Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Overconfidence and Hindsight Bias are two well-knowncognitive biases. Herein, it is argued these biases may berelated to one another and human memory limitations;specifically, that memory limitations result in hindsight bias,causing people to recall being right more often than theyactually were, which leads to overconfidence as people applythis misremembered confidence to future events. Analysescomparing three types of overconfidence (overestimation,overplacement and overprecision) and hindsight bias confirmstrong, positive correlations between the different types ofoverconfidence – from 0.488 up to .807 and moderatecorrelations (.331 to .398) between all of these and hindsightbias. Comparisons between bias scores and five broadcognitive abilities (from the CHC model) suggests hindsightbias is more pronounced in people with worse memories andgenerally, lower cognitive ability. Overall, results are arguedto support the proposed links between memory, hindsight biasand overconfidence and future directions are suggested.