Hindsight Bias: What Is It?

Cognitive biases cause our perception and interpretation of reality to deviate, and make our judgments or interpretations of it inaccurate or illogical. One of them is the hindsight bias, which implies thinking that we could have avoided certain events once they have already happened.

The fundamental characteristic of this bias, which will allow us to understand it better, is precisely the moment in which it appears: after an event, and never before.

Thus, it appears when certain things have happened and we think: “Oysters, I knew it would happen!” , or “I could have prevented it!” However, this perception of predictability and avoidability is biased, false, and disproportionately increased. Why? Because before the event we would never have thought that we could have avoided it (or if we had thought about it, it would never have been to such a high degree).

What are cognitive biases?

Although we believe that our interpretation of reality is accurate or reliable, in many cases, this is not the case. And this is because there are so-called cognitive biases, a type of psychological phenomenon that leads us to make illogical or inaccurate interpretations of reality. It is, in a way, a mental deviation that takes us away from “objective” reality.

In this way, cognitive biases can be defined as errors that people manifest when interpreting reality. They appear unconsciously, automatically and systematically. It is about erroneous perceptions that we have of things, which cause us to make false or inaccurate judgments. One of these biases is the retrospective bias, which we will learn about throughout the article.

Useful for marketing or advertising?

Therefore, cognitive biases lead us to make mistakes, and can even influence our memories, our thoughts and beliefs, our perception and our judgments. These biases can turn out to be benefits in areas such as marketing, advertising or business strategy.

Thus, if these sectors know these biases in human beings, they can take advantage of them to “manipulate” people and make them believe what they want. In fact, for this reason, more and more neuromarketing strategies and studies are being promoted, for example, because knowing the human mind allows sales to be boosted.

Hindsight bias: what is it and how does it work?

Hindsight bias, also known as hindsight bias, is a cognitive bias. It is defined as that overestimation of the predictability that something will happen after it has happened. That is, it implies seeing things more clearly or evident once they have already happened. In other words: it has to do with the belief that something was very evident or very easy to prevent once it has already happened.

Some examples for us to better understand the hindsight bias are: “Oysters, this was coming” (once it has already happened), or “I knew it would happen.” But they are thoughts that we do not have before the event or event happens, and that is precisely why we are talking about a bias, because it only appears after the situation, and makes us believe that “we could have foreseen it” (when in reality it is not So).

We can sum up hindsight bias in a cliché:  A past bull is easy to see! Through this bias, people have the false belief that certain outcomes, often from critical situations, are more predictable than they actually were.

Origin of retrospective bias

Hindsight bias, or hindsight bias, is a term from cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology is that area of ​​psychology in charge of the study of cognition, that is, of the mental processes involved in knowledge (attention, memory …).

The first research that was carried out in a systematic way, with retrospective bias, was in 1975. It was developed by the researcher Baruch Fischhoff. Through their research and subsequent studies, it was concluded that this bias is more complex than others (and has deeper levels than others).

Elements of hindsight bias

Although Fischhoff initially defined it as an indivisible whole, it was later learned that it was a phenomenon that could be broken down into sub-elements. One of them is the overestimation of the real predictability of an event, already described above. Another, the possibility that this bias could falsify the correct recall of the estimates made before the event.

In other words, it can change the memory we had before the appearance or development of the event. These two elements described can appear simultaneously and reinforce the retrospective bias.

Finally, we find as another of its components a feeling of inevitability after the event (believing that we could not avoid it, when it has already happened). In summary, we find that the retrospective bias is made up of the following elements:

• An increased sense of post-event inevitability (believing it couldn’t be helped).
• Greater impression of predictability after the event (believing it could be prevented)
• Distortions in memory.

A contradictory bias?

If we look at it, two of these elements are paradoxical: on the one hand, the belief that the event could not be avoided (inevitability), and on the other, the belief that it could be prevented. This may occur, since the retrospective bias is a paradoxical bias, and as Blank et al. (2008) in one of their studies, their creation processes are unconscious.

This would explain why sometimes, after an event occurs, we simultaneously perceive it as more inevitable but also less predictable than before it took place. And it is that cognitive biases are often difficult to identify and understand, precisely because of this type of “contradiction.”

Our mind is not perfect: get to know it

And you, have you ever experienced hindsight bias? If you think about it, surely in your day to day, you have lived it at some time. Our perception and interpretation of reality, as we have seen, is not perfect, much less exact.

This is the source of many errors when we make decisions, when we make judgments or when we draw conclusions. Although we deviate from logical or valid solutions many times, knowing this type of cognitive bias can help us increase our effectiveness when drawing conclusions or deciding, in multiple aspects and areas of our life.