streetlight effect

English

Etymology

An allusion to an old joke in which a drunkard searches for his keys (lost elsewhere) under a streetlight because that is where the light is.

Noun

streetlight effect (plural streetlight effects)

  1. A kind of observational bias whereby people only search for something where it is easiest to look.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.