The Role of Surprise in Hindsight Bias – A Metacognitive Model of Reduced and Reversed Hindsight Bias

Patrick A. Müller () and Dagmar Stahlberg ()
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Patrick A. Müller: Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Utrecht University, Postal: Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands
Dagmar Stahlberg: Lehrstuhl fuer Sozialpsychologie, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Postal: Seminargebaeude A5, D-68131 Mannheim

No 07-16, Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications from Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim

Abstract: Hindsight bias is the well researched phenomenon that people falsely believe that they would have correctly predicted the outcome of an event once it is known. In recent years, several authors have doubted the ubiquity of the effect and have reported a reversal under certain conditions. This article presents an integrative model on the role of surprise as one factor explaining the malleability of the hindsight bias. Three ways in which surprise influences the reconstruction of pre-outcome predictions are assumed: (1) Surprise is used as direct metacognitive heuristic to estimate the distance between outcome and prediction. (2) Surprise triggers a deliberate sense-making process, and (3) also biases this process by enhancing the retrieval of surprise-congruent information and expectancy-based hypothesis testing.

Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2007-06-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe
Note: Financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 504, at the University of Mannheim, is gratefully acknowledged.
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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