I told you so!
Do you know an ‘I told you so’ person? If we are honest with ourselves, we’d recognise that we are all this person. The ‘hindsight bias’ makes us believe that certain events were obvious and predictable. For example, after serious incidents, such as space shuttle disasters and financial crises, individuals look back and believe these unexpected events were, in fact, obvious and predictable.
These individuals are biased by their knowledge of the consequence. This bias can also make us less forgiving of mistakes. We might, for example, claim a person should have known better at the time.
Alarmingly, knowing about the hindsight bias isn’t helpful because research also shows being aware of the hindsight bias does not reduce it! This is another bias called the ‘bias blackspot’. Ok, there is something that can be done. The hindsight bias can be reduced by getting people to think through alternative explanations for the same event.