The hindsight bias is a common cognitive bias that involves the tendency to see events, even random ones, as more predictable than they are. It's also commonly referred to as the "I knew it all along" phenomenon.
Research
In one classic psychology experiment, college students were asked to predict whether they thought then-nominee Clarence Thomas would be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prior to the Senate vote, 58% of the students thought Thomas would be confirmed. The students were polled again following Thomas's confirmation, and a whopping 78% of students said they had believed Thomas would be confirmed.
Some examples of the hindsight bias include:
- Insisting that you knew who was going to win a football game once the event is over
- Believing that you knew all along that one political candidate was going to win an election
- Saying that you knew you weren’t going to win after losing a coin flip with a friend
- Looking back on an exam and thinking that you knew the answers to the questions you missed
- Believing you could have predicted which stocks would become profitable
The hindsight bias occurs for a combination of reasons, including our ability to “misremember” previous predictions, our tendency to view events as inevitable, and our tendency to believe we could have foreseen certain events.
The effect of this bias is that it causes us to overestimate our ability to predict events. This can sometimes lead people to take unwise risks.
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