PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN Pronin et al. / THE BIAS BLIND SPOT The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others Emily Pronin Daniel Y. Lin Lee Ross Stanford University Three studies suggest that individuals see the existence and oper- ation of cognitive and motivational biases much more in others than in themselves. Study 1 provides evidence from three surveys that people rate themselves as less subject to various biases than the “average American,” classmates in a seminar, and fellow airport travelers. Data from the third survey further suggest that such claims arise from the interplay among availability biases and self-enhancement motives. Participants in one follow-up study who showed the better-than-average bias insisted that their self-assessments were accurate and objective even after reading a description of how they could have been affected by the relevant bias. Participants in a final study reported their peer’s self-serv- ing attributions regarding test performance to be biased but their own similarly self-serving attributions to be free of bias. The rele- vance of these phenomena to naïve realism and to conflict, mis- understanding, and dispute resolution is discussed. Cognitive and social psychologists have documented a number of specific cognitive and motivational biases that compromise lay inference and judgment (for reviews, see Dawes, 1998; Gilovich, 1991; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Plous, 1993; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Everyday obser- vation confirms the existence of such biases. We find that our adversaries, and at times even our peers, see events and issues through the distorting prism of their political ideology, their particular individual or group history and interests, and their desire to see themselves in a positive light. When we reflect on our own views of the world, however, we generally detect little evidence of such bias. We have the impression that we see issues and events “objectively,” as they are in “reality.” We would concede, perhaps, that some of our views have been shaped by our unique personal experience or group identity, but we feel that in our own particular case these factors have led to increased insight rather than bias. It is this perceived asymmetry in susceptibility to bias that provides the focus of the present article. We propose that people recognize the existence, and the impact, of most of the biases that social and cognitive psychologists have described over the past few decades. What they lack recognition of, we argue, is the role that those same biases play in governing their own judgments and inferences. This proposal of an asymmetry in perceptions of bias arises from recent accounts of “naive realism” (Griffin & Ross, 1991; Pronin, Puccio, & Ross, 2001; Ross & Ward, 1996; also see Ichheiser, 1970), which hold that people think, or simply assume without giving the matter any thought at all, that their own take on the world enjoys particular authenticity and will be shared by other open- minded perceivers and seekers of truth. As a conse- quence, evidence that others do not share their views, affective reactions, priorities regarding social ills, and so forth prompts them to search for some explanation, and the explanation most often arrived at, we argue, is that the other parties’ views have been subject to some bias that keeps them from reacting as the situation demands. As a result of explaining such situations in terms of others’ biases, while failing to recognize the role of similar biases in shaping their own perceptions and reactions, individ- uals are likely to conclude that they are somehow less 369 Authors’ Note: Research reported in this article was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH-44321. Emily Pronin was supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Re- search Fellowship during the conduct of this research. We gratefully thank Zachary Dillon for his assistance in carrying out Study 3. Please address correspondence concerning this article to Emily Pronin, De- partment of Psychology, 1444 William James Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; e-mail: pronin@wjh.harvard.edu. PSPB, Vol. 28 No. 3, March 2002 369-381 © 2002 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.