Decomposing the hindsight bias: A multinomial processing tree model for separating recollection and reconstruction in hindsight.

After having received feedback about the correct answer to a question, a memory judgment about one's own past answer, the original judgment (OJ), is often biased toward the feedback. The authors present a multinomial model that explains this hindsight bias effect in terms of both memory impairments and reconstruction biases for nonrecollected OJs. The model was tested in 4 experiments. As predicted, the parameters measuring OJ recollection could be influenced selectively by contrasting items whose OJs were or were not retrieved successfully earlier (Experiment 1). Increasing the feedback-recall delay reduced reconstruction biases exclusively (Experiment 2), whereas discrediting the feedback enhanced recollection of the OJs to feedback items (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, the model's guessing parameters, but no other parameters, varied as a function of the number of response alternatives. The authors discuss implications for hindsight bias theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pain patients show a higher hindsight bias

Research on pain-related cognitions has up to now predominantly relied upon introspective questionnaire data. Experimental cognitive psychology offers an alternative way of access to the cognitive aspects of chronical pain. Building on the assumption that information-processing is in part uncontrolled, automatic and pre-attentive, similar processes are also expected to be relevant for pain-relevant cognitions and to be involved in health-related convictions and in coping strategies that can be assessed with questionnaires. Cognitive-psychological research has established the "hindsight bias" as a robust phenomenon that occurs uncontrolled and automatically in diverse contexts when a prior judgment or prediction is assimilated to information received later on. The hindsight bias may be regarded as a manifestation of a universal cognitive mechanism, meaning that information (including information about emotional states) available at a given time will change the memory of prior judgments or of predictions of future events and results of behavior. Cognitive biases similar to the hindsight effect have been demonstrated in chronical pain patients. The present work elaborates the hypothesis that pain patients differ from other groups in the size of the hindsight bias and in its composition and outlines how it can contribute to the chronification of pain. Data from a hindsight-bias experiment comparing pain patients, psychiatric patients and students are analyzed using alternatively a traditional global hindsight bias score ("Hell-Index") and a multinomial modelling approach. The hindsight-effect was observed in the usual extent in the student control group, but was significantly greater in the pain group and absent in the psychiatric sample. In addition to this global finding, multinomial modelling revealed group differences in specific model parameters. This method of analysis thus proved as promising for the assessment of cognitive aspects of clinical disorders.     

Surprise, memory, and retrospective judgment making: Testing cognitive reconstruction theories of the hindsight bias effect.

Hindsight bias has been shown to be a pervasive and potentially harmful decision-making bias. A review of 4 competing cognitive reconstruction theories of hindsight bias revealed conflicting predictions about the role and effect of expectation or surprise in retrospective judgment formation. Two experiments tested these predictions examining the effects of manipulating the information presented in a text-based scenario and its congruency with the given outcome on surprise, hindsight bias, and recall. The results of Experiment 1 revealed evidence of hindsight bias after exposure to incongruent and ambivalent outcomes but not after exposure to congruent outcomes. Experiment 2 replicated the hindsight bias results and found that the ratio of outcome consistent information recalled was higher than expected in the incongruent and ambivalent conditions but equaled the ratio presented to participants in the congruent condition. The results were interpreted as supporting the general predictions of sense-making models of the hindsight bias. A refined version of this model is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Misled subjects may know more than their performance implies.

Many studies have demonstrated that subjects exposed to misleading postevent information are likely to report the misinformation with confidence on subsequent tests of memory for the event. The purpose of the present studies was to determine whether subjects exposed to misleading postevent information come to believe they remember seeing the misinformation at the original event. A second question addressed by the present studies is whether exposure to misinformation reduces subjects' ability to remember the source of items they witnessed at the original event. In two experiments, subjects viewed a slide sequence depicting an event, were subsequently exposed to misleading information or neutral information about selected aspects of the event, and were later tested on their memory for the source of original and misleading details. The results showed that exposure to misinformation did not lead subjects to believe they remembered seeing the misinformation, nor did it reduce subjects' ability to accurately identify the source of originally seen details. The same pattern of results was obtained whether subjects were tested immediately (Experiment 1) or after a 1-day delay (Experiment 2). Collectively, the results suggest that subjects may report misinformation even if they know they do not remember seeing it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hindsight bias doesn't always come easy: Causal models, cognitive effort, and creeping determinism.

