IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/medema/v8y1988i4p259-264.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hindsight Bias: An Impediment to Accurate Probability Estimation in Clinicopathologic Conferences

Author

Listed:
  • Neal V. Dawson
  • Hal R. Arkes
  • Carl Siciliano
  • Richard Blinkhorn
  • Mark Lakshmanan
  • Mary Petrelli

Abstract

Although clinicopathologic conferences (CPCs) have been valued for teaching differential diagnosis, their instructional value may be compromised by hindsight bias. This bias occurs when those who know the actual diagnosis overestimate the likelihood that they would have been able to predict the correct diagnosis had they been asked to do so beforehand. Evidence for the presence of the hindsight bias was sought among 160 physicians and trainees attending four CPCs. Before the correct diagnosis was announced, half of the conference audience estimated the probability that each of five possible diagnoses was correct (foresight subjects). After the correct diagnosis was announced the remaining (hindsight) subjects estimated the probability they would have assigned to each of the five possible diagnoses had they been making the initial differential diagnosis. Only 30% of the foresight subjects ranked the correct diagnosis as first, versus 50% of the hindsight subjects (p

Suggested Citation

  • Neal V. Dawson & Hal R. Arkes & Carl Siciliano & Richard Blinkhorn & Mark Lakshmanan & Mary Petrelli, 1988. "Hindsight Bias: An Impediment to Accurate Probability Estimation in Clinicopathologic Conferences," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 8(4), pages 259-264, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:8:y:1988:i:4:p:259-264
    DOI: 10.1177/0272989X8800800406
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X8800800406
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0272989X8800800406?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas S. Wallsten, 1981. "Physician and Medical Student Bias in Evaluating Diagnostic Information," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 1(2), pages 145-164, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jay J.J. Christensen-Szalanski & Cynthia S. Fobian, 1988. "On the Significance of Judgment Studies," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 8(4), pages 265-267, December.
    2. Louie, Therese A., 2005. "Hindsight bias and outcome-consistent thoughts when observing and making service provider decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 88-95, September.
    3. Danz, David, 2020. "Never underestimate your opponent: Hindsight bias causes overplacement and overentry into competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 588-603.
    4. Cassar, Gavin & Craig, Justin, 2009. "An investigation of hindsight bias in nascent venture activity," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 149-164, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlson, Kurt A. & Pearo, Lisa Klein, 2004. "Limiting predecisional distortion by prior valuation of attribute components," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 48-59, May.
    2. William P. Bottom & Paul W. Paese, 1999. "Judgment Accuracy and the Asymmetric Cost of Errors in Distributive Bargaining," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 8(4), pages 349-364, July.
    3. Bond, Samuel D. & Carlson, Kurt A. & Meloy, Margaret G. & Russo, J. Edward & Tanner, Robin J., 2007. "Information distortion in the evaluation of a single option," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 240-254, March.
    4. John C. Hershey & Jonathan Baron, 1987. "Clinical Reasoning and Cognitive Processes," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 7(4), pages 203-211, December.
    5. Gurmankin Levy, Andrea & Hershey, John C., 2006. "Distorting the probability of treatment success to justify treatment decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 52-58, September.
    6. John M. Eisenberg & John C. Hershey, 1983. "Derived Thresholds," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 3(2), pages 155-168, June.
    7. Mehmet Eren Ahsen & Mehmet Ulvi Saygi Ayvaci & Srinivasan Raghunathan, 2019. "When Algorithmic Predictions Use Human-Generated Data: A Bias-Aware Classification Algorithm for Breast Cancer Diagnosis," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(1), pages 97-116, March.
    8. Andreas Herrmann & René Befurt & Mark Heitmann & Hans Berger, 2007. "Alles für die Marke? Produktdesign im Konflikt zwischen einer markenkonformen und einer eigenständigen Produktliniengestaltung," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 59(8), pages 1055-1079, December.
    9. Andia, Tatiana & Mantilla, Cesar & Rodriguez-Lesmes, Paul & Criado, Leonel & Gomez, Juan Sebastian & Ortiz, Santiago & Quintero, Andrea & Rincón, Heiner & Romero, Steffanny, 2020. "Mentioning anosmia improves how community pharmacies handle phone call requests during the COVID-19 pandemic: An audit study in Colombia," SocArXiv s2z47, Center for Open Science.
    10. DeKay, Michael L. & Patiño-Echeverri, Dalia & Fischbeck, Paul S., 2009. "Distortion of probability and outcome information in risky decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 79-92, May.
    11. Tatiana Andia & César Mantilla & Paul Rodríguez-Lesmes & Leonel Criado & Juan Sebastián Gómez & Santiago Ortiz & Andrea Quintero & Ferley Rincón & Steffanny Romero, 2020. "Information and symptoms assessment in community pharmacies during the COVID-19 pandemic: An audit study in Colombia," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 4(S2), pages 5-14, December.
    12. Jay J. J. Christensen-Szalanski & Paula H. Diehr & James B. Bushyhead & Robert W. Wood, 1982. "Two Studies of Good Clinical Judgment," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 2(3), pages 275-283, August.
    13. repec:cup:judgdm:v:8:y:2013:i:6:p:662-677 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Seth A. Miller & Michael L. DeKay & Eric R. Stone & Clare M. Sorenson, 2013. "Assessing the sensitivity of information distortion to four potential influences in studies of risky choice," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 8(6), pages 662-677, November.
    15. Robert A. McNutt & Harry P. Selker, 1988. "How Did the Acute Ischemic Heart Disease Predictiue Instrument Reduce Unnecessary Coronary Care Unit Admissions?," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 8(2), pages 90-94, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:8:y:1988:i:4:p:259-264. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.