The ‘‘saw-it-all-along’’ effect: Demonstrations of visual hindsight bias

*The writing of this article and the laboratory described in it were supported by NIMH Grant MH41637 to G. Loftus. We thank Daniel Bernstein for valuable comments on previous versions of this manuscript. We also thank Chris Dessert, Eunice Poon, Sarah Hayes, and Erik Gust for assistance in data collection. This article addresses whether a hindsight bias exists for visual perception tasks. In three experiments observers equipped with visual target information predicted the performance of a naïve self or peer. In phase 1 of all experiments, observers identified degraded images of celebrity faces as they resolved to full clarity. Following phase 1, Experiment-1 and 2 observers were given a surprise memory test in which they attempted to adjust the clarity of each face until it looked as it did when recognized in phase 1. Experiment-3 observers viewed phase-1 faces plus a new set of faces in full clarity at the outset, and then stopped the resolution process when they thought a naive peer would identify the face. In all experiments, observers overestimated identification performance of naïve observers. This visual hindsight bias was greater for more familiar faces—those shown in both phases of the experiment—an