Strength of hindsight bias as a consequence of meta-cognitions

The hindsight bias is the tendency of people to falsely believe that they would have predicted the outcome of an event correctly, once the outcome is known. The present paper addresses the ongoing debate whether the hindsight bias is due to memory impairment or biased reconstruction. The memory impairment approach states that outcome information alters the memory trace for the initial judgment, whereas the biased reconstruction approach assumes that people who have forgotten their initial judgments are forced to guess and, in the presence of outcome information, are likely to use this information as an anchor. Whereas the latter approach emphasizes the role of meta-cognitive considerations, meta-cognitions are not included in the memory impairment explanation. Two experiments will be presented which show that the biased reconstruction explanation provides a better explanation for empirical findings in hindsight bias research than the memory impairment explanation.