Hindsight Bias

Humans have a natural tendency to mix the facts so that they can make themselves look and feel like they know more than they really do. The Critical thinking application “Hindsight in everyday analysis of Personality” is a very informative piece of writing that describes and analyzes hindsight bias. Hindsight bias very can be bad; they can cause big problems, especially in some professional fields. It is important to know how to recognize hindsight bias to prevent problems from occurring.
Hindsight bias are accretions made after a event has occurred; The psychology textbook (Wayne Weiten. Psychology, themes & variations, briefer version) describes it as “the tendency to mold one’s interpretation of the past events to fit how the events actually turned out”. Most people do this on a regular basis. It’s easy to come up with possible explanations why something happened, or why someone we know well has a certain personality trait. Hindsight bias make everyone seem like an expert on personality or a situation.
Hindsight bias can be harmful in a variety of professional fields. In the medical field, when patients go to another doctor to obtain a second opinion, if the doctor knows the original diagnosis they are much more likely to have the same diagnosis. Hindsight bias can also be a issue in politics, games, evolutionary theories, and many other things.
Hindsight bias are a much too common thing these days. If we were to be more careful about our everyday assumptions, it would prevent a large number of problems. People need to be critical thinkers that, as the book says, “understand that knowing the outcomes of events biases our recall and interpretation of the events”.