Which Of The Following Is An Example Of Hindsight Bias?


Which of the following is an example of hindsight bias?


A. Tom is certain that electric cars will represent 80 percent of vehicles in twenty years and only reads research studies that support his hypothesis.


B. Liza underestimates how much time it will take her to finish writing her college application essays and as a result fails to meet an important deadline.


C. Experts predicting world events with 80 percent confidence turned out to be correct less than 40 percent of the time.


D. Marcy cannot recognize a definition on a flashcard. After turning the card over and viewing the term, she tells herself she knew what the answer was all along.


E. Dr. Grace overestimates how effectively her new treatment method works because she fails to seek out any evidence refuting her theory.


Answer: The answer is D. (Marcy cannot recognize a definition on a flashcard. After turning the card over and viewing the term, she tells herself she knows the answer.). Hindsight bias refers to our belief that we could’ve predicted a solution to a problem after learning about it – in other words, that we already knew the result.


What Is Hindsight Bias?


Answer: Hindsight bias is the tendency to see past events as more predictable than they actually were. It’s a cognitive distortion that can lead you to believe you “knew it all along,” even when you didn’t. This bias can impact your ability to make decisions in the present and future because you may underestimate the role of chance and luck in how things turn out.


How Can Hindsight Bias Be Used In Education?


Answer : Hindsight bias can be used in education to help students learn from their mistakes. By understanding that hindsight bias exists, students can examine their own thinking and try to correct for it when making judgments about what happened in the past. When educators provide feedback to students, they can also take into account the student’s hindsight bias and try to counter it with specific, objective information.



After the student council election, a friend tells you he could have guessed who would be elected president. What psychological phenomenon might this illustrate?

Answer:  Hindsight bias


While taking a standardized test with randomly scrambled answers, you notice that your last four answers have been “c.” Which of the following is true concerning the probability of the next answer being “c”?


Answer: It is unaffected by previous answers. It is as likely to be “c” as any other answer.

The tendency to exaggerate the correctness or accuracy of our beliefs and predictions is called


Answer: overconfidence.


Which of the following is an example of hindsight bias?

Answer: Alliyah, after reading a definition on one of her flashcards, turns the card over to see the term and then tells herself she knew what the answer was all along.


The hindsight bias refers to people’s tendency to


Answer: exaggerate their ability to have foreseen the outcome of past events.


Giving half the members of a group some purported psychological finding and the other half an opposite result is an easy way to demonstrate the impact of


Answer: the hindsight bias.


Professor Smith told one class that alcohol consumption has been found to increase sexual desire. He informed another class that alcohol consumption has been found to reduce sexual appetite. The fact that neither class was surprised by the information they received best illustrates the power of


Answer: the hindsight bias.


The hindsight bias leads people to perceive research findings as


Answer: unsurprising.


Alexandra is told that research supports the value of cosmetic surgery for boosting self-esteem. Belinda is told that the esteem-enhancing value of cosmetic surgery has been refuted by research. Both women would consider the findings to be common sense. This best illustrates the power of


Answer: the hindsight bias.


When provided with the unscrambled solution to anagrams, people underestimate the difficulty of solving the anagrams by themselves. This best illustrates

Answer: overconfidence.


Thinking that she had outperformed most of her classmates, Glenda was surprised to receive just an average grade on her psychology test. Glenda’s experience best illustrates


Answer:  overconfidence.


According to Emily’s grandfather, Adolf Hitler’s obvious emotional instability made it clear from the beginning days of his international conflicts that Germany would inevitably lose World War II. The grandfather’s claim best illustrates


Answer:  the hindsight bias.


Formulating testable hypotheses before conducting research is most directly useful for restraining a thinking error known as


Answer:  the hindsight bias.

T

he scientific attitude of humility is most likely to be undermined by


Answer:  overconfidence.

When we see certain outcomes as obvious based on what has occurred, we may be experiencing


Answer:  hindsight bias.

Our tendency to believe we know more than we do illustrates


Answer:  overconfidence.


Dr. Donelian wants to reduce his students’ perception that psychological experiments merely document the obvious. His best strategy would be to ask the students to


Answer:  predict the outcomes of experiments before they are told the actual results.

Sasha believes that she is a very good driver. Her belief leads her to take unnecessary risks, such as driving too fast and cutting in front of other drivers. Sasha’s driving appears to be affected by


Answer:  overconfidence.

Hindsight bias, overconfidence, and our tendency to perceive patterns in random events push us to overvalue


Answer:  Common sense


Political officials who have no doubt that their own economic and military predictions will come true most clearly demonstrate


Answer:  overconfidence.

Which of the following is most likely to inhibit critical thinking?


Answer:  overconfidence

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