The hindsight bias: A meta-analysis

Christensen-Szalanski, Jay; Willham, Cynthia Fobian

doi:10.1016/0749-5978(91)90010-q

Cited by 412 publications

(239 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Altogether, this more intensive sensemaking process, compared to processes elicited by expectancy-congruent outcomes, will result in stronger hindsight bias effects (Roese & Olson, 1997;Schkade & Kilbourne, 1991). In line with this view, several studies have shown that people in fact exhibit greater hindsight bias when confronted with difficult and misleading questions, and therefore, with presumably more surprising answers (Christensen-Szalanski & Willham, 1991;Fischhoff, 1977;Hoch & Loewenstein, 1989;Winman, 1997).…”

Section: Differing Views On the Role Of Surprisementioning

confidence: 51%

“…For example, even if participants were carefully informed about the effect or asked to try not to fall prey to this bias, they were unable to ignore the outcome information (Fischhoff, 1975(Fischhoff, , 1977. In their meta-analysis of 128 hindsight bias studies, Christensen-Szalanski and Willham (1991) found only six studies without a significant effect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many fields of judgment, this has to be doubted. The almost ubiquitous tendency of people to falsely believe that they would have correctly predicted the outcome of an event once the outcome is known is called hindsight bias (for meta-analyses see Christensen-Szalanski & Willham, 1991;Guilbault, Bryant, Brockway, & Posavac, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

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

Müller¹,

Stahlberg²

2007

Social Cognition

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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.Words: 120

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Section: Differing Views On the Role Of Surprisementioning

confidence: 51%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

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

Müller¹,

Stahlberg²

2007

Social Cognition

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“…People reconstruct the past through the lens of their present (Schacter, 2001). People are more likely to presume that what they know now was how they conceived it at the beginning (Christensen-Szalanski & Willham, 1991;Fischoff, 1977;Fischoff & Beyth, 1975). Without a registry for accountability, findings may be genuinely and confidently espoused as confirmatory tests of prior predictions when they are written for publication.…”

Section: Open Workflowmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific Utopia

Nosek

Spies

Motyl

2012

Perspect Psychol Sci

1,076

421

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An academic scientist's professional success depends on publishing. Publishing norms emphasize novel, positive results. As such, disciplinary incentives encourage design, analysis, and reporting decisions that elicit positive results and ignore negative results. Prior reports demonstrate how these incentives inflate the rate of false effects in published science. When incentives favor novelty over replication, false results persist in the literature unchallenged, reducing efficiency in knowledge accumulation. Previous suggestions to address this problem are unlikely to be effective. For example, a journal of negative results publishes otherwise unpublishable reports. This enshrines the low status of the journal and its content. The persistence of false findings can be meliorated with strategies that make the fundamental but abstract accuracy motive-getting it right-competitive with the more tangible and concrete incentive-getting it published. This article develops strategies for improving scientific practices and knowledge accumulation that account for ordinary human motivations and biases.

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“…The very fact that human memory is limited and research may span great lengths of time invites errors in remembering (Reyna & Brainerd, 1995), providing ample room for remembering the goals, plans, and analysis decisions that look best to be the ones that were present all along. When initial hypotheses are legitimately forgotten, scientists assume that the results they found are what they expected before data collection (Christensen-Szalanski & Willham, 1991;Fischoff, 1977;Fischoff & Beyth, 1975).…”

Section: The Current Incentive Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

The Open Science Framework: Improving Science by Making It Open and Accessible

Spies¹

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There currently exists a gap between scientific values and scientific practices. This gap is strongly tied to the current incentive structure that rewards publication over accurate science. Other problems associated with this gap include reconstructing exploratory narratives as confirmatory, the file drawer effect, an overall lack of archiving and sharing, and a singular contribution model -publication -through which credit is obtained. A solution to these problems is increased disclosure, transparency, and openness. The Open Science Framework (http://openscienceframework.org) is an infrastructure for managing the scientific workflow across the entirety of the scientific process, thus allowing the facilitation and incentivization of openness in a comprehensive manner. The current version of the OSF includes tools for documentation, collaboration, sharing, archiving, registration, and exploration.

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The hindsight bias: A meta-analysis

Cited by 412 publications

References 23 publications

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

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

Scientific Utopia

The Open Science Framework: Improving Science by Making It Open and Accessible

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