Perceptions of Purple: Counterfactual and Hindsight Judgments at Northwestern Wildcats Football Games

Previous research has supported the counterintuitive idea that counterfactual thinking (thoughts of what might have been) may increase rather than decrease the hindsight bias (post hoc certainty regarding a factual outcome) and that this effect is mediated by shifts in causal perceptions. Unlike previous research, which has been limited to simple laboratory demonstrations, the present studies assessed highly involved sports fans' perceptions before and after home football games. Participants induced to generate counterfactual thoughts after the game showed a greater hindsight bias than control participants. Participants induced to generate causal explanations evinced a similar exacerbation of the hindsight bias, supporting previous claims that the positive effect of counterfactual thinking on the hindsight bias is mediated by explanations that satisfyingly accountfor the outcome.

Cognitive Reconstruction, Hindsight, and Reactions to Victims and Perpetrators

Two studies provide evidence that reconstructive memory contributes to the hindsight bias. In the first study, participants read identical scenarios that either had no ending or ended with a rape. Those receiving the rape ending reconstructed the story to be more stereotypically associated with rape than did those in the no-ending condition. In the second study, participants read an identical scenario that ended in a marriage proposal or a rape. Participants’ memories of the events in the story were reconstructed to be stereotypically consistent with whichever ending they received. The hindsight bias was obtained in both studies; participants rated the ending they received as more likely than participants not receiving that ending. For both studies, regression analyses revealed causal paths in which the ending of the story predicted stereotypical memories, which predicted the hindsight bias. The hindsight bias predicted derogation of the characters in the stories.

Hindsight Bias

Hindsight bias occurs when people feel that they "knew it all along," that is, when they believe that an event is more predictable after it becomes known than it was before it became known. Hindsight bias embodies any combination of three aspects: memory distortion, beliefs about events' objective likelihoods, or subjective beliefs about one's own prediction abilities. Hindsight bias stems from (a) cognitive inputs (people selectively recall information consistent with what they now know to be true and engage in sensemaking to impose meaning on their own knowledge), (b) metacognitive inputs (the ease with which a past outcome is understood may be misattributed to its assumed prior likelihood), and (c) motivational inputs (people have a need to see the world as orderly and predictable and to avoid being blamed for problems). Consequences of hindsight bias include myopic attention to a single causal understanding of the past (to the neglect of other reasonable explanations) as well as general overconfidence in the certainty of one's judgments. New technologies for visualizing and understanding data sets may have the unintended consequence of heightening hindsight bias, but an intervention that encourages people to consider alternative causal explanations for a given outcome can reduce hindsight bias.

Hindsight Bias and the Activation of Counterfactual Mind-Sets

Previous research has shown that conditional counterfactuals are positively related to the magnitude of creeping determinism. Unlike previous experiments which show this increased hindsight bias to occur after exceptional antecedents, we investigated another possible factor, namely a prior activation of a counterfactual mind-set. We investigated our prediction using a hypothetical scenario. Prior to reading the hindsight scenario some participants were asked to solve a scrambled-sentence test including conditional counterfactual sentences. Results of two experiments were consistent with our predictions: Participants that solved the scrambled-sentence test perceived the outcome to be more inevitable than participants in a no-outcome control condition and participants in a no-prime control condition. Furthermore, we found that this increase in creeping determinism was mediated by the perceived causal strength of the target antecedent for the occurrence of the outcome, and that the priming-effect did not occur when an unconditional counterfactual mind-set was activated before. The results are interpreted as supporting a causal-model theory of the hindsight bias.

Hindsight Bias and Causal Attribution

Hindsight bias describes characteristic changes in the perceptions of events or facts once their outcomes are known. This article focuses on one important facet of this, named creeping determinism, denoting enhanced hindsight perceptions of the inevitability of event outcomes. We suggest a systematic link between the literatures on causal attribution and hindsight bias/creeping determinism and introduce a comprehensive causal model theory (CMT) of creeping determinism. We then distinguish between two alternative versions of CMT, which reflect recent debates in the causal attribution literature. These versions assume, respectively, that individuals make causal attributions by means of covariation analysis or via the discovery of some underlying mechanism. In order to contrast these assumptions, we introduce a new hypothesis concerning the magnitude of creeping determinism, based on the conjunction effect in causal attribution, and we present empirical evidence concerning this hypothesis.

Causal Attribution and Hindsight Bias for Economic Developments

Hindsight bias for economic developments was studied, with particular focus on the moderating effects of attitudes and causal attributions. Participants (N = 263) rated the likelihood of several economic developments 6 months before and 6 months after the euro introduction in 2002. Hindsight bias occurred selectively for attitude-consistent economic developments: Euro supporters showed stronger hindsight bias for positive developments than for negative ones; euro opponents showed the opposite pattern. Causal attribution further moderated the hindsight bias: participants who perceived a strong connection between the euro introduction and specific economic developments showed higher attitude-consistent hindsight bias than participants who perceived those developments as unrelated to the euro. It is argued that hindsight bias serves to stabilize subjective representations of the economy.

Surprise, defence, or making sense: What removes hindsight bias?

This paper examines predictions concerning the absence of hindsight bias. Some hypothesise that because hindsight bias increases with outcome "surprisingness", only unsurprising outcomes will remove it. Others suggest the opposite-that very surprising outcomes will reduce or reverse the bias. A proposed sense-making model suggests that unexpected outcomes (i.e., initially surprising) invoke greater sensemaking, which typically produces greater hindsight bias. If the process is not successful, however, the bias may be reduced or reversed. Expected outcomes will also produce little hindsight bias, but only because they invoke relatively little sensemaking in the first place. Feelings of surprise arising from sensemaking (i.e., resultant surprise) should be inversely related to hindsight bias. Results of four experiments provide support for the model. A secondary goal was to determine the boundaries of a defensive-processing mechanism also thought to reduce hindsight bias for negative, self-relevant outcomes. Results suggest that a sense of responsibility for the outcome may be necessary for defensive processing to be activated.