![]() Hindsight bias can become a decision trap because it leads to a flawed assessment of the past.This can have both negative and positive consequences. Hindsight bias causes people to think that certain (negative) outcomes were far more predictable and avoidable than they were in reality. This part of hindsight bias relates to the availability heuristic. Because it’s easy, we feel certain that we had this understanding all along. It is easy to understand an event in retrospect, when all the information is available to us. Foreseeability or “I knew it would happen.” This occurs when we retrospectively think that we were able to foresee or predict the end result (the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect).With the information we have at the present moment, it’s easy to see an event as predetermined or inevitable, and this aligns well with how we like to view the world. We strive to maintain this idea of order by drawing on cause-and-effect relationships to explain events. In general, people like to think that the world is an orderly place. Inevitability or “It had to happen.” This involves beliefs about how the world works and what caused an event.In other words, knowing the outcome makes that outcome more available to us, which means we overestimate how probable the outcome was in the first place. This distorted recall also factors into confirmation bias and the availability heuristic. We often misremember past events or information in such a way that they agree with what we already know. Memory distortion or “I said it would happen.” Memory distortion is the misrecollection of our earlier judgments.Three different processes are involved in hindsight bias (these can occur independently or together): During this process, we essentially “rewrite the story,” focusing on certain factors and disregarding others. Hindsight bias occurs as a result of our effort to make sense of an outcome. This is because our current knowledge allows us to easily re-interpret any past disagreements or questionable behavior as a sign of trouble. Hindsight bias, for instance, might cause us to think that we “knew” a couple in our social circle would break up. This is consistent with the general tendency people have to pay more attention to negative outcomes of events, known as negativity bias. Hindsight bias is more likely to occur when the outcome of an event is negative rather than positive. Regardless of which scenario plays out, people become convinced that “they saw it coming.” In reality, people usually consider many different scenarios of what might happen in the future, but there’s no way to be certain which one of them will ultimately materialize. After an event, people often believe they knew the outcome of the event before it actually happened. Hindsight bias is a type of cognitive bias that causes people to convince themselves that a past event was predictable or inevitable. ![]() ![]() Hindsight bias is the reason behind the “Monday morning quarterback” phenomenon.īecause people feel that they “knew it all along,” they overestimate their ability to foresee the outcome of future events, such as medical errors, sport scores, or election results. When you know the result, you know what worked and what didn’t work during the game. ![]() However, it is easy to pass judgment from a position of hindsight and to recognize bad decisions after the fact. This is particularly the case after a loss. Example: Hindsight biasFootball fans often criticize or question the actions of players or coaches in what is known as “Monday morning quarterbacking.” They often claim they knew the result before the game was over and that the outcome was easily preventable. This can lead them to take unnecessary risks or judge others too harshly. Due to this, people think their judgment is better than it is. Hindsight bias is the tendency to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were. Try for free What Is Hindsight Bias? | Definition & Examples Eliminate grammar errors and improve your writing with our free AI-powered grammar checker.
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