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A paper on hindsight bias
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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...
Furthermore, the authors aim to unfold the scientific logic of their analysis of the effects of hidden biases so people will be “better able to achieve the alignment,” between their behavior and intentions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) preface
“Limited Information is really how we err. But it is also how we think.” The act of actively combating our inductive bias in Kathryn Schulz’s Evidence
Any hypothesis, Gould says, begins with the collection of facts. In this early stage of a theory development bad science leads nowhere, since it contains either little or contradicting evidence. On the other hand, Gould suggests, testable proposals are accepted temporarily, furthermore, new collected facts confirm a hypothesis. That is how good science works. It is self-correcting and self-developing with the flow of time: new information improves a good theory and makes it more precise. Finally, good hypotheses create logical relations to other subjects and contribute to their expansion.
Confirmation Bias: A perfect example would pertain to when the victims of sexual assault from the University of North Carolina stuck together, they bonded when no one else would listen and believe them. They sought out each other and many others around the United States as the film continued until they had proven their point. The two women, Andrea and Annie just kept moving forward while avoiding those that
Jackson, J. P., Clements, P. T., Averill, J. B., & Zimbro, K. (2009). Patterns of knowing:
People are biases about every aspect of their life. From religion, to the people they date, to the type of toothpaste they use, people already have a preset judgement about things because of experiences in their past. In the book Stumbling on Happiness, author Daniel Gilbert says the ability to think about our future is what separates humans from other animals. Gilbert suggests that our brains fall victim to a wide range of biases that cause our predictions of the future to be inaccurate. Due to these mental errors it is remarkably difficult to predict what will actually happen and what will make us happy.
People influenced to accept a determinist viewpoint over a free will viewpoint cheated more often than both the control groups and pro-free will groups (Vohs 50, 52). The two studies tested both inactive and active cheating by permitting participants to see answers prior to them answering the questions if they did nothing or to reward themselves with money for their score on the test regardless of whether or not they deserved the amount they took (Vohs 50, 52). In both, those who read a deterministic passage versus a neutral or free will passage took advantage of others more when given the opportunity (Vohs 50, 52). Additional research demonstrated that people influenced by deterministic beliefs felt less or no guilt for their actions when reflecting on past personal events or learning of a death their actions indirectly caused, and noted that they would not change their actions (Stillman 954, 958). In other words, the determinism group exhibited less learning from their mistakes than the control group which claimed they would act differently in the future (Stillman 954, 958). Rigoni and Brass conducted a study looking at
For instances, in one study, volunteers were required to stare at a computer screen as different phrases quickly appeared and disappeared without their knowledge. These phrases such as “violent” and “elderly” influenced their minds when they complete different types of tasks, such as writing or walking. Their behaviors changed according to the flashing words because the unconscious mind was affected by it, even though they were unaware of these influences. Since their conscious minds were not able to pick up the words on the screen, they created reasoning with the knowledge they did have. As Daniel Gilbert stated, “ their brains quickly considered the facts they are aware and draw out the same kinds of plausible but mistaken inferences about themselves that an observer would probably draw about them” (131). Daniel Gilbert proves that the unconscious mind takes the knowledge one is aware of and creates a logical reasoning behind it, even if it is not true. When Daniel Gilbert says "mistaken inferences" he means that the person is unaware of the factors that influence one's behavior, thus creating a false sense of understanding. The volunteers believed their false reasoning, thus affecting the truth behind their
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.
The first topic of discussion is the self-imposed, or self-inflicted, self-fulfilling prophecy. This idea follows that if one has a preconception or notion of an outcome, then chances are that person will raise the possibility of making it so. Take for example these cases-in-hand that Channing Grigsby, teacher of self-esteem speaks of:
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
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
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
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
The phrase “Did you know it all along?” will be a great topic question to ask around on the campus. Dr. Watson stated a quote, “Anything seems commonplace, once explained.” (Myers, 2012) This is where the paper will lead into three factors explaining about the quote itself. In my thought what does the quote means to me? It is like when we lived our life yesterday and it does make sense today. Because of what events happened yesterday is like when we realized oh yes things make sense! Like we already knew it all along, but it is not how we think or do this everyday.