What does hindsight bias lead individuals to do?

Hindsight bias leads individuals to overestimate their ability to predict the outcome of events because it creates an illusion that past events were more foreseeable than they actually were. Once an outcome is known, people often misjudge their prior predictability, believing they had a clearer understanding of the situation before the event occurred. This cognitive bias can lead to a false sense of confidence in one’s predictive abilities, as people tend to view their past judgments as having been more accurate than they truly were.

This phenomenon can also affect how individuals evaluate the decisions they made leading up to an event, leading them to conclude that they should have seen the outcome coming, thereby distorting their perception of their decision-making skills. As a result, hindsight bias can have implications for learning from past experiences and making future decisions, as it may engender unwarranted confidence in future predictions.