"We Don′t Expect It Happened": On Mazursky and Ofir′s (1990) Purported Reversal of the Hindsight Bias

Abstract

Mazursky and Ofir (1990) recently claimed to have shown a reversal of the hindsight bias. They presented three experiments which supposedly showed that, following unexpected and surprising events, judgments were biased in a direction opposite to that predicted by the hindsight bias. We argue that the Mazursky and Ofir results should not be interpreted as a reversal of the hindsight bias for three reasons: (1) Mazursky and Ofir′s supposed reversal effect is on a rating of the quality of a product, rather than on the sort of likelihood ratings on which the hindsight bias has been demonstrated; (2) their results can readily be interpreted in terms of a contrast effect, especially in the case of their Experiments 1 and 2; and (3) given the use of quality ratings, the supposed reversal effect could have resulted from subjects′ desire to rate one product as superior, in part by rating other similar products as inferior. Discussion focuses on other purported evidence for a reversal of the hindsight effect and on suggestions for future research.