Adult Age Differences in Hindsight Bias
Final Report Abstract
The term hindsight bias refers to all cases in which a judgment regarding an outcome – or the recall of a prior judgment – is systematically distorted towards the actual outcome. The magnitude of hindsight bias depends on age, with older adults showing larger hindsight bias than young adults. This project addressed potential sources of this age difference. In a series of experiments, we investigated the role of age differences in access inhibition, in taskexecution strategies, and in the ability to recall prior judgments. Furthermore, we investigated whether another potential explanatory variable, participants’ affective state, moderates hindsight bias. In all of the experiments were we able to replicate the finding that older adults show larger hindsight bias than young adults. As to the suggested sources of this effect, results were as follows: Access control was impaired in older adults, but the relationship to hindsight-bias magnitude was merely weak. Although the investigation of task-execution strategies revealed age differences in the intentional use of the solution, we found no clear relationship between use and hindsight bias. We found age differences in hindsight bias with a memory task, but not with a hypothetical version of the task. When we lowered younger participants’ recall of their prior judgments via a long retention interval, such that their recall matched that of older adults, age differences in hindsight bias disappeared. This means that older adults‘ higher reconstruction bias may represent a compensatory process for their decline in OJ memory. Results were also promising with regard to potential effects of affective states. Taken together, access control and task-execution strategies seem to not play a substantial role in age differences in hindsight bias. Adult age differences in hindsight bias are presumably mainly caused by age differences in recall ability; yet other factors (e.g., affect) may play a role as well.
Publications
- (2013, April). Hindsight bias and aging. Aging & Cognition Conference, Dortmund, Germany
Bayen, U. J., & Groß, J.
- (2015). Adult age differences in hindsight bias: The role of recall ability. Psychology and Aging, 30, 253-258
Groß, J. & Bayen, U. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000017) - (2015). Hindsight bias in younger and older adults: the role of access control. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 22, 183-200
Groß, J., & Bayen, U. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13825585.2014.901289) - Effects of dysphoria and induced negative mood on the processes underlying hindsight bias. Cognition and Emotion, Volume 31, 2017 - Issue 8, 1715-1724
Groß, J., & Bayen, U. J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2016.1249461)