Creeping determinism, a form of hindsight bias, refers to people's hindsight perceptions of events as being determined or inevitable. This article proposes, on the basis of a causal-model theory of creeping determinism, that the underlying processes are effortful, and hence creeping determinism should disappear when individuals lack the cognitive resources to make sense of an outcome. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked to read a scenario while they were under either low or high processing load. Participants who had the cognitive resources to make sense of the outcome perceived it as more probable and necessary than did participants under high processing load or participants who did not receive outcome information. Experiment 3 was designed to separate 2 postulated subprocesses and showed that the attenuating effect of processing load on hindsight bias is not due to a disruption of the retrieval of potential causal antecedents but to a disruption of their evaluation. Together the 3 experiments show that the processes underlying creeping determinism are effortful, and they highlight the crucial role of causal reasoning in the perception of past events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Increased or reversed? The effect of surprise on hindsight bias depends on the hindsight component.

Two diverging hypotheses concerning the influence of surprising events on hindsight effects have been proposed: Although some authors believe that surprising events lead to a reversal of hindsight bias, others have proposed that surprise increases hindsight bias. Drawing on the separate-components view of the hindsight bias (which argues that hindsight bias consists of 3 independent components: memory distortions, impressions of inevitability and impressions of foreseeability), we reconcile these 2 perspectives by relating them to foreseeability and inevitability. Specifically, we assume that reversals in hindsight bias are to be found when foreseeability is considered, and increases in hindsight bias are found when inevitability is considered. To test these assumptions, we arranged for participants to learn about a highly surprising outcome and subsequently judge its foreseeability and inevitability. Results were consistent with our hypotheses: Participants perceived a highly surprising but explainable outcome to be both more inevitable and less foreseeable than participants who did not received outcome information. On the basis of experimentally induced dissociations between hindsight components, the present results thus strongly support the separate-components view of the hindsight bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Directed forgetting and posthypnotic amnesia: Information processing and social contexts.

In three experiments we compared posthypnotic amnesia (PHA) with directed forgetting (DF), evaluating subjects' hypnotic susceptibility, hypnotized or not. Experiment 1 suggested that the memory processes in PHA and DF were not the same. Low and high susceptibility subjects responded differently in the two contexts. Experiment 2 demonstrated a context effect for highly susceptible subjects: They showed the usual DF response outside hypnosis but not during hypnosis. Experiment 3 showed that high and low susceptibility subjects responded similarly to DF instructions outside hypnosis, eliminating the susceptibility as an important variable in the DF response. We concluded: (a) The interaction of context and susceptibility was the important determinant of unusual DF responses for high susceptibles, and (b) information processing concepts are too limited to explain PHA and perhaps DF. Theories that include interactions appear necessary for an accurate understanding of hypnotic phenomena and perhaps some phenomena usually focused on by cognitive psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overcoming misinformation effects in eyewitness memory: effects of encoding time and event cues

Eyewitness memory is often distorted when misleading information is presented to subjects after encoding. Three experiments explored ways to overcome these misinformation effects. In Experiment 1, subjects viewed slides of a robbery, at a rate of four or seven seconds per slide. Five minutes later subjects were given a recognition test with few (1-3) or numerous (6-13) event cues. Providing numerous retrieval cues improved overall performance, but did not reduce the effects of misinformation. With week-long delays (Experiment 2) numerous retrieval cues did eliminate misinformation effects, but only when subjects viewed slides at the slower rate (seven seconds per slide). Experiment 3 essentially replicated this pattern, using a modified test to eliminate any biasing effects of distractors. Given adequate encoding and numerous retrieval cues, misinformation effects were eliminated, suggesting that under some conditions misinformation makes event memory inaccessible, but not unavailable.     

Hindsight bias: A by-product of knowledge updating?

With the benefit of feedback about the outcome of an event, people's recalled judgments are typically closer to the outcome of the event than their original judgments were. It has been suggested that this hindsight bias may be due to a reconstruction process of the prior judgment. A model of such a process is proposed that assumes that knowledge is updated after feedback and that reconstruction is based on the updated knowledge. Consistent with the model's predictions, the results of 2 studies show that knowledge after feedback is systematically shifted toward feedback, and that assisting retrieval of the knowledge prior to feedback reduces hindsight bias. In addition, the model accounts for about 75% of cases in which either hindsight bias or reversed hindsight bias occurred. The authors conclude that hindsight bias can be understood as a by-product of an adaptive process, namely the updating of knowledge after feedback. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the misinformation effect: A neuropsychological analysis.

