What is the difference between hindsight bias and self-serving bias?

Hindsight bias: "I knew it all along" after the fact. Self-serving bias: claiming credit for successes but blaming circumstances for failures.

• Hindsight bias (Rückschaufehler) — once you know the outcome, you overestimate how predictable it was beforehand ("I knew it all along"). It rewrites your earlier uncertainty into false foresight, which makes you over-trust your judgement and harshly judge others for "not seeing" what's only obvious in retrospect.
• Self-serving bias (Selbstwertdienliche Verzerrung) — you attribute your successes to your own ability or effort, but your failures to bad luck or outside circumstances. It protects self-esteem at the cost of an honest account of what happened.

Both distort the lessons we draw from events: hindsight bias corrupts how predictable the past felt, self-serving bias corrupts who/what we credit for results. Each quietly inflates our competence — one about foresight, the other about responsibility.

Tip: These pair with two of the "10 commandments": judge strategies, not outcomes (against hindsight bias) and know your limits / honest self-assessment (against self-serving bias).