“I knew it !” the foibles of hindsight bias

And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” Genesis 1:31.

The tendency to have a favourable reflection on the glamour of your own work on hindsight is a universal one. Like above, even the almighty is not spared getting awed at the perceived magnificence of his own creations through his own eyes.

You can imagine therefore how we, mere mortals, may find it easier to exaggerate the beauty of our own works, the intelligence of our own kids and the mastery of our own craft beyond the boundaries of their actual reality.

Consider a new born baby. No mother sees her own kid to be anything but good looking- however far this is from fact. This same kid is always going to receive a better rating from mum when her intelligence is called into question.

“She is way more intelligent than her age,” is a common compliment young kids receive from their adoring parents. As she gets older, her discipline is always going to be regarded as way above that of the rest. It is the rare mum who says to her kid, “Don’t be bad company to others.” Instead, it is presumed that bad company can only come from outside.

Hence it is fair to say that it is natural for our reflections to be clouded by self-bias. We are wired to evolve to better people and it makes sense to imagine our kids being better than we are.

Failure to achieve this would in a way be testament to a failure on our part. Their intelligence, looks and manners are a reflection, not of them, but of who we are as their parents. Hence we are desperate to want to think the best of them.

Yet interestingly, this bias does not limit itself to parental instinct. Sometimes it rears its ugly head to crowd the judgement of even the best of experts despite their professional training.

As an avid football fan, I am fond of listening to pundits just before the game. Mostly, many will make their informed guesses of what is likely to happen based on the immediate historical record of the team (also known as form) which is okay because form causes momentum.

Momentum causes winning mentality. Winning mentality wins football ( soccer) games. But this is not always the case.

Being an ( English Premier League) Arsenal fan, I should know this clearly since it’s a team that has turned this notion upside down too many times before, much to our own chagrin. But I am moving ahead of myself here.

So the pundits will make their pre-game analysis and predictions based on the teams’ momentum leading to the game.

Hereafter they shall make their half time commentary and prediction (most of which is no longer based on historical form but a more immediate form of the previous half). Later on the pundits will make their post-game punditry after the game is over.

The tendency is normally as follows; during the pre-game analysis, most of the pundits will predict that the team with the better momentum is likely to win the game. During half time, the predictions are going to be swayed more by the performance of the half.

The team in the lead is likely to be predicted as the one likely to go ahead and win the game. After the game, the pundits are likely to either strengthen their views especially if their predicted team won.

They will claim how certain they were of the performance even though the same may have just surprised them since their prediction was a gamble anyway. They will downplay the fact that they ever doubted the outcome.

Meanwhile, those that made the erroneous prediction are likely to change tone and start arguing that although they thought their team would win, they had far greater doubt of the outcome.

All this is natural behaviour because it’s human nature not to agree out rightly to be wrong.

This tendency is especially reflected in football games where the end result is a surprise. If you are an Arsenal fan, then this game, played February 5, 2011 should be a good reminder. Arsenal faced Newcastle United at St. James Park.

After 25 games, Arsenal were riding high , only four points shy of the leaders Manchester United and were credible title contenders. Newcastle, tenth on the log, was having a poor run of form. They had not won at home in their previous four matches.

Before the game, the conclusion from the pundits was obvious, Arsenal were going to win comfortably. The first half made this a foregone conclusion. Arsenal were four goals up inside twenty six minutes.

Game wrapped, everyone thought so. At half time, the pundits poured Arsenal with praise, mentioning that the invincible spirit (Arsenal’s winning team of the 2003/4 season) was back.

No pundit had any nice words for Newcastle and a number of the home fans started leaving the stadium having given up hope. In their half time predictions, pundits believed only one team looked set to score more, and Newcastle was not that team.

Second half underway and Arsenal’s cause was not helped when centre-back Djourou limped off after 48 minutes to be replaced by Sebastien Squillaci.

However, the real pivotal moment in the match came after 50 minutes when Diaby was dismissed by referee Phil Dowd. Those changes completely destabilised an Arsenal team that had looked much stronger in the first half.

In what turned up to be a classic game of two halves, two penalties and two outright goals saw Newcastle pull what ranks as one of the greatest comebacks of the premier league era to finish the game at four all.

Some of the Newcastle supporters had appeared to leave at half-time, despondent at the scoreline, but by now the vast majority who remained were passionately roaring on their team.

The real clincher though was after the game. Pundits , in their post-game commentary, were as surprised as anyone else about the scoreline.

But they were quick to point out that they were not as surprised about Arsenal’s dreadful performance adding that the team had almost always been rickety and unstable.

They were quick to tone down their half time rhetoric and some went as far as giving the impression that they knew it all along that Arsenal would falter the lead.

It’s a classic hindsight bias also known as the knew-it-all-along effect or creeping determinism. This is the inclination, after viewing the outcome of a potentially unforeseeable event; a person believes he or she “knew it all along” despite having little or no objective basis for predicting it.

It is a bias that many of us gullibly fall into the trap. It could be football commentary.

But it could also be present in the writings of historians describing outcomes of battles, physicians recalling clinical trials, and in judicial systems trying to attribute responsibility and predictability of accidents.

Wait till you hear pundits try to explain how Leicester FC pulled 5001–1 odds to win the English Premeir League.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PSy3cccs8M

Twitter@marvinsissey