"omission bias" vs "action bias" -- how can they be reconciled? I'm having trouble reconciling these two biases. They seem to be the exact opposite of each other. Yet humans are allegedly pre-disposed to both. 

How can they be reconciled?



Omission Bias: 


  The omission bias is an alleged type of cognitive bias. It is the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral than equally harmful omissions (inactions) because actions are more obvious than inactions.


Action Bias (academic source: Bar-Eli et al., 2007) 


  Simply put this means that just about everyone, when faced with ambiguous situations, especially those circumstances associated with risk, gets the feeling that they need to take some action regardless of whether this is a good idea or not.
This is a great question, you're not the only one confused. We just completed a working paper on this very topic: "What is action, what is inaction? A review of action-inaction biases and recommendations for term use and typology" and we cover these two biases and many other action-inaction biases. 

See page 5:


  Building on the action-effect is the omission bias. The omission bias
  has been defined in many different ways, and is sometimes regarded to
  be the same as the action-effect. We view the two biases as different,
  with the omission bias extending the action-effect to focus on the
  choices made between action and inaction or about moral attributions
  to action and inaction, rather than the experience of negative
  emotions or regret as a consequence of action-inaction. In its
  broadest definition, the omission bias is the phenomenon that people
  prefer omissions to commission when there is the possibility of a
  negative outcome (Spranca, Minsk, &amp; Baron, 1991; Ritov &amp; Baron, 1990).
  Using this definition, if we consider the classic action-effect
  scenario, the two investors facing a risky situation and presented
  with the options of taking action and switching versus not taking
  action and sticking to the initial investment would prefer inaction to
  action. Linking with the action-effect, the bias could partly be
  explained as a strategy to minimize anticipated-regret (Anderson,
  2003; Wong &amp; Kwong, 2007; Zhang &amp; Fishbach, 2005), possibly further
  heightened by related biases such as loss aversion (Tversky &amp;
  Kahneman, 1991) and risk aversion (Kahneman &amp; Tversky, 1979; Tversky &amp;
  Kahneman, 1992).


Briefly, the "action effect" is the tendency to regret actions more than inaction (negative outcomes) leading to a preference for omissions. In Bar-Eli's paper the action-effect is reversed to an inaction-effect (Zeelenberg etal. 2002) due to normality, the expectations for goal keepers to act. Therefore, the reconciliation is by using normality from norm theory (Kahneman &amp; Miller, 1986).

Hope that helps, we'd appreciate feedback if things aren't clear.