A very common and dangerous bias, because it is unknown to most, is the so-called “hindsight bias”, which consists of the error of retrospective judgment. Also called hindsight or recapitulation bias. This is an effect of emphasizing recent memories that is activated by convincing you that you had anticipated an event, but that event is already known or has even occurred. It’s when you say after, but not before: “I said it.” This process leads far from reality and close to misunderstandings and relational problems; In fact, you had not foreseen it, you think you did, but that is not the case. In this Psychology-Online article, we are going to delve deeper into what What is retrospective bias, its characteristics and some examples about.
What is hindsight bias
What does retrospective bias mean? The concept of hindsight bias is derived from psychological literature and, in particular, from experimental studies showing that In hindsight people exaggerate what they knew before the event occurred: It’s the “I knew it all along” effect. Hindsight bias is the tendency to reconstruct the past so that it is compatible with the current body of knowledge: a kind of confirmation bias that goes backwards in time, in short. Once an event has taken place, we reconstruct how it happened, why it happened that way and not another, and why we should have foreseen it. We are all good coaches, but after the game.
But why does this happen? Our brain reasons by patterns and associations of ideasand in this way, every time we can associate a consequence with a cause, the brain fuses them into a usefully repeatable pattern, to be able to use it again in the face of a similar situation and help us predict it.
To better understand biases, in this article you will find.
Characteristics of hindsight bias
Hindsight bias is in full force after a major catastrophe, when everyone thinks they know how and why it happened and why experts and leaders should have foreseen it. Improbable and unpredictable events become not only probable, but practically certain afterwards. After a disaster, in retrospect, everything seems simple and the “expert” analyzing the case wonders how the subject involved could not notice the obvious connections.
Hindsight bias has another aspect, known as outcome bias: When an outcome is unfavorable, those who reexamine the case are more likely to criticize the attention given and find errors. For example, Caplan and colleagues (1991) asked two groups of physicians to review a series of clinical notes. The grades for both groups were identical, except for the patient outcomes, which were satisfactory for one group of reviewers and poor for the other. The group of outcomes poor gave much harsher criticism than the other group, although the treatments described were identical. So, in retrospect, we simplify things and tend to be more critical when the outcome is unfavorable.
Examples of Hindsight Bias
Let’s look at some examples of these cognitive biases:
- Conspiracies. Hindsight bias plays a determining role in conspiracy theories; Often, conspiracy theories are based on a result that, in light of the available elements, could not be easily foreseen and, despite this, whoever would have been in charge of intervening would not have done so. Which means that everything was pre-programmed. It is enough to think of the attack of September 11, in which according to the conspirators, in light of all the available evidence, it does not seem possible that the Americans did not already know about the attack, having in their hands all the elements to deduce it.
- Another striking example of retrospective bias is that of Pearl HarborAccording to conspiratorial sources, in fact, in the days before the attack there had been up to eight reports, the result of radio interceptions by Japanese commanders, about the imminent attack on the Hawaii base. From this, the conspirators deduce that The attack was easily foreseeable and that proof of premeditation, intended to constitute an excuse to intervene in the war, had not been proven. In reality, the narrative ignores the fact that, on those same days, Japanese commanders’ radio eavesdropping had intercepted 58 messages regarding movements of Japanese ships in the Philippines, 21 regarding attacks on Panama, 7 regarding attacks on India and to Southeast Asia and even 7 in a possible attack on the West Coast of America. The interceptions in those days were, therefore, so many and confusing that “military intelligence stopped sending memos to the White House, fearing that there would be a breach in the security system and that the Japanese would begin to suspect that the Americans had deciphered their codes and that they were reading their communications.
If you want to know other cognitive biases, in these articles you will find:
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
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- Tuttotroppo, P. (2020). Retrospective bias: when the imprevedibile becomes predictable. Retrieved from: https://www.paolotuttotroppo.it/bias-retrospettivo-imprevedibile-diventa-prevedibile/
- Vincent, C. (2011). The security of the patient. Milan: Springer-Verlag.