HINDSIGHT BIAS

Question 1 : What Did Happen?

Senor Balotelli deflected an Adam Lallana cross into the net area of the goal, in a move that was counted as legitimate by the match officials. It has entered the official records as the first Premier League goal of Mario Balotelli's Liverpool career. 

Question 2 : How Probable was the Event?

I don't know how to calculate the actual probability, but I can google statistics like a boss (hey Zachariah, shouldn't that be a capital 'G' for 'Google'? No. It's a verb, not a proper noun. for more information, google "verbification"). 13 league appearances, 48 shots. That would seem to indicate the probability as being somewhere below "certain". I think I can get away with asserting that it was not "certain" that Mario Balotelli would wind up scoring the winning goal. Which is interesting, isn't it Michael Owen...

*you're

Question 3 : Okay, What Did He Say?

In (more or less) his own words, Michael said that the event described above was "always going to happen". Two interesting points : one, Mario's impressively unimpressive goal stats. Two, Michael Owen himself did not mark Balotelli's introduction off the bench by saying "he's obviously going to score now!". 

So, 

Welcome to "HINDSIGHT BIAS"

aka - "things you probably genuinely believe that you thought that you probably didn't actually think"

aka - "the tendency to see erronious inevitability in events that have just occurred"

Believe it or not, we're not having a go at Michael Owen. Alright, we're not big fans of his commentary style (which is as convincing as a pig doing an impersonation of an international airline pilot), but Hindsight Bias is a pervasive and robust finding of psychology research that affects even the most wise and experienced commentators. It is simply the tendency after an event has occurred to see it as having been predictable.

 

So...

Hindsight Bias can be so strong that even when presented with objective evidence (the fact Michael Owen didn't bother to mention it) people will still be prone to believing that they believed prior to the event that the event was certain to occur. It is easily confused with the Illusion of Memory. When presented with their own vivid accounts written the day after 9/11, people still believed their newer, distorted memories of the event (even though they had reasonable proof that their present memories were inaccurate). So, first of all, it's understandable that Michael Owen might believe that he believed that Balo's goal was certain to occur. 

So...

Michael can't recreate what went through his head when the sub was made, all he knows is the sensation of now, a world in which Balo has scored. Our minds are consistently conserving resources by creating images of the world which suppress ambiguity, the world inside our heads, our Subjective Social Reality, is a gross simplification which frequently rejects ambiguity, doubt, and ignores complicating and mitigating factors. You see these processes at work when you yourself forge explanations for the behaviours of others, which are frequently consistent with our pre-existing assessments of their personality. We see the behaviour of others as explicable. We think we know why people are doing things, when in fact we're just guessing.

But wait...

Ah, yes, but, to be fair, we do know we're only guessing. It might be something else. He might've genuinely thought it was "probable" that the event would occur, and "probable" in his head might be a near-enough synonym of "definite", and he may have substituted one word for another, in much the same way as when presented with an unfathomably complicated question ("How happy are you these days?") most people will answer a much easier one ("How do I feel right now?"), substituting one answer seamlessly for the other. Why make this substitution? To conserve attentional resources (our brains are almost always working with this goal, unless provoked into working another way). 

So...

We're back on simplification. Balo has just scored. Michael has a sense of familiarity with the concept of a Balotelli goal. We are calling Michael's false remembering as an instance of Post-Event Misinformation. He has adapted the world of his past to fit the world of his present in a consistent and knowable way. After all, wouldn't you say "consistent" and "knowable" are exactly two of the things we'd all much much rather the world was? Take consistency, we regularly see other peoples behaviour as very consistent with our opinion of them, even when it isn't. It's easier than trying to completely suss them out (this task is impossible). Take knowable, the very Illusion of Knowledge is based on our desire to believe that we have made sense of the world, and that that is even possible (it isn't. "making sense of the world" is also impossible, and we mean impossible in the sense of "cannot be done"). 

To Conclude...

Please can we all stop using the phrase "always going to happen" like it applies to anything.