Hindsight Bias Concept

     "Knowledge of the outcome makes it seem that events leading to the outcome should have appeared more obvious than was actually the case. This outcome knowledge poisons the ability of after-accident observers to recreate the view of the situation before the accident. Hindsight bias remains the primary obstacle to accident investigation."
- Richard I. Cook, GAPS Center, Cognitive Technologies Laboratory, 1998.

     "Hindsight bias" is one of the most reproduced research findings relevant to accident analysis and reactions to failure. Knowledge of outcome biases our judgment about the processes that led up to that outcome. Just as the "Monday Morning" quarterback would have recognized dangers and grabbed opportunities while leading the team to certain victory, we second-guess adverse events without fully understanding the complexity of the situation. When we know the outcome of a situation, we are much more likely to judge the process as inadequate, substandard, or less than perfect when the outcome is negative than when positive.

     Hindsight, however is not foresight. After an accident, we know all of the critical information and knowledge needed to understand what happened. But that knowledge is not available to the participants before the fact. In looking back, we tend to oversimplify the situation the actual practitioners faced, and this tends to block our ability to see the deeper story behind the label human error.

     Hindsight bias is impossible to eliminate and greatly entrenched in retrospective accident investigations. Outcome knowledge makes it difficult to see the complexity of the situation at the time of decision making. Knowledge of outcome taints the evaluation of the process. This makes it seem that those involved failed to account for information or conditions that should have been obvious or behaved in ways inconsistent with significant information known after the fact. The correct action that should have occurred is crystal clear. Hindsight is 20-20.