Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
a paper on hindsight bias
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: a paper on hindsight bias
Hindsight Bias
"Oh, I shouldn't have missed that question, I knew the answer." No I didn't, I just thought I did. I just further proved the concept of the Hindsight Bias, or the "I knew it all along phenomenon." This concept came about in the late seventies when psychologists Paul Slovic and Baruch Fischoff began studying how scientific results and historical happenings always seem like common sense to people when in fact , they had no idea. Once people find out something has happened, it seems inevitable that the event happened. Studies have proved this fact by taking a group of people and giving them two concepts exactly opposite of each other. For example, one group may receive "scientific findings" that opposites in people attract them to one another. The other could receive opposite "findings" that people tend to stay with others who have similar qualities to their own. After the "results" are read by the two groups, they both "knew that people behaved in that manner", when in fact, they only thought they knew.
This can also come up in the medical field. Docto...
First of all, human memory tends to distort and bias in favor of current thoughts. That is, when we perceive new beliefs that are different from the memories in our mind, we often trust the
In his book, Everything is Obvious, Duncan Watt starts off reasonably well in explaining how certain beliefs or perceptions influence our way of thinking and decision making. These sets of beliefs are accumulated through past experiences, surrounding environments and cultures in which collectively form the philosophy of common sense. Though common sense is powerful tool that helps us navigate through our life smoothly without encumbering our brains into reflecting on every single detail. The author considers it as a set of fallible mental patterns that are invisible to us, yet have a powerful affect that extends to our way of thinking as well predicting the future of certain things in our life. In the book, Watt exposes the reality of common sense which convinces us that we know more than what we really do. Consequently, we keep making same mistakes and learning less from the past. "Bad things happen not because we forget to use our common sense, but rather because the incredible effectiveness of common sense in solving the problems of everyday life causes us to put more faith in it than it can bear."(Watt 23).
Negative stimulus automatically triggers the response of counterfactual thinking. The different effects of counterfactual thinking integrate in to a functional model that contrasts positive consequences of the inferential mechanism (Myers & Twenge 72-73). Thoughts that relate to adverse emotional circumstance of the past and hypothetical reinterpretations of history, one is bound to experience feelings of despair, intense sense of loss, and regret. Social psychologist have studied the worth of thinking and feeling of a counterfactual character and in the process confirming that undesirable emotions could arise from counterfactual discerning. The social psychological theory could functionally become beneficial to individuals with an integrated possibility of causal inference. In most circumstances, extreme events activate the counterfactual specially the influential negative consequences and the version of the past established the
Reason, either deductive or inductive, creates expectations in which bias is present because observations are more easily accepted as true. Deductive reasoning is moving from general truths to specific knowledge, and inductive reasoning is moving from specific details and observations to more general conclusions. Expectations can easily be formed from both types of reason and influence what is observed, as we are more easily accepting of something that we can reason to be true. However, there is false confidence in what we “should” see, as there is truly minimal certainty in reason because of the assumption that the future will be the same as the past when knowledge is always subject to re-examination and change. ...
Jackson, J. P., Clements, P. T., Averill, J. B., & Zimbro, K. (2009). Patterns of knowing:
Counterfactual thinking is part of everyday life because people are always thinking of past and future possibilities that may have happened or might happen. When people imagine the different possibilities it can cause them to feel upset or to have hope, which can motivate them to do or not to do something. Gopnik expresses that although counterfactuals are not reality it still affects all humans, when she states, “counterfactual thinking is pervasive in our everyday life and deeply affects our judgments, our decisions and our emotions” (Gopnik 164). Counterfactual thoughts start with our imagination and as a result, can change the future by triggering emotions and effecting beliefs. Gopnik explains an experiment completed by psychologists Daniel Kahnemanto to prove how exactly counterfactuals effect emotions. In the experiment, Mr. Tee and Mr. Crane both missed their 6:00 flights, but Mr. Crane watched his flight take off as he arrives and is much
What have you learned about yourself regarding personal biases and values throughout the life course? Throughout reading the text life course I have learned to value life more. Life course has given me great perspectives in regards to the different stages and theories especially middle adulthood. Additionally, my view on late adulthood is so profound especially with having a grandmother in this stage. The value of diversity, family, health, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and culture are of great significance. More importantly I have learned the value of others.
