Cognitive sophistication does not attenuate the bias blind spot

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Volumn 103, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 506-519

  West, Richard F ^a   Meserve, Russell J ^a   Stanovich, Keith E ^b  

^a JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

Bias blind spot; Cognitive ability; Heuristics and biases; Thinking biases

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AGED; ARTICLE; COGNITION; FEMALE; HUMAN; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; PHYSIOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGIC TEST; PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY; QUESTIONNAIRE; THINKING;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AGED; COGNITION; FEMALE; HUMANS; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS; PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY; QUESTIONNAIRES; THINKING; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84872159052     PISSN: 00223514     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/a0028857     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. Amsel, E., Klaczynski, P. A., Johnston, A., Bench, S., Close, J., Sadler, E., & Walker, R. (2008). A dual-process account of the development of scientific reasoning: The nature and development of metacognitive intercession skills. Cognitive Development, 23, 452-471. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2008.09.002
2. Baron, J., & Hershey, J. C. (1988). Outcome bias in decision evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 569-579. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.54.4.569
3. Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2007). Individual differences in adult decision-making competence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 938-956. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.938
4. Buss, D. M. (1999). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind. Boston. MA: Allyn and Bacon.
5. Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Feinstein, J. A., & Jarvis, W. B. G. (1996). Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: The life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 197-253. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.197
6. Campitelli, G., & Labollita, M. (2010). Correlations of cognitive reflection with judgments and choices. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 182-191.
7. Cassady, J. C. (2001). Self-reported GPA and SAT: A methodological note. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(12). Retrieved from http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v7&n12
8. Chance, Z., Norton, M. I., Gino, F., & Ariely, D. (2011). Temporal view of the costs and benefits of self-deception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108, 15655-15659. doi:10.1073/pnas.1010658108
9. Chiesi, F., Primi, C., & Morsanyi, K. (2011). Developmental changes in probabilistic reasoning: The role of cognitive capacity, instructions, thinking styles, and relevant knowledge. Thinking & Reasoning, 17, 315-350. doi:10.1080/13546783.2011.598401
10. Cokely, E. T., & Kelley, C. M. (2009). Cognitive abilities and superior decision making under risk: A protocol analysis and process model evaluation. Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 20-33.
11. Dawes, R. M. (1976). Shallow psychology. In J. S. Carroll & J. W. Payne III (Eds.), Cognition and social behavior (pp. 3-11). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
12. Del Missier, F., Mäntyla, T., & Bruine de Bruin, W. (2010). Executive functions in decision making: An individual differences approach. Thinking & Reasoning, 16, 69-97. doi:10.1080/13546781003630117
13. Del Missier, F., Mäntyla, T., & Bruine de Bruin, W. (2011). Decisionmaking competence, executive functioning, and general cognitive abilities. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. Advance online publication. doi:10.1002/bdm.731
14. Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Boston, MA: Little Brown.
15. Ehrlinger, J., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L. (2005). Peering into the bias blind spot: People's assessments of bias in themselves and others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 680-692. doi:10.1177/ 0146167204271570
16. Epley, N., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Are adjustments insufficient? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 447-460. doi:10.1177/ 0146167203261889
17. Evans, J. St. B. T. (2008). Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 255-278. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093629
18. Evans, J. St. B. T. (2010). Thinking twice: Two minds in one brain. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
19. Evans, J. St. B. T., & Frankish, K. (Eds.). (2009). In two minds: Dual processes and beyond. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230167.001.0001
20. Evans, St. J. B. T., & Stanovich, K. E. (in press). Dual-process theories of higher cognition: Advancing the debate. Perspectives in Psychological Science.
