Hindsight bias, often referred to as the "knew-it-all-along phenomenon", is the tendency for people to see events as having been predictable after they have already happened. Once an outcome is known, individuals often believe they could have predicted it beforehand, leading to a false sense of certainty regarding their ability to foresee future events. This cognitive bias can distort memories of prior beliefs and contributes to overconfidence in predictive abilities.
For instance, after the U.S. presidential election in 2016, many journalists claimed they saw Donald Trump's victory coming, despite various polls and predictions suggesting otherwise before the election results were revealed.
One way to counteract hindsight bias is to keep a record of your predictions and the reasoning behind them prior to an event occurring. This can help create a clearer understanding of how certain you were about those predictions when reviewing outcomes later.