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memory
You believe past events were more predictable than they were.
Hindsight bias causes you to view historical outcomes as inevitable despite the inherent uncertainty of the time.
When people are asked to estimate the probability of an event before it happens, they provide varied answers. Once the outcome is revealed, they revise their memory, claiming they 'knew it all along'.
Your memory reconstructs the past to match the present, erasing your original doubt.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Baruch Fischhoff, 1975
- What the check found
- The claim accurately captures the definition of hindsight bias introduced by Fischhoff's 1975 research, though it is a conceptual summary rather than a direct verbatim quote.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.