After my math test, I spent 20 minutes complaining to my friends about how I failed. I talked through every problem, sure that I had gotten them all wrong. When I got the test back two days later, with an easy 95% at the top of the paper, my first response was, “I knew it.”
As I felt so confident in the ease of the test and the instinct that I knew I would do that well, I was hit by a realization— this was hindsight bias!
Hindsight bias is the tendency to overestimate the predictability of an outcome after the outcome has been revealed. It’s considered the “knew-it-all-along phenomenon”.
It’s also one of the first LFHS AP Psychology class terms of the year.
I decided to take AP Psychology my senior year because I’ve always been interested in how the mind works. In middle school, I had a brief phase where I was convinced I would be a therapist. I quickly learned that I did not have the patience… but, it still intrigued me.
When I signed up for the course, I did not realize the amount of terms and vocabulary I would have to learn. Each unit involves anywhere from 20 to 90 identifications, defining core parts of psychology. I also didn’t realize how often these terms would impact my daily life.
The other day, I asked my friend first for a ride home. Then, I asked for a ride to Target— the foot-in-the-door technique! It’s where you ask for a smaller thing first, so when you ask for a larger, more unreasonable thing, it doesn’t seem that bad.
I recently watched my friend go up to someone who I know she doesn’t like. But, my friend was overly nice to this other girl— reaction formation! It’s a defense mechanism where your behavior is opposite to your emotions.
I watched a TikTok video where a woman believed in a diet pill. When all of the comments were about how the pill is fake and does nothing for weight, the woman made a video defending her decision to keep taking the pill— belief perseverance! It’s where, even with overwhelming evidence against it, someone still believes something.
All of a sudden, I was spotting psychology terms around every corner I turned. Somehow, the class was infiltrating my whole life.
Every situation I found myself in, I was “diagnosing” and making myself feel a lot smarter. Maybe I was never going to be an actual therapist, but I got to live my dream in a small, low-pressure way; maybe I’ll learn the term for this in the next unit.