Older adults' susceptibility to misinformation in an eyewitness memory paradigm was examined in two experiments. Experiment 1 showed that older adults are more susceptible to interfering misinformation than are younger adults on two different tests (old-new recognition and source monitoring). Experiment 2 examined the extent to which processes associated with frontal lobe functioning underlie older adults' source-monitoring difficulties. Older adults with lower frontal-lobe-functioning scores on neuropsychological tests were particularly susceptible to false memories in the misinformation paradigm. The authors' results agree with data from other false memory paradigms that show greater false recollections in older adults, especially in those who scored poorly on frontal tests. The results support a source-monitoring account of aging and illusory recollection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eliminating the hindsight bias.

Those who consider the likelihood of an event after it has occurred exaggerate their likelihood of having been able to predict that event in advance. We attempted to eliminate this hindsight bias among 194 neuropsychologists. Foresight subjects read a case history and were asked to estimate the probability of three different diagnoses. Subjects in each of the three hindsight groups were told that one of the three diagnoses was correct and were asked to state what probability they would have assigned to each diagnosis if they were making the original diagnosis. Foresight-reasons and hindsight-reasons subjects performed the same task as their foresight and hindsight counterparts, except they had to list one reason why each of the possible diagnoses might be correct. The frequency of subjects succumbing to the hindsight bias was lower in the hindsight-reasons groups than in the hindsight groups not asked to list reasons χ–2(1, N?=?140)?=?4.12, p     

The interplay of memory and judgment processes in effects of aging on hindsight bias.

Hindsight bias is the phenomenon that after people are presented with the correct answer to a question, their judgment regarding their own past answer to this question is biased toward the correct answer. In three experiments, younger and older adults gave numerical responses to general-knowledge questions and later attempted to recall their responses. For some questions, the correct answer was provided during recall (Experiment 1) or before recall (Experiments 2 and 3). Multinomial model-based analyses show age differences in both recollection bias and reconstruction bias when the correct judgment was in working memory during the recall phase. The authors discuss implications for theories of cognitive aging and theories of hindsight bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hindsight bias from 3 to 95 years of age.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 37(3) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record 2011-08992-005). On page 381, the notation in Figure 1 is incorrect. The corrected notations are discussed in the correction.] Upon learning the outcome to a problem, people tend to believe that they knew it all along (hindsight bias). Here, we report the first study to trace the development of hindsight bias across the life span. One hundred ninety-four participants aged 3 to 95 years completed 3 tasks designed to measure visual and verbal hindsight bias. All age groups demonstrated hindsight bias on all 3 tasks; however, preschoolers and older adults exhibited more bias than older children and younger adults. Multinomial processing tree analyses of these data revealed that preschoolers' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them substituting the correct answer for their original answer in their recall (a qualitative error). Conversely, older adults' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them forgetting their original answer and recalling an answer closer to, but not equal to, the correct answer (a quantitative error). We discuss these findings in relation to mechanisms of memory, perspective taking, theory of mind, and executive function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influences of misleading postevent information: Misinformation interference and acceptance.

Because of the biasing nature of retrieval tests, evidence that the introduction of misleading postevent information will impair the memory for an original event has recently been in dispute. In two experiments, a retrieval test sensitive to both biasing effects of misinformation (misinformation acceptance) and influences of the misinformation on memory (misinformation interference) was used. Both experiments demonstrated misinformation acceptance, and one of the experiments suggested that misinformation interferes with the ability to remember the original event. Two misinformation interference hypotheses are evaluated; they suggest that the misinformation may have either impaired memory or led to confusion regarding what had occurred during the event. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to Bernstein et al. (2011).

