European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 32, 577–588 (2002) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.120 Retroactive pessimism: a different kind of hindsight bias ORIT E. TYKOCINSKI,* DANA PICK AND DANA KEDMI Ben Gurion University, Israel Abstract In an attempt to regulate disappointments people may sometimes change their perceptions of the events leading to an undesirable outcome so that in retrospect this outcome seems almost inevitable. This retroactive pessimism effect was demonstrated in three studies. In the first, sports fans rated the likelihood of success for their team and its opponent before and after an important soccer match. Evidence for significant pre- and post-game probability shifts was found for the fans of the defeated team but not for the supporters of the winning opponent. In the second and the third experiments participants responded to a scenario depicting a loss of stipend that was either large or small in value. Participants were expected to show more evidence of retroactive pessimism with greater disappoint- ment. Indeed, estimates of the probability of a more favorable counterfactual outcome were sensitive to the magnitude of the loss with lower estimates of the probability that things could have turned out better in the large stipend condition. The effect was attenuated, however, when the loss was not personal but rather that of a friend (Experiment 2), or when the disappointment was mitigated (Experiment 3). Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. When confronting disappointing events the realization that things could have easily turned out in our favor will probably make us feel much worse. If we decide, however, that what happened was in a sense inescapable or ‘bound to happen’ these bitter outcomes may become more palatable. Consistent with this assumption, research on this ‘retroactive pessimism’ effect indeed demonstrated shifts in the perceived probabilities of relevant events post-facto, so that the disappointing reality appears to perceivers to be almost inevitable and the more positive alternatives now seem highly unlikely (Tykocinski, 2001). A process of retroactive reevaluation of probabilities of events leading to a particular known outcome is well documented in the hindsight bias literature (Christensen-Szalanski & Willham, 1991; Received 2 August 2001 Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 13 March 2002 *Correspondence to: Orit E. Tykocinski, Departmentof Behavioral Sciences, Ben Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel. E-mail: Oritt@bgumail.bgu.ac.il Contract/grant sponsor: Israel Science Foundation. Contract/grant number: 83558101.