ABSTRACT
Recollection or re-evaluation of past events can be affected by what has happened since. While interesting in its own rightas it sheds light on the working of human memory-this phenomenon, hindsight bias, also matters because it affects how we evaluate the actions of others. Take historians as an example. Historians are hermeneuts of the past, trying to explain why things turned out the way they did. They must, for instance, evaluate the appropriateness of ex ante behaviour (e.g., Napoleon’s decision to invade Russia) that resulted in bad or good ex post outcomes. By necessity historians are cognisant of the outcome, and this knowledge can affect their evaluations. A behaviour, for instance, may be judged to be more neglectful than it would have been judged without knowing its negative consequences. As an example, consider the tragic failure of an adventure that has captured the public’s imagination: Robert F.Scott’s race to be first to reach the South Pole. In November 1911, Scott led a British team in an attempt to reach the Pole. After marching and skiing more than 900 miles, Scott and his four companions reached their goal in January 1912, only to find that Amundsen and his Norwegian colleagues had beaten them by almost a month. On their way back, Scott and his compatriots froze to death in a tent just a few miles short of a depot of food and heating oil. “When words of their deaths reached England, Scott was hailed as a hero, an exemplar of
English gentlemanly pluck in the face of dire adversity” (The New York Times, Science section, 28 August 2001). In recent decades, however, historians have turned to less flattering second-guessing of Scott’s actions. For instance, the British historian Roland Huntford sought to revise the public’s view of Scott. With the benefit of hindsight, he questioned many of Scott’s decisions, such as why Scott and his men acted as their own pack animals, pulling a sled loaded with more than 200 pounds of equipment and supplies. He also asked how it was possible that Scott and his crew were not prepared for the gruelling temperatures. In his foreword to the new edition of Huntford’s book (1999), the well-known travel writer Paul
Requests for reprints should be sent to Ralph Hertwig, Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, D-14195 Berlin, Germany. Email: hertwig@mpib-berlin.mpg.deThis work was completed while Ralph Hertwig was a visiting scholar at Columbia University. We thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for its financial support of Ralph Hertwig with Grant HE 2768/6-1 and of Ulrich Hoffrage with Grant Ho 1847/1. We are grateful to Oliver Hardt, Rüdiger Pohl, Lael Schooler, and Anders Winman for many helpful comments, and we thank Callia Piperides and Anita Todd for editing the manuscript.
