Meta Bias

in Cognitive Sophistication Does Not Attenuate the Bias Blind Spot just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the authors note :

As opposed to the social emphasis in past work on the bias blind spot, we examined bias blind spots connected to some of the most well-known effects from the heuristics and biases literature: outcome bias, base-rate neglect, framing bias, conjunction fallacy, anchoring bias, and myside bias. We found that none of these bias blind spot effects displayed a negative correlation with measures of cognitive ability (SAT total, CRT) or with measures of thinking dispositions (need for cognition, actively open-minded thinking). If anything, the correlations went in the other direction...More intelligent people were not actually less biased—a finding that would have justified their displaying a larger bias blind spot.

I put this in with evidence that IQ is positively correlated with not just deception, but self-deception. This is why stupid sons don’t ruin a family, the clever ones do. Remember this the next time someone tells you their strategy is based on heuristics and biases, because it isn't obvious people aware of biases are less biased.

Hat tip: Robin Hanson