Citation

Calvillo DP, Gomes DM. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 2011; 18(2): 385-391.

Affiliation

Psychology Department, California State University San Marcos, 333 South Twin Oaks Valley Road, San Marcos, CA, 92096, USA, dcalvill@csusm.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Psychonomic Society Publications)

DOI

10.3758/s13423-011-0062-4

PMID

21327370

Abstract

The hindsight bias occurs when people view an outcome as more foreseeable than it actually was. The role of an outcome's initial surprise in the hindsight bias was examined using animations of automobile accidents. Twenty-six participants rated the initial surprise of accidents' occurring in eight animations. An additional 84 participants viewed these animations in one of two conditions: Half stopped the animations when they were certain an accident would occur (i.e., in foresight), and the other half watched the entire animations first and then stopped the animations when they thought that a naïve viewer would be certain that an accident would occur (i.e., in hindsight). When the accidents were low in initial surprise, there were no foresight-hindsight differences; when initial surprise was medium, there was a hindsight bias; and when initial surprise was high, there was a reversed hindsight bias. The results are consistent with a sense-making model of hindsight bias.

Language: en