Elisa Reiter, Board Certified in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and Daniel Pollack, attorney and professor at Yeshiva University’s School of Social Work in New York City. (Courtesy Photos)
There is a well-known psychological phenomenon known as hindsight bias, “the recognized tendency for individuals to overestimate or exaggerate the predictability of events after they have occurred.” Chavez v. City of Los Angeles, 47 Cal. 4th 970, 104 Cal. Rptr. 3d 710, 224 P.3d 41, 52 (Cal. 2010). “[S]tudies have demonstrated not only that people claim that they would have known it all along, but also that they maintain that they did, in fact, know it all along.” Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, A Positive Psychological Theory of Judging in Hindsight, 65 U. Chi. L. Rev. 571, 577 & n.22 (1998). Unsurprisingly, “the law is not blind to the influence of the hindsight bias.” Rachlinski, at 573.
To what extent and in what ways might hindsight bias exist in the context of child protection services?
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