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SAGE Publications, Psychological Science, 12(23), p. 1524-1533

DOI: 10.1177/0956797612447817

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Shared Visual Attention Reduces Hindsight Bias

Journal article published in 2012 by Daw-An Wu ORCID, Shinsuke Shimojo, Stephanie W. Wang, Colin F. Camerer
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Hindsight bias is the tendency to retrospectively think of outcomes as being more foreseeable than they actually were. It is a robust judgment bias and is difficult to correct (or “debias”). In the experiments reported here, we used a visual paradigm in which performers decided whether blurred photos contained humans. Evaluators, who saw the photos unblurred and thus knew whether a human was present, estimated the proportion of participants who guessed whether a human was present. The evaluators exhibited visual hindsight bias in a way that matched earlier data from judgments of historical events surprisingly closely. Using eye tracking, we showed that a higher correlation between the gaze patterns of performers and evaluators (shared attention) is associated with lower hindsight bias. This association was validated by a causal method for debiasing: Showing the gaze patterns of the performers to the evaluators as they viewed the stimuli reduced the extent of hindsight bias.