Hindsight Research Articles

The skewing effect of outcome evidence

Behaviours are primarily regulated to reduce the risks of a negative outcome to others. This article discusses the use of outcomes as evidence of violations of a legal standard (outcome evidence). The current debate over outcome evidence centres around limited rationality. Opponents argue that factfinders’ estimations are distorted by hindsight bias, while supporters argue that factfinders properly update the probability of fault, given information about the outcome. The article adopts the rationality assumptions and argues that factfinders should nevertheless disregard outcome evidence in most cases unless the outcome can provide evidence that works for or against the defendant or when the law creates inefficient incentives to comply with the legal standard, then using adverse outcomes as evidence may help solve the problem of undercompliance. The article further shows that when evidence cannot be excluded, changes to the law governing primary behaviour are warranted to account for the distortionary effect of outcome evidence.

Just as I expected? Hindsight bias for the outcome of a national referendum is moderated by outcome valence and surprise

AbstractWhen people learn that an event has occurred, they often report that they expected it all along. The present study explored this “hindsight bias” for the outcome of a national referendum on abortion. Participants rated the probability of the referendum passing one week before polling day, and then recalled their original estimates one week and one year post‐referendum. The magnitude and direction of bias was predicted by voting choice: People on the losing side exhibited a classic hindsight bias, and remembered believing the outcome to be roughly 16% more likely than they originally reported. In contrast, people on the winning side exhibited a weak reversal of the typical bias. Hindsight bias was moderated by feelings of surprise in both groups. This study suggests that individuals on the losing side of political campaigns may be especially likely to misremember their prior expectations if the outcome is disappointing but not unexpected.

Weak correlations among 13 episodic memory tasks related to the same public event

AbstractIf an individual demonstrates accurate autobiographical memory in one task, will they also demonstrate accurate autobiographical memory in related tasks? Over 18 months, 213 participants completed 13 episodic memory tasks related to the same national referendum. Tasks included false memories for fake news, flashbulb memories, factual memories, memory for emotions, hindsight bias, eyewitness accuracy, susceptibility to leading questions and memory blindness. Although moderate to strong correlations were found over time for the same episodic memory tasks, correlations among differing memory tasks were very weak. Our findings suggest that individuals vary in how well they remember different elements of a public event. We conclude that episodic memory is a multi‐faceted construct and researchers should be slow to generalise from one task to another, even when the two tasks refer to the same public event (e.g., we should not presume that individual differences in event memory will predict false memories for fake news).

Randomized Clinical Trials and Observational Tribulations: Providing Clinical Evidence for Personalized Surgical Pain Management Care Models.

Proving clinical superiority of personalized care models in interventional and surgical pain management is challenging. The apparent difficulties may arise from the inability to standardize complex surgical procedures that often involve multiple steps. Ensuring the surgery is performed the same way every time is nearly impossible. Confounding factors, such as the variability of the patient population and selection bias regarding comorbidities and anatomical variations are also difficult to control for. Small sample sizes in study groups comparing iterations of a surgical protocol may amplify bias. It is essentially impossible to conceal the surgical treatment from the surgeon and the operating team. Restrictive inclusion and exclusion criteria may distort the study population to no longer reflect patients seen in daily practice. Hindsight bias is introduced by the inability to effectively blind patient group allocation, which affects clinical result interpretation, particularly if the outcome is already known to the investigators when the outcome analysis is performed (often a long time after the intervention). Randomization is equally problematic, as many patients want to avoid being randomly assigned to a study group, particularly if they perceive their surgeon to be unsure of which treatment will likely render the best clinical outcome for them. Ethical concerns may also exist if the study involves additional and unnecessary risks. Lastly, surgical trials are costly, especially if the tested interventions are complex and require long-term follow-up to assess their benefit. Traditional clinical testing of personalized surgical pain management treatments may be more challenging because individualized solutions tailored to each patient's pain generator can vary extensively. However, high-grade evidence is needed to prompt a protocol change and break with traditional image-based criteria for treatment. In this article, the authors review issues in surgical trials and offer practical solutions.

