According to the data provided by the Association for Psychological Science ([APS], 2012), Science Daily published an article explaining what hindsight bias is, how it manifests, and suggestions on bypassing that cognitive flaw. Researchers explain that people convince themselves they anticipated a certain outcome in various situations, but they do not distinguish between knowing something before it manifests and feeling that they know it. That phenomenon is currently called hindsight bias and researchers identify it as a problem. It is a general principle that can be applied in politics, marketing, sports competition, and various other areas of life.
Researchers overviewed existing material on hindsight bias explained through different models and scientific disciplines. After reviewing the factors and contexts that encourage hindsight bias, Roese and Vohs identified three hindsight bias levels. They are called memory distortion, inevitability, and foreseeability. Memory distortion is when a person remembers their initial opinion about an outcome wrong; inevitability is a form of comforting people use to convince themselves it was the only possible outcome; foreseeability makes people believe they can predict exact outcomes of actions, but they usually express their knowledge only when the outcome is clear.
The article proposed various factors as critical for developing hindsight bias, and the approach is interesting because all factors depend on individuals. People usually want to skip analyzing events, so they just use hindsight bias instead. Other possibilities include the desire to overestimate personal judgment abilities, the need for fast closure, or the need to keep an image of a predictable and safe world.
Those needs can have negative consequences because hindsight bias can make people overconfident. They will start taking more risks because they believe in their power of precognition, so they are more likely going to fail as entrepreneurs or gamblers. Other negative consequences the researchers suggest are negligence, product liability, and similar consequences that will affect the legal system.
As a solution to hindsight bias, researchers suggest that people should be urged to think about why the opposite outcomes were not true and how they could have manifested. They also warn that technology may encourage the development of hindsight bias in the future, so it is important to implement its solutions as fast as possible.
The article offers a valid point on hindsight bias, but it focuses too much on its negative aspects. It is true that hindsight bias can influence future judgments or personal image, but it does not explain exactly why hindsight bias occurs in the first place or why people are content with lying to themselves and developing vanity as if it were a positive trait. Rather than observing it as a cause, researchers should observe it as a symptom. Hindsight bias is just another cognitive defensive system and understanding why and what it protects is more critical in solving it than categorizing it into levels.
More importantly, the article does not offer an adequate solution. If people start narratives with a hypothesis, they will always be able to find facts that support their claims. If they practice hindsight bias at the second level, they will deny any other possible outcome in the first place, so it is not possible to reason with them and ask them to consider any other outcome. The proposed solution does not place people in the situation where they can lose or gain something. It is evident that fear from loss is the best motivation people can get to change. Putting people in a situation to accurately analyze their outcome predictions or risk losing something if they fail to do so is a better way to solve hindsight bias than asking them to analyze outcomes without staking anything.
References
Association for Psychological Science (2012, September 6). 'I knew it all along didn't I?' – Understanding hindsight bias. ScienceDaily. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120906123324.htm
