The Effects of Post-Outcome Information on Hindsight Bias

The Hindsight Bias Effect describes the observation that people's retrospective judgments are systematically more in favor of the given outcome than their predictive judgments. Over the last 30 years, the Hindsight Bias has been one of the most researched judgment phenomena and a number of competing theories have arisen to explain the effect. This study investigated the effect of post-outcome information on the size and direction of the hindsight bias. In order to test the predictions of different theories of hindsight bias, two aspects of post-outcome information were manipulated: I) source (internal vs. external), and 2.) congruency with the outcome information. Findings from the study indicate evidence for a sense-making model as being a strong candidate for accurately explaining hindsight biases, as well as uncovering a new phenomenon of negative hindsight bias in specified conditions.