10.2 Judgement and Decision Making
People have a tendency to believe that they are less biased than their peers. For example, college students think they are less biased than their classmates. Similarly, Americans think that they are less biased than their fellow citizens (Pronin et al., 2002). This is referred to as the bias blind spot, and it has been observed in relation to various social and cognitive biases (Pronin et al., 2002; Epley & Dunning, 2000).
There are two potential causes of bias blind spots: introspection illusion and naive realism. Introspection illusion occurs because people often rely on their thoughts and feelings when evaluating their personal biases. However, because bias happens subconsciously, people often fail to recognize that bias exists in the very thoughts and feelings they are relying on during their evaluation. As a result, introspection frequently does not reveal the presence of bias, leading people to believe that their judgments are unbiased. Naive realism refers to the false belief that one’s perception reflects the true state of the world.
Scopelliti and colleagues (2015) discussed three potential relationships between bias blind spots and the decision-making process. The negative correlation hypothesis suggests that people with lower decision-making ability may be less aware of their bias, so they may have more bias blind spots. It is also possible that people who believe that they are less biased than their peers may be correct, so there is a positive correlation between bias blind spots and decision-making competence. It is also likely that there is no relationship between bias blind spots and decision making. Scopelliti and colleagues found that susceptibility to bias blind spots is likely to predict two kinds of bias in social judgment. First, people with stronger bias blind spots are more likely to ignore others’ abilities when judging their own abilities. Thus, these people are more likely to believe that they are better than average at performing easy tasks and worse than average at performing difficult tasks. Second, people who have stronger bias blind spots are more likely to ignore others’ advice than those who have weaker bias blind spots. Those with a strong bias blind spot are less receptive to training aimed at mitigating other judgmental biases (Scopelliti et al., 2015). Overall, these findings suggest that people who overlook their own biases overestimate their skills and ignore advice, making it harder for them to improve their decision-making ability.
Video 10.1. “What is Bias blind spot? [Definition and Example] – Understanding Cognitive Biases” by PsychOut.
