With Hindsight (Bias) - Article Example

The Hindsight Regarding Hindsight Bias: A Critique of Perry’s “With Hindsight (Bias)” “Obama won, and I predicted that weeks ago,” accords to someone who predicted earlier that Romney would most likely win. This example reflects hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is common, even among brilliant politicians and influential people, but not many understand what it means and what its negative effects are. In the news article “With Hindsight (Bias), Everyone is a Brilliant Political Pundit,” Perry criticizes how people easily fall prey to hindsight bias and why. She uses a sarcastic and comedic tone to express the meaning and implications of hindsight bias. Her main arguments are that: hindsight bias is widespread in society; it is almost unavoidable because of its “cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational” sources; and it produces negative effects on the ability of people to be a critical thinker and decision maker. The strengths of Perry’s article article are its effective use of sarcasm and humor to describe the commonness of hindsight bias, clear organization and flow of ideas, and use of an authoritative source, while its weaknesses are poor use of direct quotations, overdependence on Carey as dominant source of information, and lack of exploitation of hindsight bias as an urgent social, economic, and political issue. One of the weaknesses of Perry’s article is her ineffective use of direct quotations. Her main audiences are ordinary people, so the concepts of “cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational” sources are not that easy to understand. Perry uses direct citations for explanations, which does not improve the understanding of these factors. For instance, she says that cognitive inputs mean that “…people selectively recall information consistent with what they now know to be true and engage in sensemaking to impose meaning on their own knowledge” (Perry). Perry should have explained sensemaking and what it means to “impose meaning” (Perry). She can give examples or compare and contrast scenarios to describe what cognitive inputs mean. Metacognitive input is another hard concept to comprehend: “the ease with which a past outcome is understood may be misattributed to its assumed prior likelihood” (Perry). Instead of directly quoting this, metacognitive can be explained as understanding that what happened in the past may be incorrectly connected to a previous hypothesis or guess. Her article shows that directly citing sources is not enough. Perry should have explained them in her own terms too. To save space, she can just explain these terms using her own words and then cite only the most significant quotations. One of the most important direct quotations, for example is this: “Hindsight bias is evident in people around the world … [and] has been has been documented in diverse domains, including labor disputes, terrorist attacks, medical diagnoses, consumer satisfaction [etc.]” (Perry). Good articles are supported with logical evidence, but it does not have to be composed of numerous chunks of direct citations. Aside from the lack of effective use of direct quotations, Perry fails to expand her sources, which can improve the validity and reliability of her arguments. To support her claims, she used a single secondary source, specifically the interview of Carey. Carey used the study of Roese and Vohs to make her conclusions. It seems that Perry rehashed the article of Carey. To explore validity and reliability further, validity refers to being able to correctly measure what is being measured. In this case, what is being measured is hindsight bias. The measures are the interviews and surveys with different people in two different time frames, which showed changes in their assumptions or opinions. Reliability pertains to being able to repeat the same findings. For Perry’s report, the reliability of her arguments cannot be replicated through the same interview because it is not clear how she collected and interpreted her data. Since this is a news report, the research design or research methodology of her article is no longer discussed. Nevertheless, since people cannot test the validity of her arguments using her own data, they can at least measure its reliability. The reliability question is: Does hindsight bias truly affect many people because of “cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational” inputs? Two empirical studies have been read to study the reliability and validity of Perry’s arguments. These come from peer-reviewed journals and experts in their fields, which make them as credible sources. Perry should have expanded her evidence using these journals too. For example, she can cite the study of Anderson in 2011 and Ash in 2009. Anderson noted that hindsight bias affected the thinking of auditors, although it did not directly affect their confidence or influence their decisions. This study opposes the main arguments of Perry regarding the effects of hindsight bias on confidence and decision-making. Ash supported Anderson in saying that hindsight bias does not always affect the processes of decision-making. Perry should have done additional research on hindsight bias, so that she can discuss studies that show opposite results. She can criticize these articles’ validity and form her own opinions. At least, by showing both sides, she provides a balanced approach to the effects of hindsight bias. Hence, depending too much on one source can result to poor analysis of the evidence that supports it. Despite these weaknesses in the strength of her arguments, Perry’s writing style that mixes humor and sarcasm deserves praise, since an engaging writing style is important to news writing. Perry wants to stress that hindsight bias might not be such a common term but it happens regularly, sometimes too frequently. She begins her article with an interesting hook, by citing a popular article about hindsight bias: “[hindsight bias refers to] — our personal belief after an event (like, say, a presidential election) that we had known and predicted with remarkably detailed precision (“295 electoral college votes!”) before the event how it would turn out” (Perry). She uses language that is easy to read and with good humor and sarcasm. The sarcasm is saying “295 electoral college votes,” which is very obvious, while emphasizing that people