Surprisingly unsustainable: How and when hindsight biases shape consumer evaluations of unsustainable and sustainable products

AbstractSustainability as a vital purchase criterion in sustainable consumption contexts is often biased by misguided information. In this context, we investigate the hindsight bias, i.e., consumers think in hindsight that they knew what would happen all along, may lead consumers to think they evaluated attributes of unsustainable or sustainable products correctly all the time while they did not, devaluating downstream marketing variables. This paper experimentally investigates the hindsight bias by manipulating information about a products' sustainability. We focus on two perspectives about hindsight biases, namely, marketing and psychology, to explore the interaction of surprise and sustainability. In a set of two online studies (Study 1: n = 300; Study 2: n = 461), we found a group‐based hindsight bias for high‐involvement, unsustainable products (Study 1) and individual hindsight biases for low‐involvement, unsustainable and sustainable products (Study 2). Contributing to both, mostly separately researched perspectives, we conclude that neither is predominantly correct. Instead, both perspectives jointly determine why consumers evaluate products differently. Confronted with surprising, sustainable information about unsustainable products causes a hindsight bias that increases purchase intention and word of mouth. In contrast, surprising, unsustainable information about sustainable products show opposed effects. Implications for marketing practice show when product information can unintentionally cause greenwashing and how product information should be communicated to underline a product's sustainability.

What determines hindsight bias in written work? One field and three experimental studies in the context of Wikipedia.

Hindsight bias not only occurs in individual perception but in written work (e.g., Wikipedia articles) as well. To avoid the possibility that biased written representations of events distort the views of broad audiences, one needs to understand the factors that determine hindsight bias in written work. Therefore, we tested the effect of three potential determinants: the extent to which an event evokes sense-making motivation, the availability of verifiable causal information regarding the event, and the provision of content policies. We conducted one field study examining real Wikipedia articles (N = 40) and three preregistered experimental studies in which participants wrote or edited articles based on different materials (total N = 720). In each experiment, we systematically varied one determinant. Findings provide further-and even more general-support that Wikipedia articles about various events contain hindsight bias. The magnitude of hindsight bias in written work was contingent on the sense-making motivation and the availability of causal information. We did not find support for the effect of content policies. Findings are in line with causal model theory and suggest that some types and topics of written work might be particularly biased by hindsight (e.g., coverage of disasters, research reports, written expert opinions). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Hindsight Bias and Its Applications

The hindsight bias, also known as the “I knew it all along” effect, is a psychological phenomenon in which a personbelieves they predicted the outcome of an event, even if they did not act on their “prediction.” Individuals can beaffected by the hindsight bias to confidently overestimate their judgment, which can have severe consequences. Also,it can negatively affect all aspects of society to varying degrees. Social experiments have demonstrated that thisphenomenon exists in the investment industry, politics, and the law. It can be detrimental to individuals, affect theoutcome of political elections, and compromise the impartiality of police evaluations. Due to the impact of hindsightbias, there are several suggested ways to prevent this bias, and it is essential to understand how to prevent and accountfor it.

Visual hindsight bias for abnormal mammograms in radiologists.

Hindsight bias-where people falsely believe they can accurately predict something once they know about it-is a pervasive decision-making phenomenon, including in the interpretation of radiological images. Evidence suggests it is not only a decision-making phenomenon but also a visual perception one, where prior information about an image enhances our visual perception of the contents of that image. The current experiment investigates to what extent expert radiologists perceive mammograms with visual abnormalities differently when they know what the abnormality is (a visual hindsight bias), above and beyond being biased at a decision level. experienced mammography readers were presented with a series of unilateral abnormal mammograms. After each case, they were asked to rate their confidence on a 6-point scale that ranged from confident mass to confident calcification. We used the random image structure evolution method, where the images repeated in an unpredictable order and with varied noise, to ensure any biases were visual, not cognitive. Radiologists who first saw an original image with no noise were more accurate in the max noise level condition [area under the curve ] than those who first saw the degraded images (; difference: ), suggesting that radiologists' visual perception of medical images is enhanced by prior visual experience with the abnormality. Overall, these results provide evidence that expert radiologists experience not only decision level but also visual hindsight bias, and have potential implications for negligence lawsuits.

