The present study tested the effects of salience and hindsight biases on judgements of the likelihood of real and fictitious world events. Those events that are salient or have already occurred were predicted to be assigned overestimated probabilities compared to similar matched world events. In two studies utilizing four different types of events, deaths, revolutions, troop movements, and national independence, evidence for such biases was found. However, in two cases where a salient feature was the unexpectedness of the event, hindsight biases were not found.
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