The hindsight bias is closely related to the confirmation bias; both are examples of how overconfident we can be in our own thoughts and beliefs. The hindsight bias is the tendency to overestimate how predictable something was after it has occurred ("I knew it all along!"). For example, when you get an A on a midterm, you "knew" it would happen because you studied so hard. When you ran a red light and nothing bad happened, you "knew" there was no one coming. This bias can be particularly troublesome to students who use practice exams to study for finals: instead of trying the problems, the student looks at the answer key. "I knew that was going to be the answer." Well, no, you probably didn't.
Cognitive distortions like the hindsight bias probably derive from cognitive dissonance: the discomfort we feel when we hold two or more conflicting ideas. "I thought I was going to get an A on that midterm, but I got a B." These two conflicting thoughts make you feel quite uncomfortable; so you rectify them. "Well, it wasn't a fair exam. I have an unfair professor." Hindsight bias is one of the many ways we can reduce the amount of cognitive dissonance we feel. Obviously, when I'm right I knew it all along. When I'm wrong, something happened that was completely out of my control.
5) The Gambler's Fallacy
The Gambler's fallacy is the false belief that a purely random process can become more predictable over time. For example, if in tossing a coin 100 times, you get 100 heads, then the next coin toss must be tails. The human mind has a tough time accepting that future events are not influenced by past events. No matter how many time you flip a fair coin, the chance you will get tails will never fluctuate from 50%. This fallacy is much more general than just coin-tossing: people tend to think that past failures indicate a higher chance of future success in many areas of life. (Although, as a caveat, I should add that there are many situations in which past events do influence future outcomes - when the probability of different events is not independent, like in card games when cards are drawn without replacement.)
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, two leading figures in the psychology of decision making, believed that the Gambler's fallacy comes from another cognitive bias called the representativeness heuristic: the idea that past experiences are representative samples that can be used to predict future outcomes (you'll notice that all of these biases are starting to sound rather similar). When watching the tossing of a coin, we have a mental image of an equal number of heads and tails, so when we encounter a streak of heads, we will expect a streak of tails to follow.6) The Availability Heuristic
There are many heuristics that we use to make decisions, but I think the one plaguing most people is the availability heuristic, which occurs when we make decisions or judgment based on how easily information comes to mind. For example, if you're out buying a new car, and you remember your uncle telling you about how much he loves his new Honda, you may be persuaded to buy a Honda. When memories are available to us, they can be quite persuasive. Many students unknowingly use this tactic to answer multiple choice questions; read the question, and whatever comes to mind is probably the right answer. Professors can take advantage of this mental short-cut to trip up their students and make misleading questions.
This heuristic can be used to make a lot of false assumptions, and can enhance the effects of an illusory correlation (a situation where two things seem related, but are not). For example, say you have two friends from Belgium. Both of them happen to be fans of the show Friends. If asked whether most Belgium people like the show Friends, you'll probably say yes. Hopefully you can see how irrational this logic is; two individuals is hardly a representative sample of a population of 11 million. We use the availability heuristic in many different areas of our lives to make decisions, both trivial and important.
Now that we've explored many cognitive biases that our brains use to make decisions quickly and at times inaccurately, hopefully you have a better appreciation of why people are so grounded in their beliefs. We've seen how memory can become distorted to meet our present needs (the misinformation effect and the hindsight bias). We've seen how our minds scan the environment for information that supports our worldviews (the fundamental attribution error and the confirmation bias). We've seen how our brains can use misleading, but accessible, information that can influence our decisions (the Gambler's fallacy and the availability heuristic). Perhaps now you can see why Nietzsche once said, "In everything, one thing is impossible: rationality."
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