Hindsight Bias: A By-product of Knowledge Updating

Ulrich Hoffrage (), Ralph Hertwig and Gerd Gigerenzer ()
Additional contact information
Ulrich Hoffrage: Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Postal: L 13, 15, D-68131 Mannheim
Ralph Hertwig: MPI for Human Development, Postal: Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin
Gerd Gigerenzer: MPI for Human Development, Berlin, Postal: Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin

No 99-33, Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications from Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim

Abstract: After feedback, peopleãs recollections of judgments they made earlier differ systematically from their actual original judgments: Their recollection judgments are typically closer to the truth than the original judgments have been. It has been proposed that this phenomenon¨the so-called hindsight bias¨may be due to cognitive reconstruction of the prior judgment. We propose a theoretical model of this reconstruction process. The modelãs crucial assumptions are that knowledge is updated after feedback, and that reconstruction is based on the updated knowledge. By using a simple inferential heuristic (Take The Best, Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996), this model explains at the level of individual judgments why hindsight bias does or does not occur, and even why it sometimes reverses. Two studies show (a) that knowledge after feedback is indeed systematically shifted toward feedback, (b) that our model accounts for 75 percent of cases in which either hindsight bias or reversed hindsight bias occurred, and (c) that assisting knowledge recall reduces hindsight bias. We conclude that hindsight bias can be seen as a by-product of an adaptive process, namely the updating of knowledge after feedback.

Pages: 46 pages
Date: 1999-03-30
Note: Financial Support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 504, at the University of Mannheim, is gratefully acknowledged.
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:xrs:sfbmaa:99-33

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications from Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim Contact information at EDIRC., Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carsten Schmidt ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).