Illusion of Validity

Identified by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky. Kahneman first experienced it personally as a young psychologist in the Israeli army, where he was tasked with predicting which recruits would make good officers. He noticed that his confidence in predictions remained high even when his accuracy was provably poor — the compelling narrative of each candidate's behavior overrode the statistical reality. He later explored this in Thinking, Fast and Slow.