an available option at all. The bias has been discussed as relevant to fields such as design, writing and management, wherever a person seeking to strengthen an argument, a structure or a process defaults to a search for something to add rather than something to remove.