Introspection and the bias blind spot.

[Requia ☣]

So I'm sure it will come to no surprise to anyone here that people are shit at recognizing bias in themselves, even when they're fairly good at recognizing it in others.  One of the more interesting things pulled up by studies of this is that people actually use different strategies to try and recognize bias in themselves than others.  For other people we tend to use naive theories of bias and so forth, for ourselves the default technique is introspection.  We use our access to our thoughts feelings plans etc to make decisions about our own biases.  This doesn't appear to work at all.

Well, I just found something really interesting digging through papers on that effect.  Apparently telling people that introspection doesn't work for recognizing self bias actually increases their ability to recognize self bias.  In fact it can outright eliminate the bias blind spot.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Link?

[Requia ☣]

Good question, the site I got the key article off of has a nasty paywall if you aren't VPNed through a university.

It's     Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blind spot. Emily Pronin, Matthew B. Kugler 2007, Journal of experimental psychology v 43 issue 4 if anybody wants to try their luck.


Or I could just try google: http://cbdr.cmu.edu/seminar/pronin.pdf

Study 5 is the stuff about eliminating the bias blind spot.

[LMNO]

The way I've been trying to do it these days is behaviorally.  That is, when a Barstool shows me that what's in my mind isn't matching reality, I try to look at my behaviors, rather than my thought processes.  That usually reveals a lot more about how I'm thinking about a certain subject than digging around in my self-justification control center.  The main problem with that is, it's really hard to do when you're in a worked-up emotional state, so it's not that effective "in the moment", so to speak.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

Or you could hate everyone and everything and any bias is eliminated from the get go.

[Adios]

Or you could hate everyone and everything and any bias is eliminated from the get go.

Wouldn't that be total bias?

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

Or you could hate everyone and everything and any bias is eliminated from the get go.

Wouldn't that be total bias?

I was thinking more like complete equality.  But I could be wrong. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

The way I've been trying to do it these days is behaviorally.  That is, when a Barstool shows me that what's in my mind isn't matching reality, I try to look at my behaviors, rather than my thought processes.  That usually reveals a lot more about how I'm thinking about a certain subject than digging around in my self-justification control center.  The main problem with that is, it's really hard to do when you're in a worked-up emotional state, so it's not that effective "in the moment", so to speak.

Couldn't agree more with the monitoring behaviour tack. The mind is cloudy when examined using mind, especially so when it's functioning irrationally but black-box behavioural and even physiological response analysis is bombproof as long as you're not some kind of fucking hypochondriac.

Realising I'm in a worked up emotional state is a trigger to stepping back from it and analysing just exactly what the hell it was that led "the subject" to behave this way.

One of my most effective "I'm a fucking lunatic" coping strategies. Sure it's not 100% reliable, some situations still have the ability to push me over the edge too quickly to catch but those are becoming less and less common with practice.