Making sense of failure: A motivated model of hindsight bias

Can we learn from our mistakes? Does the large body of research demonstrating hindsight bias indicate that people are not likely to take responsibility for their errors and thus deprive themselves of the opportunity to learn to avoid such errors in the future? This examines two somewhat contradictory theories of hindsight bias, defensive processing and retroactive pessimism, and proposes a "motivated sense-making" model as a possible similar common pathway for the two processes. Specific attention is given to the implications of each process with regard to learning from one's mistakes.