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.

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Classic studies

Paul Lazarsfeld (1949): Lazarsfeld gave participants interpretive statements that seemed like common sense immediately after they were read, but in actuality the opposite was true.

Karl Teigen (1986): Teigen gave participants proverbs to evaluate. When participants were given the proverb "Fear is stronger than love", most students would rate it as true; when given its opposite ("Love is stronger than fear"), most would also rate that as true.

Phrases

The following common phrases are expressions or terms for hindsight bias:

• "I told you so!"
• "With the wisdom of hindsight."
• Retrospective foresight
• 20/20 Hindsight
• Monday morning quarterback

See also

• Cognitive bias
• Historian's fallacy
• List of cognitive biases
• Memory
• Memory bias
• Unknown unknown

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.
• Meyers, David G. (2005). Social Psychology. Boston: McGraw Hill (p. 18-19).
• Social Cognition (2007). Special issue on the Hindsight Bias, ed. Hartmut Blank, Jochen Musch & Rüdiger F. Pohl, Vol 25 (1).