Hindsight bias

Hindsight bias is the inclination to see events that have occurred as more predictable than they in fact were before they took place. Hindsight bias has been demonstrated experimentally in a variety of settings, including politics, games and medicine. In psychological experiments of hindsight bias, subjects also tend to remember their predictions of future events as having been stronger than they actually were, in those cases where those predictions turn out correct.

Prophecy that is recorded after the fact is an example of hindsight bias, given its own rubric, as vaticinium ex eventu.

One explanation of the bias is the availability heuristic: the event that did occur is more salient in one's mind than the possible outcomes that did not.

It has been shown that examining possible alternatives may reduce the effects of this bias.

See also

Thinking portal

• Cognitive bias
• Historian's fallacy
• List of cognitive biases
• Memory
• Memory bias
• Unknown unknown
• Black swan theory
• Outcome bias

References

• Bernstein, Michael André. (1994). Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Fischhoff, B. & Beyth, R. (1975). "I knew it would happen": Remembered probabilities of once-future things. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 13, 1–16.
• García Landa, José Ángel. (2004) "The Hermeneutic Spiral from Schleiermacher to Goffman: Retroactive Thematization, Interaction, and Interpretation." BELL (Belgian English Language and Literature) ns 2: 155–66.
• Memory (2003). Special issue on Hindsight Bias, ed. Ulrich Hoffrage and Rüdiger F. Pohl).11.4/5.
• Morson, Gary Saul. (1994). Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Myers, David G. (2005). Social psychology (8 ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. pp. 18–19. ISBN 9780071113908. OCLC 173074713. 
• Social Cognition (2007). Special issue on the Hindsight Bias, ed. Hartmut Blank, Jochen Musch & Rüdiger F. Pohl, Vol 25 (1).

External links

• Excerpt from: David G. Myers, Exploring Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994, pp.15-19. (More discussion of Paul Lazarsfeld's experimental questions.)
• Forecasting (Macro and Micro) and Future Concepts Ken Fisher on Market Analysis (4/7/06)
• Iraq War Naysayers May Have Hindsight Bias. Shankar Vedantam. Washington Post.

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