Introduction

Hindsight bias is the tendency to associate the happening of events with more probability after they have occured than before they had occured. Also known as knew-it-all-along effect or creeping determinism, it is a multifaceted phenomenon that can effect different stages of designs, processes, contexts, and situations[1]

In this project we model our work to study the effect of hindsight bias across the lifespan[2] and try to determine whether the error is due to qualititaive or quantitive reasons. Qualilitative errors are those that result when the subject substitutes the correct answer for their original answer in their recall.[2] Quantititave errors, on the other hand, result from them forgetting their original answer and recalling an answer closer to, but not equal to, the correct answer[2]

Motivation and Previous Work

The implications of a study of hindisght bias across the lifespan can span across multiple domains. "First, lifespan developmental studies can inform theory and practice in terms of how and when biases form and change"[3]. "Second it may be of significance in developmental psychology"[4] [5] like in Theory of Mind(TOM) which aims at understanding the development process in children that makes them aware of others' mind and thus hold false beleifs about the world.

Methodolgy

People from different age groups will be administered different hindsight tasks and later only one half of them will learn the correct answer to the questions and the other half will serve as the control group. The extent to which participants recalled their original answers as being closer to the correct answers in the experimental condition than in the control condition reflects hindsight bias[6]. The hindsight bias will involve the following tasks:
  1. Verbal Hindsight Task: Participants are asked general knowledge questions and their answers recorded at T1 and later they are asked to recollect their answers at time T2
  2. Visual Hindsight Task: Participants tried to identify objects (which were deliberately blurred) and the objects gradually clarified with time. In the hindsight judgment condition, participants were told the same objects identities at the start of the process, and were asked to try and estimate when a same-age naive peer would identify the objects. The degree to which subjects expected their naive pair to identify the objects at a more blurred state than what they had identified the object in reflects visual hindsight bias.[2]

References

[1] Rudiger, F. (2007) Ways to Assess Hindsight Bias: Social Cognition
[2] Bernstein et al (2011) Hindsight Bias across 3 to 95 years of age
[3] Baltes PB(1987) Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology
[4] Perner, J. (1991) Understanding the representational mind
[5] Wellman, HM.(1990) The child's theory of mind
[6] Pohl RF.(2007) Ways to assess hindsight bias. Social Cognition