Notes on the Bias Blind Spot

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Emily Pronin, Daniel Y. Lin and Lee Ross (2002) "The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others" Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 28, No. 3, 369-381 doi: 10.1177/0146167202286008

Participants in one follow-up study who showed the better-than-average bias insisted that their self-assessments were accurate and objective even after reading a description of how they could have been affected by the relevant bias. Participants in a final study reported their peer’s self-serving attributions regarding test performance to be biased but their own similarly self-serving attributions to be free of bias.

Emily Pronin, Thomas Gilovich and Less Ross (2004) "Objectivity in the Eye of the Beholder: Divergent Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others" Psychological Review, Vol. 111, No. 3, 781–799 doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.111.3.781

Although this blind spot regarding one’s own biases may serve familiar self-enhancement motives, it is also a product of the phenomenological stance of naive realism. It is exacerbated, furthermore, by people’s tendency to attach greater credence to their own introspections about potential influences on judgment and behavior than they attach to similar introspections by others.

Joyce Ehrlinger, Thomas Gilovich and Lee Ross (2005) "Peering Into the Bias Blind Spot: People’s Assessments of Bias in Themselves and Others" Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 5, 680-692

People tend to believe that their own personal connection to a given issue is a source of accuracy and enlightenment but that such personal connections in the case of others who hold different views are a source of bias.

Emily Pronin and Matthew B. Kugler (2006) "Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blind spot" Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Volume 43, Issue 4, July 2007, Pages 565-578 doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.05.011

Participants considered introspective information more than behavioral information for assessing bias in themselves, but not others. [...] And, participants claimed that they, but not their peers, should rely on introspections when making self-assessments of bias.

Seeing oneself as less prone to bias than other people is an aspect of Superiority Bias