Hindsight bias: biased reconstruction
Contemporary models suggest that the hindsight bias appears due to reconstructive processes while people try to generate their original estimates.
One is loosely based on the
response bias hypothesis,
originally developed in eyewitness testimony research: People are assumed either to have remembered or to have forgotten their original judgements. Those that do remember their original estimates are likely to reproduce them. Those who have forgotten them are forced to guess and, in the presence of outcome information, are likely to utilize this information as an anchor assuming that their estimates must have been somewhere in the proximity of the true outcome. But since people are generally optimistic about their capacities, they will locate their presumed prior estimates closer to the real outcome than it had actually been, resulting in the hindsight bias.
Other authors concentrate their assumptions on three different stages in the reconstructive process: Selective retrieval, prejudiced interpretation and weighing of different cues.
Finally, the hindsight distortion may be triggered by the heuristic of
anchoring and adjustment.
Continue to:
response bias hypothesis
Return to:
theoretical explanations
Literature:
Hawkins & Hastie (1990),
Kahnemann, Slovic & Tversky (1982),
Stahlberg & Maass (1998)
