According to Neal J. Roese and Kathleen D. Vohs, writing for the May 2010 of Harvard Business Review, hindsight bias – the irrational belief that past outcomes were predictable – can work in reverse.
They describe research that has revealed what they call the 'propensity effect', whereby visualisation, in certain circumstances, makes people hyperconfident of the impending outcomes of events.
Participants were presented with traffic situations, with some receiving a text description with diagrams and others viewing a computer animation. Some examined normal traffic conditions, while others saw or read about driver error with or without an accident resulting.
The results showed that hindsight bias more than doubled for those viewing the computer animation. The propensity effect was much more in evidence for those who viewed the driver error without the accident – they were more likely to say they could see a serious accident coming than those who actually saw it occur and then were asked if they had seen it coming.
The authors explain: "Animations can whitewash the guesswork and assumptions that go into interpreting reconstructions. By creating a picture of one possibility, they make others seem less likely, even if they’re not."
Highlighting the significance of this research for management, they say: "When an objective reading of evidence is critical – as it is… in many business contexts – both the deepening hindsight bias and the propensity effect can be pernicious.
"A manager with the tools to animate financial data sets, such as sales forecasts, can easily – on the basis of the story the visualisation tells – misidentify trends, place blame where it doesn’t belong, or become overconfident about an action plan."
Despite these dangers, the authors do not suggest doing away with animations. They insist they can help "penetrate complexity". However, they say further research is necessary to fully explore the consequences of using them to depict data and gain knowledge on how to control for variables.
The Visualization Trap, Neal J. Roese and Kathleen D. Vohs, Harvard Business Review, May 2010
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