Hindsight bias…Do you get yourself caught in this common thinking trap?
Who among us wouldn’t like to be able to predict the future? To know in advance how things will turn out so that we can make the best decision possible based on those future outcomes. Does that sound too good to be true? Yes, well that’s because it is!
In reality we make decisions every day without being able to know how things will turn out in the future. We do the best we can with the information available and based on our interpretation of past experiences, and then make decisions and choices in the moment. The problem, of course, comes when we later look back and believe that we “should” have known better or “should” have been able to foresee some now seemingly “obvious” future outcome.
When we do this, we are committing the very common cognitive distortion of hindsight bias, the tendency to look back and see past events as having been more predictable then than they actually were. This is an error made by laypeople and experts alike (and poses a particular problem with expert testimony in legal trials!). For laypeople the trap that comes with hindsight bias in everyday life is to then think that we have made a bad decision and to beat ourselves up mentally and experience feelings of guilt, shame, and regret about past choices.
Thus, being kind to oneself and letting yourself “off-the-hook” for something that you did not know at the time, is the antidote to the mental suffering that comes from hindsight bias and the “should have” thinking that accompanies it. Retrospective “shoulding” on oneself is simply unhelpful…unless you have a time machine! And it is unfair to retrospectively believe that you could have known something that you did not know at the time. So next time you notice yourself caught in this common thinking trap, try saying to yourself instead something like:
“Wow, there’s that hindsight bias. I’m beating myself up for not knowing something I couldn’t have known! How human of me to now think that I should have known or that it was more predictable than it actually was. That’s okay. I can’t actually read the future. Now that I know though, what choices, if any, will I make for next time?”
The ability to notice these cognitive errors…have a little laugh even…and let ourselves off-the-hook, can free us from a lot of unnecessary (and unfair) mental suffering. Try letting yourself off the hook today!