Tag: hindsight-bias

The cognitive distortion called hindsight bias makes warning signs and red flags seem obvious in retrospect when they weren’t clear in real-time, causing survivors devastating guilt about “missing” signs they actually couldn’t have known were significant. Hindsight bias is the tendency to believe after an event that you knew or should have known it would happen, creating false certainty about things that were actually ambiguous. Understanding how this cognitive bias distorts memory and judgment helps survivors recognize that guilt about missed signs often stems from how the brain processes trauma rather than actual failure to recognize real, clear warnings that demanded action.