People Claim Objectivity After Knowingly Using Biased Strategies

Abstract

People tend not to recognize bias in their judgments. Such "bias blindness" persists, we show, even when people acknowledge that the judgmental strategies preceding their judgments are biased. In Experiment 1, participants took a test, received failure feedback, and then were led to assess the test's quality via an explicitly biased strategy (focusing on the test's weaknesses), an explicitly objective strategy, or a strategy of their choice. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants rated paintings using an explicitly biased or explicitly objective strategy. Across the three experiments, participants who used a biased strategy rated it as relatively biased, provided biased judgments, and then claimed to be relatively objective. Participants in Experiment 3 also assessed how biased they expected to be by their strategy, prior to using it. These pre-ratings revealed that not only did participants' sense of personal objectivity survive using a biased strategy, it grew stronger.

Influences of appearance-behaviour congruity on memory and social judgements

“…However, people learn others’ traits better after exposure to congruent stimuli (Carlston & Skowronski, 1994), suggesting a strong role of congruity in impression formation. One reason why these findings might seem counterintuitive is that people often claim objectivity in decisions despite their actual behavior (Hansen, Gerbasi, Todorov, Kruse, & Pronin, 2014). Gaining a richer understanding of congruity effects is therefore important.…”

Libraries and Fake News: What’s the Problem? What’s the Plan?

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Morality justifies motivated reasoning in the folk ethics of belief

“…For instance, people typically judge that their beliefs reflect an objective and impartial assessment of the evidence (Ross & Ward, 1996). Even when people acknowledge that, in principle, they and others are likely to be biased (e.g., that people similar to them tend to be overly optimistic or let their identities affect their judgment), they often deny that they were influenced by these biases when asked about any particular judgment that they have made (Ehrlinger, Gilovich, & Ross, 2005;Hansen, Gerbasi, Todorov, Kruse, & Pronin, 2014;Pronin, Gilovich, & Ross, 2004;Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002;West, Meserve, & Stanovich, 2012). They also claim to prefer to hold beliefs that are logical and based on evidence, with a recent survey reporting that the majority of participants (78%) agreed with statements such as, "It is important to me personally that I can justify my beliefs using rational arguments and evidence" (Ståhl et al, 2016).…”