Jamie Hale

Jamie Hale

Sunday, October 31, 2021

I am Not Biased- You Are!?

You are biased and so is everyone else. “I am not biased” says the uninformed consumer, researcher, policy maker, minister, spiritual guru, coach, therapist etc....... 

Myside bias: is the tendency for people to evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own opinions. The weight of evidence doesn’t matter when making decisions or determining belief. It is reasonable to suggest everyone is influenced at some level of bias (conscious and unconscious- not being aware of bias).

Bias Blind Spot

“Research involving the assessment of one’s own biases indicates people often feel that they are less biased than others. Bias blind spot is conceptualized as a tendency to recognize bias in others, while not recognizing bias in ourselves (Pronin et al. 2002). Emily Pronin and colleagues conducted a study that asked participants to rate themselves and others on their susceptibility to a variety of biases. The results indicated across eight biases people felt they were less biased than their peers. In summary, people acknowledge the value of scientific findings on biased processing, but they don’t believe those findings apply to them.

A key factor involved with bias blind spot is placing too much emphasis on introspective evidence (monitoring one’s own conscious processes), despite the tendency for biases to occur unconsciously (below our awareness). Another factor driving bias blind spot is the tendency for people to assume their perceptions directly reflect reality (naive realism), and that those who don’t agree are biased. Indeed, “People’s tendency to deny their own bias, even while recognizing bias in others, reveals a profound shortcoming in self-awareness, with important consequences for interpersonal and intergroup conflict” (Pronin 2007)Full article 

Intelligence & Myside Processing

Toplak & Stanovich (2003) presented 112 undergraduate university students with an informal reasoning test in which they were asked to generate arguments both for and against the position they endorsed on three separate issues. Performance on the task was evaluated by comparing the number of arguments they generated which endorsed (myside arguments) and which refuted (otherside arguments) their own position on that issue. Participants generated more myside arguments than otherside arguments on all three issues, thus consistently showing a myside bias effect on each issue. Differences in cognitive ability were not associated with individual differences in myside bias. However, year in university was a significant predictor of myside bias. The degree of myside bias decreased systematically with year in university. Year in university remained a significant predictor of myside bias even when both cognitive ability and age were statistically partialled out. 
Myside bias was displayed on all three issues, but there was no association in the level of myside bias shown across the different issues  Read more  

Proxies of Intelligence Do Not Predict Avoidance of Myside Bias

In Experiment 1, the researchers concluded, there was "no evidence at all that myside bias effects are smaller for students of higher cognitive ability" (p.140). The main purpose of Experiment 2 was to investigate the association of cognitive abilities with myside and one side bias. "The results... were quite clear cut. SAT total scores displayed a nonsignificant 7.03 correlation with the degree of myside bias and a correlation of .09 with the degree of one-side bias (onebias1), which just missed significance on a twotailed test but in any case was in the unexpected direction" (p.147). It was also revealed that stronger beliefs usually imply heavier myside bias. In Experiment 3 "the degree of myside bias was uncorrelated with SAT scores", and "[t]he degree of one-side bias was uncorrelated with SAT scores" (p.156). Myside bias was weakly correlated with thinking dispositions. One side bias showed no correlation with thinking dispositions. From In Evidence We Trust 2nd Edition  


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