"I could never have expected it to happen": The reversal of the hindsight bias

It has been hypothesized and demonstrated in previous research that individuals′ recall of predictive judgments is typically distorted by knowledge of the outcomes of the events predicted. This is attributed to the tendency to downgrade the surprise element associated with the outcomes and the adoption of an "I knew it all along" attitude. The present study identifies the limits of this hypothesis by showing that following the exposure to unexpected events, individuals may react by expressing an "I did not expect this to happen" response and recall predictions opposite to their judgment of the event after its occurrence. In other words, the recall of past judgments may be biased in a direction contrary to rather than consistent with subsequent judgments. Three experiments were conducted in different contexts to test the boundary conditions of the "I knew it all along" hypothesis. The findings in all three experiments suggest that following unexpected and surprising events, recall judgments are biased in a direction opposite to that predicted by the hindsight bias.