Perceiving events as both inevitable and unforeseeable in hindsight: the Leipzig candidacy for the Olympics

We present a new conceptualization of hindsight bias in terms of three separate hindsight components (foreseeability impressions, perceptions of necessity and memory distortions) and report three kinds of supporting evidence from an internet study (N = 101) of the unsuccessful application of the City of Leipzig to host the Olympic Games: (1) strongly diverging hindsight effects, (2) low intercorrelations between the components, and (3) dissociative effects of third variables on them. Specifically, experiencing the failure of the application as personally negative (due to a pro-application attitude and previous commitment), led to perceiving it as inevitable but also as unforeseeable. This surprising result helps to resolve seeming contradictions between previous findings (Louie, 1999; Mark et al., 2003; Tykocinski, 2001) by relating the opposite hindsight effects to differences in the nature and functions (dissonance reduction vs. coping with disappointment) of the foreseeability and necessity components.