21. Fast, N. J., Gruenfeld, D. H., Sivanathan, N., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Illusory control: A generative force behind power's far-reaching effects. Psychological Science, 20, 502-508. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280 .2009.02311.x
22. Finucane, M. L., & Gullion, C. M. (2010). Developing a tool for measuring the decision-making competence of older adults. Psychology and Aging, 25, 271-288. doi:10.1037/a0019106
23. Forguson, L., & Gopnik, A. (1988). The ontogeny of common sense. In J. W. Astington, P. L. Harris, & D. R. Olson (Eds.), Developing theories of mind (pp. 226-243). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
24. Frantz, C. M. (2006). I AM being fair: The bias blind spot as a stumbling block to seeing both sides. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 28, 157-167. doi:10.1207/s15324834basp2802_5
25. Frederick, S. (2005). Cognitive reflection and decision making. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19, 25-42. doi:10.1257/089533005775196732
26. Frey, M. C., & Detterman, D. K. (2004). Scholastic assessment or g? The relationship between the Scholastic Assessment Test and general cognitive ability. Psychological Science, 15, 373-378. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00687.x
27. Gabennesch, H. (1990). The perception of social conventionality by children and adults. Child Development, 61, 2047-2059. doi:10.2307/ 1130858
28. Gilhooly, K. J., & Fioratou, E. (2009). Executive functions in insight versus non-insight problem solving: An individual differences approach. Thinking & Reasoning, 15, 355-376. doi:10.1080/13546780903178615
29. Gilhooly, K. J., & Murphy, P. (2005). Differentiating insight from noninsight problems. Thinking & Reasoning, 11, 279-302. doi:10.1080/ 13546780442000187
30. Griffin, D. W., & Ross, L. (1991). Subjective construal, social inference, and human misunderstanding. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in exper imental social psychology (Vol. 24, pp. 319-359). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
31. Haselton, M. G., & Nettle, D. (2006). The paranoid optimist: An integrative evolutionary model of cognitive biases. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 47-66. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_3
32. Higgins, D. M., Peterson, J. B., Pihl, R. O., & Lee, A. G. M. (2007). Prefrontal cognitive ability, intelligence, Big Five personality, and the prediction of advanced academic and workplace performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 298-319. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.93.2.298
33. Johnson, D. D. P., & Fowler, J. H. (2011). The evolution of overconfidence. Nature, 477, 317-320. doi:10.1038/nature10384
34. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
35. Kahneman, D., & Frederick, S. (2002). Representativeness revisited: Attribute substitution in intuitive judgment. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 49-81). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
36. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1973). On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review, 80, 237-251. doi:10.1037/h0034747
37. Koehler, D. J., & James, G. (2010). Probability matching and strategy availability. Memory & Cognition, 38, 667-676. doi:10.3758/ MC.38.6.667
38. Kokis, J. V., Macpherson, R., Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2002). Heuristic and analytic processing: Age trends and associations with cognitive ability and cognitive styles. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 83, 26-52. doi:10.1016/S0022-0965(02)00121-2
39. Kruger, J., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Actions, intentions, and self-assessment: The road to self-enhancement is paved with good intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 328-339. doi:10.1177/ 0146167203259932
40. Kuncel, N. R., Credé, M., & Thomas, L. L. (2005). The validity of self-reported grade point averages, class ranks, and test scores: A metaanalysis and review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 75, 63-82. doi:10.3102/00346543075001063
41. Levy, J., Pashler, H., & Boer, E. (2006). Central interference in driving: Is there any stopping the psychological refractory period? Psychological Science, 17, 228-235. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01690.x
42. Liang, F., Paulo, R., Molina, G., Clyde, M. A., & Berger, J. O. (2008). Mixtures of g priors for Bayesian variable selection. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 103, 410-423. doi:10.1198/ 016214507000001337
43. Lieberman, M. D. (2007). Social cognitive neuroscience: A review of core processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 259-289. doi:10.1146/ annurev.psych.58.110405.085654
44. Lieberman, M. D. (2009). What zombies can't do: A social cognitive neuroscience approach to the irreducibility of reflective consciousness. In J. St. B. T. Evans & K. Frankish (Eds.), In two minds: Dual processes and beyond (pp. 293-316). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230167.003.0013
45. McEvoy, S. P., Stevenson, M. R., McCartt, A. T., Woodward, M., Haworth, C., Palamara, P., & Cercarelli, R. (2005). Role of mobile phones in motor vehicle crashes resulting in hospital attendance: A case-crossover study. British Medical Journal, 331, 428-430. doi: 10.1136/bmj.38537.397512.55
46. Nichols, S., & Stich, S. P. (2003). Mindreading: An integrated account of pretence, self-awareness, and understanding other minds. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
47. Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
48. Noftle, E. E., & Robins, R. W. (2007). Personality predictors of academic outcomes: Big Five correlates of GPA and SAT scores. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 116-130. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.93.1.116
49. Oechssler, J., Roider, A., & Schmitz, P. W. (2009). Cognitive abilities and behavioral biases. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 72, 147-152. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2009.04.018
