Why a Good Story Can Feel More Accurate Than the Evidence
Why are we overconfident in our predictions?
The illusion of validity is a cognitive bias that describes our tendency to be overconfident in the accuracy of our judgements, specifically in our interpretations and predictions regarding a given data set.
- Job Interviews: An interviewer falls in love with a candidate during a 30-minute chat because the applicant shares a hobby and tells a compelling life story, ignoring a mediocre skill assessment. The interviewer feels 100% sure the candidate will be a star employee. [1]
- Hiring/Military Assessments: Leaders evaluate a candidate based on an impressive posture and smooth answers during an evaluation exercise, which studies show have near-zero actual correlation to future job performance
Imagine interviewing a job candidate.
They speak confidently, make strong eye contact, and answer every question smoothly.
You think:
“This person is going to be excellent.”
But what if those traits have very little connection to actual job performance?
That is the illusion of validity—our tendency to feel confident in a judgment simply because the information forms a convincing story, even when the evidence is weak.
The stronger the pattern feels, the more certain we become.
You see this in:
Hiring.
Investing.
Sports predictions.
Personality judgments.
Political forecasting.
An investor may see a charismatic CEO, rapid growth, and an exciting product and conclude:
“This company is obviously going to succeed.”
But a coherent story is not the same as a reliable prediction.
The problem is that our brains love patterns.
When the pieces seem to fit together, confidence rises—even if the sample is small, important information is missing, or the future is highly uncertain.
The lesson
When a conclusion feels “obvious,” ask:
“How strong is the evidence—not how good is the story?”
Confidence can come from accuracy.
But it can also come from a narrative that simply feels right.
