Hindsight: Thinking Backward

Abstract

Is hindsight better than foresight or just different. The formal difference between the two tasks is the hindsightful judge's possession of outcome knowledge, telling him how things turned out. In the studies reported, outcome knowledge is found to increase the perceived inevitability of the outcome reported. Judges, however, appear largely unaware of the changes in their perceptions due to outcome knowledge, and thus believe that they had insights which actually resulted from outcome knowledge. Failure to appreciate the effects of outcome knowledge can seriously prejudice the evaluation of decisions made in the past and limit what is learned from experience.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 04, 1974
Accession Number
ADA001807

Entities

People

  • Baruch Fischhoff

Organizations

  • Oregon Research Institute

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Department Of Defense
  • Information Processing
  • Judgment
  • Middle East
  • Military Research
  • New York
  • Perception
  • Probability
  • Psychology
  • Second World War
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Theses
  • Thinking
  • Uncertainty
  • United States
  • Universities
  • War

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Systems Analysis and Design