Experience Alters Perception

Introduction

• Hindsight bias or knew-it-all-along bias is a common phenomenon we come across in day to day lives. It means that when shown the outcome of an event we overestimate our ability to have been able to predict this result accurately
• Someone might generally observe that “It looks like it’s going to rain,”given his or her general knowledge of the local weather patterns. If it rains shortly after this statement is made the person might feel that the prediction was stronger than it really was
• Incorrect or inaccurate prediction tend not to be remembered as well as vaguely correct predictions, reinforcing the idea in someone’s mind that his/her predictive skills are better than they really are

Assessing odds

•We are “wildly optimistic” in judging the chances of our success or failure. This can be attributed to the fact that we “rehearse success” and spend less time thinking about failure

•Most people feel that they are more likely than average to be gifted with a smart child, or win the lottery, or to find ‘true love ’ or find a ‘dream job’, when the chances of this happening are actually quite bleak

•We measure the value of an item with a scale that heavily relies on our past experiences. When we see Rs. 20 /Rs. 10 on a price tag, chances are we’ll end up buying it.

•Presence of a larger range of prices in a shop increases the average amount spent by the customer

Happiness

•We also tend to value things that we own, more than others value them. To demonstrate this, an experiment was conducted where subjects were shown and subsequently asked to rate 6 paintings by Monet. Later, they were given a painting to take home for a week. When asked to rate the same paintings after a week, the painting owned, had significantly higher ratings respectively.

•Similar results were also obtained when the experiment was conducted with amnesiacs.

•Too many choices make us unhappy. An experiment was conducted where subjects were asked to taste 6 varieties of jams and then were given the choice to pick any one they could take home for free. In the second part of the experiment, the subjects were given a wider choice of 24 jams to choose from. Results show a large number who exercised the choice in the first case rather than the second.

Learning Facts from Fiction

•People’s knowledge about the world comes from many sources, including fictional ones such as movies and novels.

•In three experiments, investigators tried to find how people learn and integrate information from fictional sources with their general world knowledge. With 3 Goals:

o Goal 1: Whether they keep information learned by real sources separate than the information learned from fictitious sources was the question answered. Integration v Compartmentalisation v hybrid. Less blatantly false, more the integration.

o Goal 2: was to measure the awareness of reliance on fictional sources. Subjects’ source judgement makes us understand about internal representations of fictional facts.

o Goal 3: to measure the knew-it-all-along/hindsight bias. Whether they knew it from stories or from earlier knowledge.

•Fantasy facts interfered with access to prior knowledge, suggesting the two were integrated in memory. More fantasy facts were time of respond to true facts.

Design of the experiments:

•Subjects read a series of short stories that contained information about the real world. After a short delay, all participants took a general knowledge test. Subjects did indeed use information from the stories to answer general knowledge questions.

•The exact structure of analysis

o Question difficulty –easy or hard

o Fact framing – correct or neutral

o Number of story readings

o Timing of source judgements – immediate or retrospective

•ANOVA statistical analysis was done on correctly answered questions

Results:

•Prior reading of facts boosted participants’ abilities to produce both obscure and

Better-known facts and the effect held for both correct and incorrect facts (misinformation). Repeated reading of the stories increased the effect.

•After a delay of one week, effects of story exposure were strongest for items that also had been tested in the first session. Subjects were aware of using story information, but interestingly, story exposure also increased belief that the facts had been known prior to the experiment, even for misinformation answers that were rarely produced without story reading.

Joint Probability of answering a question correctly and saying ‘yes’ the answer was known prior to the experiment

Conclusion

•This hindsight bias may give us the illusion that we “understand what the past was all about,” and may “prevent us from learning anything”

•Hindsight biases are a “side effect of an adaptive learning process.”

References

1. Learning facts from fiction Elizabeth J. Marsh,* Michelle L. Meade, and Henry L. Roediger III

Journal of Memory and Language 49 (2003) 519?536

2. Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

3. Arkes, H. R., Faust, D., Guilmette, T. J., & Hart, K. (1988). Eliminating the hindsight bias. Journal of Applied Psychology, 66, 252-254.