Optimism bias is defined as the belief that the future will be better than the present and past; the individual is optimistic about the future. The individual also overestimates the chances that good things will happen in the future and underestimates the chances of something bad to happen. The optimism bias can have a positive effect as it keeps the individual from falling into depression. Being realistic is often difficult because in reality we are going to have many bad things happen to us but we don’t want to admit this as it is a depression matter. An individual is going to lose their job, lose someone they love, get into a car accident, or make a terrible mistake but thinking about these things isn’t particularly healthy for the mind.
JSMF explains heuristics; unconscious and fast ways of thinking that make reasoning easier. As heuristics are errors in thinking, these errors are related to poor encoding, as seen in UP. In addition, previous settings can sway how we react to information. JSMF outlines how private factors influence heuristic use more than outside factors. For example, past incidents can physically change the way the brain makes future choices (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989).
Thought processes can greatly influence people's social interactions, and the way that they live their lives. Cognitions develop how people perceive themselves and others on a daily basis. It is important to investigate how people attribute actions and behaviors exhibited, not only by themselves, but also those around them. These attributions shape the way an observer feels and reacts to others, and how people feel about themselves due to their own actions. The correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error) and the self-serving bias are two errors made in attribution by virtually every human being (Baron & Byrne, 2000). Both of these biases can be shown not only in adults, but also children (Guern, 1999). Even sport spectators display these biases when watching their favorite teams (Wann & Schrader, 2000). When the self-serving bias is absent in people's cognitions, they will show the self-defeating attributions. It is important to study people that demonstrate self-defeating attributions, because these individuals also show symptoms of depression (Wall & Hayes, 2000). Clearly, attributions are an imperative aspect of social cognition. Attributional bias is discussed by Marie Beesley. It is also important to investigate the factors that affect people's judgment biases in decision making and reasoning skills, which is explored by Amanda Wheeler. Because these two processes are so vital to the way in which people perceive themselves and others, and to the way a person chooses to behave, it is important to understand the factors that can cause inaccurate judgments. Judgment biases affect the way people form conclusions and make attributions about others, as well as abou...
Growing up in a very accepting and forward home, I always found myself to be free of most bias. Having been the target of some racial prejudice in the past, I always told myself that I would make sure nobody else had to feel the same way. While this may be a great way to think, it really only covers the fact that you will not have any explicit bias. What I have realized during the course of this class is that implicit bias often has a much stronger effect on us than we might think, and even the most conscious people can be affected.
An event is made historically significant by the impact it has on people, environments, and actions following it. Documentation of such an event is also a part of its historical significance- for instance, millions of simple actions have occurred in the past which we do not recall, because no one saw their effects and thought it important to record them. Even if, however, an event had an impact one deemed significant enough to record, their account of the event is plagued by bias. Each time an individual makes note of any particular occurrence, it is from their own point of view, and their own sense of interpretation. This consistent bias created a challenge in conducting this investigation, as one must look at various accounts of the same
Congruity theory attempts to explore how people’s responses could be influenced by the confirmation and disconfirmation of expectations (Mandler, 1982). According to this theory, individuals perceive a specific situation to be schema-congruent if it is consistent with their prior knowledge structure. Because of the information
In this comic strip by Matt Groening, the main character, Bongo, is being picked on by another character that is telling him "that everyone in the world hates your guts." Generally, most individuals perceive their selves as being "better than average." We are familiar with our own talents, thoughts, feelings, and emotions more so than anybody else's. This leads to a self-serving bias. In the comic, Bongo reassures himself of his "greatness" until he looks in the mirror. The mirror causes Bongo to be more self-aware of his uncertainty. I chose this particular comic not only because it illistrates the self-serving bias, but also because of the way it incorporates the mirror and Bongo's self-awareness.
The hindsight bias, as defined in the article Hindsight Bias and Developing Theories of Mind by Andrew N. Meltzoff and Geoffrey R. Loftus, occurs when “people armed with advanced knowledge of an outcome overestimate the likelihood of that particular outcome, in essence claiming that they ‘knew it all along’” (Meltzoff). People who are victims of this very common bias can be drawn to the idea of going to the past to fix all of their problems because they live in the present. Knowing what the present holds, people believe that if they went back in time, they could change the future and, in turn, have a better