Cultural Interpretations of Global Information? Hindsight Bias after Reading Wikipedia Articles across Cultures

Abstract

Hindsight bias is the mistaken belief that an outcome could have been foreseen once it is known. But what happens after learning about an event? Can reading biased media amplify hindsight distortions? And do people from different cultural backgroundswith different cognitive thinking stylesdraw equal conclusions from equal media reports? We report two studies with Wikipedia articles and samples from different cultures (Study 1: Germany, Singapore, USA, Vietnam, Japan, Sweden, N = 446; Study 2: USA, Vietnam, N = 144). Participants read one of two article versions (foresight and hindsight) about the Fukushima Nuclear Plant and estimated the likelihood, inevitability, and foreseeability of the nuclear disaster. Reading the hindsight article increased individuals' hindsight bias independently of analytic or holistic thinking style. Having excluded survey language as potential impact factor (Study 2), this result remains. Our findings extend prior research on hindsight bias by demonstrating the amplifying effect of additional (biased) information on hindsight bias.

What drives increases in hindsight impressions after the reception of biased media content?

“…Recent research has shown that people’s individual hindsight bias even extends to a collective level: A field study documented hindsight bias in specific articles of Wikipedia, the largest collaborative compendium of world knowledge (Oeberst et al, 2018). Reading such biased articles, in turn, further increased readers’ already existing hindsight bias about the respective event (Oeberst et al, 2014, 2018; von der Beck et al, 2017). What remains unclear, however, is what exactly leads to such an additional increase in hindsight bias after the reception of biased media content.…”

“…More importantly, reading such biased articles can affect recipients’ individual hindsight bias: Oeberst et al (2014) and von der Beck et al (2017) provided participants with different versions of the Wikipedia article about the nuclear power plant in Fukushima Daiichi, Japan. Participants read either the unbiased foresight article version or the biased hindsight article version from 8 weeks after the catastrophe, containing a thorough causal elaboration of the incident.…”

“…It is almost trivial to note that media content may contain entirely new information about the event. Particularly if some time has passed—as was the case, for instance, in the studies about Fukushima (Oeberst et al, 2014; von der Beck et al, 2017)—it is likely that media content about the event contains information readers did not know before. If this novel information addresses causal links, in turn, it may add to recipients’ causal model and thus increase readers’ hindsight bias.…”

“…already existing hindsight bias about the respective event (Oeberst et al, 2014(Oeberst et al, , 2018von der Beck et al, 2017). What remains unclear, however, is what exactly leads to such an additional increase in hindsight bias after the reception of biased media content.…”

“…Participants were not explicitly instructed to ignore outcome knowledge for the foreseeability and inevitability measure as the items were worded in past tense and thus already implied to take a foresight perspective (seeNestler et al, 2010; Oeberst et al, 2018;von der Beck et al, 2017 for a similar approach).6 Except for a short passage about ongoing penal proceedings, which we deemed unsuitable for our study purposes, see https://de.wikipedia.org/w/ index.php?title=Princess_Ashika&oldid=128155849.…”