14 Facts About Hindsight bias

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

Examples of hindsight bias can be seen in the writings of historians describing outcomes of battles, physicians recalling clinical trials, and in judicial systems as individuals attribute responsibility on the basis of the supposed predictability of accidents.

Hindsight bias has been found to be more likely occur when the outcome of an event is negative rather than positive.

Hindsight bias has similarities to other memory distortions, such as misinformation effect and false autobiographical memory.

The new information given in hindsight bias is correct and presented upfront to the person, while the extra information for the other two memory distortions is wrong and presented in an indirect and possibly manipulative way.

The results showed that there is in fact a relationship; the hindsight bias index was greater among the participants who were asked to respond more rapidly than among the participants who were allowed more time to respond.

Distortions of autobiographical memory produced by hindsight bias have been used as a tool to study changes in students' beliefs about paranormal phenomena after taking a university level skepticism course.

The Hindsight bias plays a role in the process of decision-making within the medical field.

Positive consequences of hindsight bias is an increase in one's confidence and performance, as long as the bias distortion is reasonable and does not create overconfidence.

Hindsight bias has been found to affect judgments regarding the perception of visual stimuli, an effect referred to as the “I saw it all along” phenomenon.

Phenomenon of visual hindsight bias has important implications for a form of malpractice litigation that occurs in the field of radiology.

Hindsight bias effect is a paradigm that demonstrates how recently acquired knowledge influences the recollection of past information.

Hindsight bias has been shown to cause difficulties in measuring errors in these cases.

Hindsight bias can contribute to startup failure through biased performance evaluations and overentry into competition.