Bias Blind Spot: Structure, Measurement, and Consequences

Abstract

People exhibit a bias blind spot: they are less likely to detect bias in themselves than in others. We report the development and validation of an instrument to measure individual differences in the propensity to exhibit the bias blind spot that is unidimensional, internally consistent, has high test-retest reliability, and is discriminated from measures of intelligence, decision-making ability, and personality traits related to self-esteem, self-enhancement, and self-presentation. The scale is predictive of the extent to which people judge their abilities to be better than average for easy tasks and worse than average for difficult tasks, ignore the advice of others, and are responsive to an intervention designed to mitigate a different judgmental bias. These results suggest that the bias blind spot is a distinct metabias resulting from naïve realism rather than other forms of egocentric cognition, and has unique effects on judgment and behavior.

"Measurement, Consequences, and Debiasing of Correspondent Inference Making"

“…In addition, we provide evidence on a potential debiasing strategy, based on increasing the accessibility of situational information, which may help consumers make less biased decisions. Individual differences in decision making appear to be prevalent (Baron and Ritov, 2004;Bruine de Bruin et al, 2007;Scopelliti et al, 2015), but their implications have often been overlooked. We argue that the identification and the assessment of individual differences in susceptibility to specific biases is a valuable approach to identify the structure and dimensionality of a bias, to test its influence in consequential judgments, decisions, and behaviors, and since decision-making can be improved (Nisbett et al 1987;, it provides useful tools for the pursuit of research on debiasing.…”

Mitigating bias blind spot via a serious video game

“…i.e., greater BBS). Other studies have also successfully used the same approach to measuring BBS (e.g., Pronin & Kugler, 2007;Scopelliti et al, 2015). Item reliabilities were acceptable (pretest α = .70, posttest1 α = .72, posttest2 α = .74, and 8-week posttest α = .70.…”

Behavioral Finance: History and Foundations

“…From the start, we underestimate how flawed and susceptible to behavioral biases our behavior is (Scopelliti et al, 2015). Humans also possess a general tendency to attribute successes to their skills and effort, while failures are attributed to factors beyond their control (self-attribution).…”