Tuesday, April 01, 2008

The bias blind spot

Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002).
The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 369-381.

4 comments:

Tiny Seal said...

Dont you think this partiality is part of survival mechanism?
For minor things like sense of humor which do not have a direct affect on survival rate, it is ok to think that one ranks lower than an average human..

Unawoken said...

It is because of the survival mechanism. However, survival value in the evolutionary past does not imply survival value today.

Tiny Seal said...

i dont think it has lost survival value in the present. In the current society, one still wants to "get ahead" of the rest of the crowd: land the best job, feel like the smartest one in peer group etc..

Unawoken said...

The following causalities need to be established:

- believing you are ahead aids in getting ahead

- being unaware of one's bias but overexpecting another's bias lands you the best job.
(For example consider that the interviewer is likely to consider you to be biased)

- feeling like the smartest one in your peer group makes you relatively smart in your peer group in a survival sense.