Scenario 1 of 5
What probability do you assign to this outcome?
What Actually Happened
Now, recall your original prediction...
Without looking back, what probability did you ORIGINALLY assign?
Memory Distortion Revealed
Your Hindsight Bias Profile
Fischhoff's Discovery (1975)
Baruch Fischhoff gave participants information about the British-Gurkha war. Some were told the British won, others that the Gurkhas won. Both groups found their given outcome "predictable" (57-58%)!
"In hindsight, people consistently exaggerate what could have been anticipated in foresight. They not only tend to view what happened as having been inevitable, but also to view it as having appeared relatively inevitable before it happened."
— Baruch Fischhoff
— Baruch Fischhoff
Why This Matters
Legal Judgments
Juries think defendants "should have known" after seeing outcomes
Medical Malpractice
Diagnoses seem "obvious" only after they're known
Financial Crises
"Everyone should have seen 2008 coming" (they didn't)
Historical Events
Pearl Harbor seems "obvious" only in retrospect
Your Bias Score
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Complete scenarios to calculate
Session Statistics
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Avg. Distortion
0
Completed
0
Shifted Toward
0
Shifted Away
Response History
Complete scenarios to see history
The Science
Creeping Determinism: Once we know an outcome, our memory reconstructs the past to make it seem inevitable.
Three Components:
1. Memory distortion (forgetting original views)
2. Inevitability ("had to happen")
3. Foreseeability ("was predictable")