normalcy bias

The state of being in denial about super bad shit that is happening. Being geared toward everything being awesome today and tomorrow, just like it was yesterday (except that some douche bag did some holocaustic shit).

Dude A: Starting tomorrow, we can all get incarcerated forever without any warrants or trials 'cuz the politicians just voted for that, and Obama said so!

Dude B: No way, dude!! I'm going to ride my skateboard, because I live in a bubble and want it to stay that way. Normalcy bias sure beats how depressing the truth is!

by Sailor Poison December 17, 2011

Normalcy Bias

The bias of assuming that one's own way of being, thinking, and living is normal—and that anything different is deviant, strange, or wrong. Normalcy Bias is the cognitive foundation of prejudice, of ethnocentrism, of every system that treats difference as deficit. It's the assumption that how I live is not just how I live but how people should live, and that those who live differently are not just different but wrong. Normalcy Bias is invisible to those who hold it because their way of being feels not like a choice but like reality. They don't see their own culture; they see the world. Everyone else has a culture; they have normality.

Example: "He couldn't understand why other cultures did things differently. To him, his way wasn't a way; it was just 'normal.' Normalcy Bias meant he never had to examine his own assumptions—they weren't assumptions, they were just reality. Other people were strange; he was just normal."

by Dumu The Void March 10, 2026