ABSTRACT
After enduring a bad experience such as a career setback, receiving a poor grade on a test, or getting into a fi ght with a best friend, we may wonder whether we or those close to us should have foreseen the outcome. These are examples of perspective-taking, or attempting to reason about what the self or another person could have known, should have known, or currently does know. Perspective-taking is present throughout human development; it is critical to maintaining relationships and necessary in many of our daily interactions. Errors in perspective-taking can have profound consequences in social, legal, medical, and political contexts (Harley, 2007; LaBine & LaBine, 1996; Leary, 1982). Two perspective-taking abilities, namely those involving hindsight and theory of mind (hereinafter ToM) judgments, require individuals to assume a perspective different from the one they currently hold. The challenge inherent to these two judgments is to ignore privileged knowledge (current knowledge others do not possess) when assessing one’s own previous, or another individual’s, naïve perspective. When individuals fail to ignore privileged knowledge, they show hindsight bias (hereinafter HB) and an underdeveloped ToM.
