Müller, Patrick A. () (Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Utrecht University) Stahlberg, Dagmar () (Lehrstuhl fuer Sozialpsychologie, Sonderforschungsbereich 504)
Abstract
Hindsight bias is the well researched phenomenon that people falsely believe that they would have correctly predicted the outcome of an event once it is known. In recent years, several authors have doubted the ubiquity of the effect and have reported a reversal under certain conditions. This article presents an integrative model on the role of surprise as one factor explaining the malleability of the hindsight bias. Three ways in which surprise influences the reconstruction of pre-outcome predictions are assumed: (1) Surprise is used as direct metacognitive heuristic to estimate the distance between outcome and prediction. (2) Surprise triggers a deliberate sense-making process, and (3) also biases this process by enhancing the retrieval of surprise-congruent information and expectancy-based hypothesis testing.
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim & Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim in its series Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications with number
07-16.
Length: 20 pages Date of creation: 21 Jun 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:xrs:sfbmaa:07-16
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