I “knew” they wouldn’t last: Hindsight bias in judgments of a dating couple

When a romantic relationship ends, individuals often look back and wish they had done things differently. What may seem clear in hindsight, however, is often unclear in foresight. We investigated the effects of outcome knowledge on individuals’ judgments of a dating couple. In Study 1 (181 U.S. college students, 334 U.S. community adults), participants read about a couple with an uncertain relationship trajectory; then, experimental group participants received knowledge about the couple’s status six months down the road as broken up or still together, while control group participants received no outcome knowledge. Individuals who were told the dating couple broke up perceived that outcome as more likely and obvious compared to those who were not given outcome knowledge or who were told the couple stayed together. In Study 2 (262 U.S. college students, 333 U.S. community adults), participants in the experimental conditions received knowledge about the couple’s status six months later as broken up or engaged, while control group participants received no outcome knowledge. In both samples, outcome knowledge of a breakup had a negative effect on individuals’ judgments about the couple. Among community adults, but not among college students, outcome knowledge of an engagement positively affected judgments of the couple. We offer directions for future research and discuss the mechanisms by which hindsight bias might affect evaluations of our own and others’ relationships.

Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) Manage Behavioural Biases Among Financial Planners?

The main novelty of this paper is proposing artificial intelligence (AI) to manage behavioural biases in the financial decision-making process. An empirical study by Kahneman and Tversky identifies the evidence of behavioural biases in the investment decision-making process: a reversal of an established tenet in traditional finance. Financial planners are vulnerable to behavioural biases and are therefore unable to provide optimal investment solutions for their clients. Identifying the limitations of current practice, this research attempts to address how AI can help financial planners in subduing their behavioural biases and proposes the adoption of AI in financial planning services to circumvent behavioural biases. In recent years, AI has attained significant efficacy and has proven to be efficacious through supervised and unsupervised learning. Applying these AI techniques in mitigating behavioural biases, this study confirms that the backpropagation within the neural network and deep reinforcement learning can help overcome confirmation and hindsight biases.

Pain Relief After Allogenic Stem Cell Disc Therapy

BACKGROUND: Treatment of intermediate-stage painful degenerative disc disease is controversial, with few reliable options. Allogenic mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)are an alternative to autologous stem cell transplantation. Allogeneic MSCs in the treatment of discogenic low back pain have some practical advantages, ranging from availability to ease of treatment in a procedure-room setting. OBJECTIVES: To assess the efficacy and safety of allogenic MSC injection into painful lumbar intervertebral discs and associated clinical outcomes. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective observational cohort study. SETTING: Private practice. METHODS: There were 33 patients: 15 women and 18 men with an average age of 47.6 years. The patients’ average follow-up was 26.88 months Patients were treated with intradiscal injection of approximately 5 million allogeneic polyclonal MSCs in 1% hyaluronic acid derived from immunoselected umbilical cord stem cells. Patients were monitored for adverse event reactions. Clinical outcomes were assessed with reductions in the reported Visual Analog Scale (VAS) for back pain, the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) scores, and the use of the modified Macnab criteria. RESULTS: No patient required any additional treatments for low back pain stemming from the level treated with MSC injections. At a 2-year follow-up, the average VAS low back score reduction was 6.565 ± 1.619 and 38.333 ± 14.865 for the ODI (P < 0.001). Reported Macnab outcomes were excellent in 11 patients (33.3%), good in 19 (57.6%), and fair in 3 (9.1%). LIMITATIONS: Our observational study is limited by patient selection, hindsight bias, and low patient numbers. CONCLUSION: The results of our feasibility study suggest that the injection of allogeneic MSCs to treat patients with painful intermediate-stage degenerative disc disease has merit. No adverse reactions were observed. The authors recommend further study in a randomized prospective study setting with a placebo control group or a natural history study group of patients to solidify this research. KEY WORDS: Allogeneic, mesenchymal stem cells, low back pain, degenerative intervertebral disc disease

조세불복사건 판단에 있어 인지 편향과 극복방안

Humans acquired heuristics for survival. Heuristics are mental shortcuts that save time by simplifying complex decisions into simple rules of thumb. Heuristics are useful in everyday life because they enable us to automatically make quick decisions with little effort. However, when making important decisions and legal judgments, heuristics can be dangerous. Before filing a lawsuit in an appeals proceeding against a taxation, it must be needed to file an administrative appeal. It is the procedure enforced by law. Administrative hearings is similar to the judicial proceedings. The evaluating of the weight of proof depends on the committee members just as the judge. The problem is that the judge could make wrong decision due to his or her cognitive bias. In the United States, many experimental studies have been conducted on jurors and judges to see if various heuristics actually occur. It is important for parties to accept the legal decision, so that the legal decision must not be biased.
 The purpose of this research is to analyze the cases that had been shown heuristics in administrative trial decisions and to research on debiasing. This paper analyzes decisions in which representativeness heuristics, hindsight bias, and confirmation bias appeared. In order to debiase, there are several trials like the cognitive correction(thinking the opposite etc.), environmental correction(reducing cognitive losses etc.), and systemic correction(decision support systems etc.).