50. Paolacci, G., Chandler, J., & Ipeirotis, P. G. (2010). Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 411-419.
51. Pronin, E. (2007). Perception and misperception of bias in human judgment. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 37-43. doi:10.1016/j.tics .2006.11.001
52. Pronin, E., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L. (2004). Objectivity in the eye of the beholder: Divergent perceptions of bias in self versus others. Psychological Review, 111, 781-799. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.111.3.781
53. Pronin, E., & Kugler, M. B. (2007). Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blind spot. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 565-578. doi:10.1016/j.jesp .2006.05.011
54. 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. doi:10.1177/0146167202286008
55. Reber, A. S. (1992a). The cognitive unconscious: An evolutionary perspective. Consciousness and Cognition, 1, 93-133. doi:10.1016/1053-8100(92)90051-B
56. Reber, A. S. (1992b). An evolutionary context for the cognitive unconscious. Philosophical Psychology, 5, 33-51. doi:10.1080/ 09515089208573042
57. Ross, L., & Ward, A. (1996). Naive realism in everyday life: Implications for social conflict and misunderstanding. In E. S. Reed, E. Turiel, & T. Brown (Eds.), Values and knowledge (pp. 103-135). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
58. Rouder, J. N., Speckman, P. L., Sun, D., Morey, R. D., & Iverson, G. (2009). Bayesian t tests for accepting and rejecting the null hypothesis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 225-237. doi:10.3758/ PBR.16.2.225
59. Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1992). Effects of optimism on psychological and physical well-being: Theoretical overview and empirical update. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 16, 201-228. doi:10.1007/ BF01173489
60. Sharot, T. (2011). The optimism bias: A tour of the irrationally positive brain. New York, NY: Pantheon.
61. Smith, S. M., & Levin, I. P. (1996). Need for cognition and choice framing effects. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 9, 283-290. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-0771(199612)9:4 283::AID-BDM241 3.0.CO; 2-7
62. Sperber, D. (1994). The modularity of thought and the epidemiology of representations. In L. A. Hirschfeld & S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 39-67). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/ CBO9780511752902.003
63. Sprouse, J. (2011). A validation of Amazon Mechanical Turk for the collection of acceptability judgments in linguistic theory. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 155-167. doi:10.3758/s13428-010-0039-7
64. Stanovich, K. E. (1999). Who is rational? Studies of individual differences in reasoning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
65. Stanovich, K. E. (2003). The fundamental computational biases of human cognition: Heuristics that (sometimes) impair decision making and problem solving. In J. E. Davidson & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), The psychology of problem solving (pp. 291-342). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
66. Stanovich, K. E. (2004). The robot's rebellion: Finding meaning in the age of Darwin. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
67. Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What intelligence tests miss: The psychology of rational thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
68. Stanovich, K. E. (2011). Rationality and the reflective mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
69. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (1997). Reasoning independently of prior belief and individual differences in actively open-minded thinking. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 342-357. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.89.2.342
70. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (1998). Individual differences in rational thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 161-188. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.127.2.161
71. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (1999). Discrepancies between normative and descriptive models of decision making and the understanding/ acceptance principle. Cognitive Psychology, 38, 349-385. doi:10.1006/ cogp.1998.0700
72. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2000). Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 645-726. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00003435
73. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2007). Natural myside bias is independent of cognitive ability. Thinking & Reasoning, 13, 225-247. doi:10.1080/ 13546780600780796
74. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2008a). On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside and one-sided thinking biases. Thinking & Reasoning, 14, 129-167. doi:10.1080/13546780701679764
75. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2008b). On the relative independence of thinking biases and cognitive ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 672-695. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.94.4.672
76. Sterelny, K. (2003). Thought in a hostile world: The evolution of human cognition. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
77. Strayer, D. L., & Drews, F. A. (2007). Cell-phone-induced driver distraction. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 128-131. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00489.x
78. Strayer, D. L., & Johnston, W. A. (2001). Driven to distraction: Dual-task studies of simulated driving and conversing on a cellular telephone. Psychological Science, 12, 462-466. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00386
79. Taylor, S. E. (1981). The interface of cognitive and social psychology. In J. H. Harvey (Ed.), Cognition, social behavior, and the environment (pp. 189-211). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
80. Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.103.2.193
81. Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1994). Positive illusions and well-being revisited: Separating fact from fiction. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 21-27. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.116.1.21
82. Toates, F. (2005). Evolutionary psychology-Towards a more integrative model. Biology and Philosophy, 20, 305-328. doi:10.1007/s10539-004-0756-3
83. Toates, F. (2006). A model of the hierarchy of behaviour, cognition, and consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 75-118. doi:10.1016/ j.concog.2005.04.008
84. Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 19-136). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
85. Toplak, M., & Stanovich, K. E. (2002). The domain specificity and generality of disjunctive reasoning: Searching for a generalizable critical thinking skill. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 197-209. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.94.1.197
86. Toplak, M. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (2003). Associations between myside bias on an informal reasoning task and amount of post-secondary education. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 851-860. doi:10.1002/ acp.915
87. Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2011). The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks. Memory & Cognition, 39, 1275-1289. doi:10.3758/s13421-011-0104-1
88. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131. doi:10.1126/science .185.4157.1124
89. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453-458. doi:10.1126/science .7455683
90. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1983). Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment. Psychological Review, 90, 293-315. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.90.4.293
91. Unsworth, N., & Engle, R. W. (2007). The nature of individual differences in working memory capacity: Active maintenance in primary memory and controlled search from secondary memory. Psychological Review, 114, 104-132. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.114.1.104
92. van Veelen, M., & Nowak, M. A. (2011). Evolution: Selection for positive illusions. Nature, 477, 282-283. doi:10.1038/477282a
93. Weller, J. A., Levin, I. P., & Denburg, N. L. (2011). Trajectory of risky decision making for potential gains and losses from ages 5 to 85. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 24, 331-344. doi:10.1002/bdm.690
94. West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (1991). The incidental acquisition of information from reading. Psychological Science, 2, 325-330. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.1991.tb00160.x
95. West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2003). Is probability matching smart? Associations between probabilistic choices and cognitive ability. Memory & Cognition, 31, 243-251. doi:10.3758/BF03194383
96. West, R. F., Toplak, M. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (2008). Heuristics and biases as measures of critical thinking: Associations with cognitive ability and thinking dispositions. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 930-941. doi:10.1037/a0012842
97. Williams, E. F., & Gilovich, T. (2008). Do people really believe they are above average? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1121-1128. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.01.002
98. Wilson, T. D. (2002). Strangers to ourselves: Discovering the adaptive unconscious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
99. Wilson, T. D., Houston, C. E., Etling, K. M., & Brekke, N. (1996). A new look at anchoring effects: Basic anchoring and its antecedents. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125, 387-402. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.125.4.387