Hindsight bias

"Hindsight" redirects here. For other uses, see Hindsight (disambiguation).

Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon[1] or creeping determinism,[2] is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they were.[3][4]

After an event has occurred, people often believe that they could have predicted or perhaps even known with a high degree of certainty what the outcome of the event would be before it occurred. Hindsight bias may cause distortions of memories of what was known or believed before an event occurred and is a significant source of overconfidence in one’s ability to predict the outcomes of future events.[5] Examples of hindsight bias can be seen in the writings of historians describing the outcomes of battles, in physicians’ recall of clinical trials, and in criminal or civil trials as people tend to assign responsibility on the basis of the supposed predictability of accidents.[6][7][2]

In some countries, 20/20 indicates normal visual acuity at 20 feet, from which derives the idiom "hindsight is 20/20".

  1. ^ "I Knew It All Along…Didn't I?' – Understanding Hindsight Bias". APS Research News. Association for Psychological Science. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  2. ^ a b Fischhoff, B. (1975). "Hindsight ≠ foresight: The effect of outcome knowledge on judgment under uncertainty". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 1 (3): 288–299. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.1.3.288.
  3. ^ Roese, N. J.; Vohs, K. D. (2012). "Hindsight bias". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 7 (5): 411–426. doi:10.1177/1745691612454303. PMID 26168501. S2CID 12660438.
  4. ^ Hoffrage, Ulrich; Pohl, Rüdiger (2003). "Research on hindsight bias: A rich past, a productive present, and a challenging future". Memory. 11 (4–5): 329–335. doi:10.1080/09658210344000080. PMID 14562866. S2CID 22496794.
  5. ^ Boyd, Drew. "Innovators: Beware the Hindsight Bias". Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  6. ^ Blank, H.; Nestler, S.; von Collani, G.; Fischer, V (2008). "How many hindsight biases are there?". Cognition. 106 (3): 1408–1440. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.07.007. PMID 17764669. S2CID 37224140.
  7. ^ Arkes, H.; Faust, D.; Guilmette, T. J.; Hart, K. (1988). "Eliminating the hindsight bias". Journal of Applied Psychology. 73 (2): 305–307. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.73.2.305. S2CID 52249728.