Jurors use mental state information to assess breach in negligence cases

To prove guilt, jurors in many countries must find that the criminal defendant acted with a particular mental state. However, this amateur form of mindreading is not supposed to occur in civil negligence trials. Instead, jurors should decide whether the defendant was negligent by looking only at his actions, and whether they were objectively reasonable under the circumstances. Even so, across four pre-registered studies (N = 782), we showed that mock jurors do not focus on actions alone. US mock jurors spontaneously rely on mental state information when evaluating negligence cases. In Study 1, jurors were given three negligence cases to judge, and were asked to evaluate whether a reasonably careful person would have foreseen the risk (foreseeability) and whether the defendant acted unreasonably (negligence). Across conditions, we also varied the extent and content of additional information about defendant's subjective mental state: jurors were provided with evidence that the defendant either thought the risk of a harm was high or was low, or were not provided with such information. Foreseeability and negligence scores increased when mock jurors were told the defendant thought there was a high risk, and negligence scores decreased when the defendant thought there was a low risk, compared to when no background mental state information was provided. In Study 2, we replicated these findings by using mild (as opposed to severe) harm cases. In Study 3, we tested an intervention aimed at reducing jurors' reliance on mental states, which consisted in raising jurors' awareness of potential hindsight bias in their evaluations. The intervention reduced mock juror reliance on mental states when assessing foreseeability when the defendant was described as knowing of a high risk, an effect replicated in Study 4. This research demonstrates that jurors rely on mental states to assess breach, regardless of what the legal doctrine says.

Hindsight bias and COVID-19: Hindsight was not 20/20 in 2020.

Hindsight bias and COVID-19: Hindsight was not 20/20 in 2020.

How do Cognitive Biases affect Strategic Decision Making in SME’s and How can they Avoid their Mistakes made Due to such Biases

The field of behavioural economics is an emerging area of study which has answered various questions that revolve around core economic problems. Therefore, it becomes essential to look into strategic decision making in small and micro enterprises through a behavioural perspective since such enterprises are run by individuals and there is an absence of a decision making body that in turn leads to flawed decision making. This paper examines biases and heuristics that affect entrepreneurial decision making across various lines in the SME sector. Biases such as the status quo bias, the hyperbolic discounting bias and the hindsight bias in particular are discussed in this paper. The paper proposes a specified solution set for every bias to negate their effects, and also specifically talks about the assumption of rationality and the framework of behavioural biases that leads to flawed decisions.

Mission Critical ESG and the Scope of Director Oversight Duties

Corporations are facing increased scrutiny over how they treat their stakeholders and society at large. Failing to address key environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns may generate significant blowback, making it harder for corporations to attract talent, access capital, and sell products. ESG concerns have thus become a major source of reputational and financial risk for companies and their shareholders. One way for shareholders to hold managers personally accountable for being inattentive to critical ESG risks is by filing a derivative action on behalf of the company, claiming that managers breached their oversight duties (Caremark duties). Until recently, corporate legal scholars have dismissed this possibility, reasoning that oversight duties are generally unenforceable. That reasoning is no longer valid. In the past two years, Delaware courts have revamped their Caremark framework. The courts are now increasingly willing to apply heightened scrutiny to directors’ efforts, and increasingly willing to grant shareholders access to internal company documents in order to investigate failure-of-oversight claims. There can no longer be any question about Caremark’s relevance, but there remains a question about Caremark’s scope. Would the courts be as willing to apply heightened scrutiny and provide access to pre-suit discovery when the case concerns nonlegal risks? In other words, do directors face personal liability for how their companies treat the environment, diversity, and privacy, even when such behaviors are not punishable by law?
 This Article examines the evolving scope of director oversight duties and makes three contributions. First, the Article synthesizes the caselaw to clarify that the relevant question when determining Caremark’s scope is not whether a risk is “legal” or “reputational,” but rather whether the risk is “critical” to the company’s success. The Article’s second contribution is to build an analytical framework for distinguishing between ESG risks that are critical (and thus subject to a realistic Caremark liability threat) and those that are not. The Article then applies the framework to concrete ESG concerns, such as cybersecurity, climate change, and sexual misconduct. Finally, the Article evaluates the social desirability of extending Caremark to oversight of nonlegal risks. The key disadvantage of doing so is that it increases the costs of judicial hindsight bias, while the key advantage is that it counterbalances the flaws of other ESG enforcement mechanisms. The Article concludes that courts should adopt a more judiciable approach when scrutinizing board oversight of nonlegal risks.

