Hypothesized drivers of the bias blind spot--cognitive sophistication, introspection bias, and conversational processes.

Individuals often assess themselves as being less susceptible to common biases compared to others. This bias blind spot (BBS) is thought to represent a metacognitive error. In this research, we tested three explanations for the effect: The cognitive sophistication hypothesis posits that individualswho display the BBS more strongly are actually less biased than others. The introspection bias hypothesis posits that the BBS occurs because people rely on introspection morewhen assessing themselves compared to others. The conversational processes hypothesis posits that the effect is largely a consequence of the pragmatic aspects of the experimental situation rather than true metacognitive error. In two experiments (N = 1057) examining 18 social/motivational and cognitive biases, therewas strong evidence of theBBS.Among the three hypotheses examined, the conversational processes hypothesis attracted the greatest support, thus raising questions about the extent to which the BBS is a metacognitive effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]