Hindsight bias psychology example
In this case, the heuristic you probably used can be described crudely as “Kansas is in the middle of the country, and Florida is near the ocean toward the bottom of the country, so I guess you need to go southeast.” And if you did, it is probably because you relied on a heuristic: a mental short-cut or rule of thumb. If you are a North American, the odds are high that you responded correctly, even if you have never been to Wichita or Fort Lauderdale (the right answer is southeast).
If you needed to get from Wichita, Kansas to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in what compass direction would you travel? Before reading on, take just a few seconds to answer. Nevertheless, the good news is that we may be able to find ways of overriding them. Hence, a predisposition to these mistakes may be part and parcel of our cognitive apparatus. To the contrary, these errors are cut from the same cloth as adaptive psychological processes (Gilovich, 1991 Kahneman, 2011). Second, many people assume that errors in clinical judgment reflect the operation of purely maladaptive psychological processes. To the contrary, in some cases, highly intelligent people may be especially prone to these mistakes (Shermer, 2002), perhaps because they assume erroneously that they are immune to them (Sternberg, 2004). Moreover, research suggests that these errors are largely or entirely uncorrelated with general intelligence (Stanovich, 2009), so they are not an indication of weak cognitive ability. Indeed, researchers are at least as vulnerable to most or all of these errors (Mahoney & DeMonbreun, 1977). Nothing could be further from the truth, as the errors that we highlight are hardly unique to clinicians they are errors to which virtually all of us are prone. First, many people presume that a focus on errors in clinical judgment implies that practitioners are somehow ignorant or inept. It also briefly discusses how clinicians may be able to compensate for these errors in their everyday practice.īefore examining specific errors in clinical judgment, it is useful to address two widespread but understandable misconceptions. Instead, it focuses on selected errors and biases that are especially relevant to clinical practice, including assessment, diagnosis, and psychotherapy. In doing so, this entry does not attempt to be comprehensive. This entry surveys the large and burgeoning research literature on errors in clinical judgment (see Garb, 1998, for a thorough, albeit somewhat dated, review). This troubling example illustrates a crucial point: even intelligent, well-intentioned, and well-trained mental health professionals can fall prey to disastrous errors in thinking. Olson used these suggestive methods despite overwhelming evidence, well known even in the 1980s, that human memory is highly fallible and prone to error, especially in the face of suggestive influences (Loftus & Palmer, 1974). Olson also persuaded Cool that she had been a member of a satanic cult, and that she had engaged in ritual sacrifices and the cannibalism of babies. Following five years of therapy, Cool emerged with over 120 “alter” personalities, including demons, angels, children, and a duck, as well as other symptoms of multiple personality disorder, now termed dissociative identity disorder. Olson used hypnosis and other suggestive techniques to unearth purportedly long-repressed memories of trauma he also performed an exorcism on Cool in an effort to rid her of malevolent spirits. Seemingly determined to find evidence that Cool's difficulties stemmed from early abuse, Dr.
Olson was an established physician who had performed his residency at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
She was suffering from clinically significant but relatively mild and common psychological problems, such as depression, family conflict, and eating disorder symptoms. In the mid 1980s, Nadean Cool entered psychotherapy with a psychiatrist, Dr.