Moral luck and the roles of outcome and negligence in moral judgments

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the influences of outcome and negligence on moral judgments of accidental actions, and hence their roles in the explanation of moral luck. In Experiment 1 (N = 300), two previous studies were replicated in which an agent armed with either a bat or a gun (to manipulate negligence) unintentionally killed a suspected intruder who turned out, luckily, to be a burglar, or unluckily, a family friend (to manipulate outcome). In response to an online questionnaire, participants made moral judgments of punishment, blame and wrongness and rated the agent's negligence and intentionality. The effects of both outcome (victim) and negligence (weapon type) IVs were slight, whereas perceived negligence had a substantial impact on all three judgments. In Experiment 2 (N = 241) the potential influence of both outcome and negligence was raised by increasing the contrasts between conditions: the agent was armed or unarmed, and the suspected intruder was harmed or unharmed. Perceived negligence again had a substantial impact on all three judgments, but now outcome, too, had a strong and direct effect on punishment judgments. These findings indicate that outcome effects on blame and wrongness judgments of accidental agents result primarily from the differential attribution of negligence: agents are considered more negligent – and hence more culpable – when outcomes are worse. In contrast, high levels of punishment are usually assigned when, and only when, the accidental agent is considered negligent and the outcome is negative. We discuss the implications for the interpretation of previous findings of strong outcome effects, and whether these effects, and therefore moral luck, are best explained by hindsight bias or by more rational updating of moral judgments.

Hindsight bias for emotional faces.

People who learn the outcome to a situation or problem tend to overestimate what was known in the past-this is hindsight bias. Whereas previous research has revealed robust hindsight bias in the visual domain, little is known about how outcome information affects our memory of others' emotional expressions. The goal of the current work was to test whether participants exhibited hindsight bias for emotional faces and whether this varied as a function of emotion. Across five experiments, participants saw images of faces displaying different emotions. In the foresight phase, participants watched several emotional faces gradually clarify from blurry to clear. Once participants believed they knew what emotion the face was exhibiting, they identified the emotion from several options (e.g., angry, disgusted, happy, scared, surprised). In the hindsight phase, participants saw clear versions of each face before stopping the clarification at the point at which they previously identified the emotional expression. On average, participants exhibited hindsight bias for all emotions except happy faces (i.e., they indicated that they identified the emotional expressions at a blurrier point in hindsight than they had in foresight). A multinomial processing tree model of our data revealed that this was not due to participants' better recollection of foresight judgments for happy faces compared to the other emotions. Additionally, participants showed a smaller reconstruction bias for happy faces than the other emotions. We discuss the social implications of these findings as well as the potential for this paradigm to be used across cultures and ages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Assessing the Evidence for Outcome Bias and Hindsight Bias

Assessing the Evidence for Outcome Bias and Hindsight Bias

Biased behavior in borrowing from loan sharks

Purpose – This study aims to explore and understand how the mindset of merchant women in Montong Traditional Market so choose loan sharks as their loan source, which refers to the perspective of behavior and financial literacy.Methodology – This qualitative research with a Schutz phenomenological design, takes the research setting in Montong Traditional Market, Tuban. Data were collected through observation, interviews, and documentation.Findings – The results of the study show five biased of merchant women towards loan sharks, namely confirmation bias, framing, herding effect, hindsight bias, and representativeness. 'Agamis' in the merchant women in Montong Traditional Market does not guarantee that she is free from loan sharks. Implications – The results of this study indicate that related parties, such as religious leaders, the society leader, and cooperatives in Montong Traditional Market, Tuban, are expected to be able to increase education related to financial literacy through existing programs effectively and efficiently. Banks and cooperatives in the Montong Traditional Market area should be able to pick up the ball by providing door-to-door services to merchant women in Montong Traditional Market as a maximum effort to eradicate loan shark practices.Originality – This study explores the mindset of merchant women on loan sharks, whereas previous studies related to loan sharks have only explored them from an economic perspective.