Hindsight Is Not Equal to Foresight¶
Fischhoff, B. (1975). Hindsight Is Not Equal to Foresight: The Effect of Outcome Knowledge on Judgment under Uncertainty. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1(3), 288-299.
Cited by¶
10 citations across 10 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Expectation Violation
- Priority in force. The commitment exists before the event rather than being reconstructed after it; a model fitted in hindsight can be illustrated by an outcome but never breached by one.
This sourceShows outcome knowledge inflates the judged prior probability of what happened, so a model reconstructed after the event no longer excludes it and cannot be breached by it.
- Priority in force. The commitment exists before the event rather than being reconstructed after it; a model fitted in hindsight can be illustrated by an outcome but never breached by one.
- Memoing
- The primary stream (the artifact). The output being produced — a coded dataset, a body of code, a model, a clinical chart, a policy document, an audit file. The parallel trace (the reasoning record). A running record of in-flight reasoning — working interpretations, alternatives considered, decisions made, doubts felt, frame-shifts — kept distinct from, not folded into, the artifact. The contemporaneity discipline (the in-flight requirement). Entries made when the reasoning happens, not reconstructed after; post-hoc reconstruction is systematically biased by hindsight, motivated forgetting, and plausibility-tightening.
This sourceDemonstrates that outcome knowledge biases retrospective judgment ("creeping determinism"/hindsight bias), motivating contemporaneous rather than post-hoc capture.
- The primary stream (the artifact). The output being produced — a coded dataset, a body of code, a model, a clinical chart, a policy document, an audit file. The parallel trace (the reasoning record). A running record of in-flight reasoning — working interpretations, alternatives considered, decisions made, doubts felt, frame-shifts — kept distinct from, not folded into, the artifact. The contemporaneity discipline (the in-flight requirement). Entries made when the reasoning happens, not reconstructed after; post-hoc reconstruction is systematically biased by hindsight, motivated forgetting, and plausibility-tightening.
- Past-State Contamination
- Naming past-state contamination gives the critic a charge that does not require exhibiting an error, and takes from the defender a reply — "but it is true" — that was never responsive to the charge.
This sourceDemonstrates that knowing the outcome systematically alters judgements of what was knowable beforehand, and that judges do not detect the effect in themselves.
- Naming past-state contamination gives the critic a charge that does not require exhibiting an error, and takes from the defender a reply — "but it is true" — that was never responsive to the charge.
Mechanisms¶
- Cognitive Walkthrough
- Its central hazard is hindsight bias: once the outcome is known, both facilitator and learner drift toward "the right call was obvious," judging the reasoning by its result instead of by the information available at the time.
This sourceShows that outcome knowledge alters retrospective likelihood judgments and the perceived relevance of information available before the outcome.
- Its central hazard is hindsight bias: once the outcome is known, both facilitator and learner drift toward "the right call was obvious," judging the reasoning by its result instead of by the information available at the time.
- Hindsight Information Exclusion Test
- Its strength is that it neutralizes hindsight bias — the well-documented tendency, once an outcome is known, to see it as having been more predictable than it was.
This sourceShows that knowing an outcome makes it appear more predictable in retrospect.
- Its strength is that it neutralizes hindsight bias — the well-documented tendency, once an outcome is known, to see it as having been more predictable than it was.
- Path-Trace Audit
- Its failure mode is hindsight bias
This sourceShows that outcome knowledge raises the perceived prior likelihood of what occurred and reshapes which preceding facts seem relevant.
- Its failure mode is hindsight bias
- Post-Decision Calibration Review
- Its characteristic failure is hindsight bias:
This sourceShows that outcome knowledge inflates perceived prior predictability and what people believe could have been known beforehand.
- Its characteristic failure is hindsight bias:
- Prediction–Outcome Delta Log
- Its whole reason for existing is that a prediction remembered after the outcome is worthless: memory quietly edits "I thought it might go either way" into "I knew it all along,"
This sourceShows that outcome knowledge increases perceived prior likelihood and distorts judgments about what was foreseeable.
- Its whole reason for existing is that a prediction remembered after the outcome is worthless: memory quietly edits "I thought it might go either way" into "I knew it all along,"
- Retrospective Error Calibration Review
- Its characteristic failure is hindsight bias
This sourceShows that outcome knowledge makes reported outcomes seem more likely and causes people to overestimate what could have been known beforehand.
- Its characteristic failure is hindsight bias
- Weak Signal Log
- A subtler trap is hindsight bias working in reverse of what the log intends: once an event unfolds, readers over-credit whichever early entries pointed at it and forget the equally-faint ones that pointed nowhere.
This sourceShows that outcome knowledge inflates the apparent prior likelihood of what occurred and changes which preceding information seems relevant.
- A subtler trap is hindsight bias working in reverse of what the log intends: once an event unfolds, readers over-credit whichever early entries pointed at it and forget the equally-faint ones that pointed nowhere.
Verification¶
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