will forget their own opinions for the sake of hindsight bias. Perry does not lose her comic expressions until the end, when she says: “But no matter what the outcome, most people won’t stop believing that they knew what was going to happen all along — and why. Just listen to the political pundits on Wednesday.” The play of words is crazy and funny. People want to think they know everything, only because of hindsight bias. What is so interesting is that they feel righteous because of a bias that is far from their original ideas or opinions. By using this writing style, Perry keeps her audience interested. However, in the middle, she makes too much direct quotations that her voice is lost. This might be related to objective reporting, but it is too bad that the statistics and direct quotations got in the way of engaging reporting. Using paraphrases could have enhanced the ease of reading the article and improved understanding and appreciation of the topic. Humor helped, as well as a clear organization and flow of ideas, in creating an interesting news article. Perry nearly divided her article into an introduction, discussion of the causes of hindsight bias, and exploration of its negative effects. The transition sentences are the section titles. The flow of ideas is clear because Perry started with a definition of hindsight bias and how widespread it is, followed by evidence of its causes and effects. Through this way of writing, readers know what they reading and what to expect next. Furthermore, an organized article makes it easier to appreciate and to apply in real life. Still, Perry could have added more examples than simply quoting sources. This way, readers can see hindsight bias from Perry’s own examples too. Perry did not neglect authoritative sources, which enhanced the validity of her arguments to some extent. She mentioned the study of Roese and Vohs and provided their credentials: “Neal Roese [is] a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Managemnt at Northwestern University,” while Kathleen Vohs is “a marketing professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.” These credentials boost the ethos of these authors. Furthermore, this study supported the claims on the negative effects of hindsight bias on people’s confidence and decision-making processes. Perry did not use just any source to support her article. She made sure to use an empirical study to make her claims believable. Her claims are not entirely invalid. Ash noted from his experimental study that hindsight bias, though mostly made during uncertain conditions, tend to impact future decision-making. Instead of learning from mistakes because of errors in past judgments, people will think that they made the right judgments all along and repeat the same thinking processes. Perry has an interesting topic but does not exploit its relevance to modern times and issues. Hindsight bias is so complex but common but many studies are devoted to it. The main concern is that instead of gaining learning from hindsight, hindsight bias turns it into an unproductive process. Hindsight bias can mean no hindsight in reality. This reality can be worrying if important decision-makers are using hindsight bias to avoid the ridicule and criticism of people. They can claim to change their prior judgments in light of present events. In other words, they are no longer being accountable for their true decisions. Furthermore, by using hindsight bias, they are manipulating people. Perry wants to emphasize these negative social effects, although it should have been explored more. Perhaps, she could have divided her article into two segments, or three, to discuss hindsight bias more. She can connect this phenomenon with politicians and company executives who make the wrong decisions because of hindsight bias. She can make hindsight bias a phenomenon that more people should be aware of, when listening to their lawmakers and other powerful people. This way, they can be critical thinkers and can also push their leaders to be critical thinkers and doers too. The process of critical thinking can be an outcome of the article. It can aim to enhance the awareness of people for critical thinking, where it can be applied to avoid hindsight bias. Perry can add the discussion on how hindsight bias can be avoided, so that people do not just know that it exists, but it can be identified and stopped. Perry can make some improvements in her article to make it better. She can add more authoritative sources, especially those with different findings. She can balance her reporting with the dialogue between conflicting studies. Furthermore, Perry can reduce her direct citations. This is a news article and people do not want to read highly academic words. In addition, Perry can add her opinion and make hindsight bias a significant factor when assessing politicians’ speeches, for instance. She can use her article to train people to know and to avoid hindsight bias when they see or hear it. The article from Perry has a timely topic. Hindsight bias is an interesting concept, not only for scholars, but also for ordinary people. People should read this article to gain an introduction into the topic. More than that, they should also seek for additional information on it. Afterwards, they should train themselves in identifying and avoiding it. Hindsight bias is not helpful. It is something people can laugh about, but they should not use it in real life because it can affect their judgment and disable them from learning from their past mistakes. The true hindsight in hindsight bias is that it is not hindsight; it is bias that must be removed. Works Cited Anderson, Kim L. “The Effects of Hindsight Bias on Auditors' Confidence in Going-Concern Judgments and on the Audit Opinion Decision.” Journal of Business & Economics Research 9.9 (2011): 1-11. Business Source Complete. Web. 9 Nov. 2012. Ash, Ivan K. “Surprise, Memory, and Retrospective Judgment Making: Testing Cognitive Reconstruction Theories of the Hindsight Bias Effect.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition 35.4 (2009): 916-933. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Nov. 2012. Perry, Susan. “With Hindsight (Bias), Everyone is a Brilliant Political Pundit.” Minn Post, 2 Nov. 2012. Web. 9 Nov. 2012. < http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2012/11/hindsight-bias-everyone-brilliant-political-pundit>. Read More