Recollection Biases in Hindsight Judgments

Abstract

Outcome knowledge can affect hindsight judgments in two different ways. First, learning about the outcome of an event can impair recollection of one's own earlier predictions concerning this event. Second, outcome knowledge can affect the reconstruction of past predictions given that they cannot be recollected. We refer to these two hindsight effects as “recollection bias” and “reconstruction bias, respectively. Although theories differ as to whether they attribute hindsight bias primarily to recollection impairments or to reconstruction mechanisms, most research has been restricted to reconstruction processes in hindsight. In this article, we focus on recollection bias. We review previous research and summarize four experiments that studied item–specific and item–unspecific interference effects contributing to this recollection bias. The results can be explained in the framework of well–established theories of human memory.