What term describes the belief that past events could have been predicted after they have unfolded?

The term that describes the belief that past events could have been predicted after they have unfolded is hindsight bias. This cognitive bias leads individuals to view past events as being more predictable than they actually were at the time they occurred. When people exhibit hindsight bias, they often feel that they "knew it all along," even though it may not have been possible to foresee the outcome beforehand.

This phenomenon can significantly affect decision-making and analysis, especially in fields such as finance and investing, where past performances are analyzed to make future predictions. Recognizing hindsight bias is crucial for traders and analysts to accurately assess risk and avoid overconfidence in their predictive abilities, which can lead to poor investment decisions.

Other options are not relevant to this specific concept. Conservatism bias is related to the tendency to favor prior evidence over new evidence, representative bias involves making judgments based on stereotypes, and information processing bias pertains to how information is processed and interpreted, but none of them specifically address the retrospective feeling of predictability associated with hindsight bias.