Reports an error in "Hindsight bias from 3 to 95 years of age" by Daniel M. Bernstein, Edgar Erdfelder, Andrew N. Meltzoff, William Peria and Geoffrey R. Loftus (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2011[Mar], Vol 37[2], 378-391). On page 381, the notation in Figure 1 is incorrect. The corrected notations are discussed in the correction. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2011-02006-001.) Upon learning the outcome to a problem, people tend to believe that they knew it all along (hindsight bias). Here, we report the first study to trace the development of hindsight bias across the life span. One hundred ninety-four participants aged 3 to 95 years completed 3 tasks designed to measure visual and verbal hindsight bias. All age groups demonstrated hindsight bias on all 3 tasks; however, preschoolers and older adults exhibited more bias than older children and younger adults. Multinomial processing tree analyses of these data revealed that preschoolers' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them substituting the correct answer for their original answer in their recall (a qualitative error). Conversely, older adults' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them forgetting their original answer and recalling an answer closer to, but not equal to, the correct answer (a quantitative error). We discuss these findings in relation to mechanisms of memory, perspective taking, theory of mind, and executive function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Decision makers' hindsight bias after receiving favorable and unfavorable feedback.

Two studies examined if decision makers show hindsight bias when feedback reflects upon their judgment. Study 1 investigated whether decision making heightens cognitive activity, and thereby reduces hindsight effects, or triggers self-serving mechanisms that prompt hindsight bias only when outcomes match favorably with decisions. Business students decided if they would purchase a company's stock, then received no feedback or feedback that the stock value increased or decreased. Consistent with a self-serving interpretation, relative to no-feedback participants, those whose outcomes matched favorably with their decisions showed hindsight bias and had a higher proportion of internal thoughts. In Study 2, favorable-feedback participants again showed hindsight bias, and had higher recall for decision-supportive items, but not when their tendency to take credit for success was suppressed. Discussion focuses on implications of decision makers' hindsight bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and emotional memory: Cognitive mechanisms underlying the positivity effect.

Younger adults tend to remember negative information better than positive or neutral information (negativity bias). The negativity bias is reduced in aging, with older adults occasionally exhibiting superior memory for positive, as opposed to negative or neutral, information (positivity bias). Two experiments with younger (N = 24 in Experiment 1, N = 25 in Experiment 2; age range: 18?35 years) and older adults (N = 24 in both experiments; age range: 60?85 years) investigated the cognitive mechanisms responsible for age-related differences in recognition memory for emotional information. Results from diffusion model analyses (R. Ratcliff, 1978) indicated that the effects of valence on response bias were similar in both age groups but that Age × Valence interactions emerged in memory retrieval. Specifically, older adults experienced greater overall familiarity for positive items than younger adults. We interpret this finding in terms of an age-related increase in the accessibility of positive information in long-term memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impediments to accurate clinical judgment and possible ways to minimize their impact.

Recent research in cognitive psychology has begun to uncover some of the factors that make clinical judgment a difficult task. Five impediments to accurate judgment are discussed: inability to assess covariation, influence of preconceived notions, lack of awareness of one's judgmental processes, overconfidence, and the hindsight bias. To minimize the impact of these impediments, 3 strategies are suggested: active consideration of alternative outcomes, increased attention to certain types of usually ignored data, and minimization of the role of memory. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hindsight: Biased judgments of past events after the outcomes are known.

The hindsight bias is the tendency for people with outcome knowledge to believe falsely that they would have predicted the reported outcome of an event. This article reviews empirical research relevant to hindsight phenomena. The influence of outcome knowledge, termed creeping determinism, was initially hypothesized to result from the immediate and automatic integration of the outcome into a person's knowledge of an event. Later research has identified at least 4 plausible, general strategies for responding to hindsight questions. These explanations postulate that outcome information affects the selection of evidence to make a judgment, the evidence evaluation, the manner in which evidence is integrated, or the response generation process. It is also likely, in some situations, that a combination of 2 or more of these mechanisms produces the observed hindsight effects. We provide an interpretation of the creeping determinism hypothesis in terms of inferences made to reevaluate case-specific evidence once the relevant outcome is known and conclude that it is the most common mechanism underlying observed hindsight effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The reiteration effect in hindsight bias.

Repetition of an assertion increases the degree of belief in that assertion. This reiteration effect is used to explain two puzzling findings in research on hindsight bias. First, the reiteration effect explains the asymmetry in hindsight bias for true and false assertions. This striking asymmetry has often been observed in experimental studies, but no rationale has yet been found. Second, the reiteration effect predicts a novel finding: Recalled confidence will increase in hindsight bias studies even if no feedback is given. The authors have checked both predictions against results reported in the literature; with some exceptions, the evidence supports them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)