“Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.” 
Michel de Montaigne:
Perfect slogan for the 
Dunning-Kruger Effect

Self-Deception

  • Meta-bias
  • Bias blind spot  
  • Dunning–Kruger effect
  • Introspection Illusion
  • Subjective validation
  • Self-serving bias
  • Egocentric bias
  • Overconfidence effect
  • Explanatory Depth
  • Pessimism bias
  • Wishful thinking
  • Selective perception
  • Belief bias
  • Change bias
  • Hindsight bias
  • Illusion-of-truth effect
  • Choice-supportive bias
  • Impact bias

Illusions of Will and Agency

  • Illusion of control
  • Reactance
  • Restraint bias

 

Meta-bias
Science review notes our worst bias is meta –
Being more aware of biases makes us more willing to assume that others’ biases, and not ours, are responsible for our disagreement.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/meta-is-max---b.html

Bias blind spot  
The tendency to view oneself as less biased than other people. The ability to recognize the biases held by others, but not one's own. 
  • Pronin, Emily; Matthew B. Kugler (July 2007), "Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blind spot". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (4): 565–57
  • Ehrlinger, J., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L. (2005). Peering into the bias blindspot: People’s assessments of bias in themselves and others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 680-692.
2002_bias_blindspot.pdf
File Size: 120 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File
2007_bias_perception.pdf
File Size: 473 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Dunning–Kruger effect
A twofold bias. On one hand the lack of metacognitive ability deludes people, who overrate their capabilities. On the other hand, skilled people underrate their abilities, as they assume the others have a similar understanding.
Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (2009). Unskilled and Unaware of It : How Difficulties in Recognizing One ’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated. Online 2009 (December), 30-46.

2009_dunning-kruger.pdf
File Size: 359 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Subjective validation
Perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.

Self-serving bias
Tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests (see also group-serving bias).

Perceiving oneself responsible for desirable outcomes but not responsible for undesirable ones.

Egocentric bias
Occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would.

Recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g. remembering one's exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as being bigger than it was.

Overconfidence effect
Excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of questions, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time

Pessimism bias
Tendency for some people, especially those suffering from depression, to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening to them.

Wishful thinking
The formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is pleasing to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality.

Selective perception
The tendency for expectations to affect perception.

Belief bias
An effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.

"The belief-bias effect in syllogistic reasoning refers to the tendency for subjects to be erroneously biased when logical conclusions are incongruent with beliefs about the world."   
  • Klauer, K. C.; J. Musch, B. Naumer (2000), "On belief bias in syllogistic reasoning", Psychological Review 107 (4): 852–884
  • Effects of aging on hemispheric asymmetry in inferior frontal cortex activity during belief-bias syllogistic reasoning: a near-infrared spectroscopy study. Tsujii T, Okada M, Watanabe S. Behav Brain Res. 2010 Jul 11;210(2):178-83. Epub 2010 Feb 19. Center for Advanced Research on Logic and Sensibility (CARLS), Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Neural correlates of dual-task effect on belief-bias syllogistic reasoning: a near-infrared spectroscopy study.
  • Tsujii T, Watanabe S. 
    • Brain Res. 2009 Sep 1;1287:118-25.  

Change bias
After making an effort to produce change, remembering one's past performance as more difficult than it actually was.

Hindsight bias
"I-knew-it-all-along" effect
Tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened.

Illusion-of-truth effect
People are more likely to identify as true statements those they have previously heard (even if they cannot consciously remember having heard them), regardless of the actual validity of the statement.

In other words, a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one.

Choice-supportive bias
Chosen options are remembered as having been better than rejected options
(Mather, Shafir & Johnson, 2000)

Impact bias
Tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of future feeling states.
A form of durability bias, in affective forecasting
  • Sanna, Lawrence J.; Schwarz, Norbert (2004), "Integrating Temporal Biases: The Interplay of Focal Thoughts and Accessibility Experiences", Psychological Science (American Psychological Society) 15 (7): 474–481
  • Gilbert, D.T., Pinel, E.C., Wilson, T.D., Blumberg, S.J. & Wheatley, T.P. (1998). Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 617-638.

Introspection Illusion
Introspection involves looking inward into conscious thoughts, feelings, motives, and intentions. Modern social psychological research has raised questions about the value and reliability of information gained via introspection.
  • people's heavy weighting of introspective information for making self-assessments. 
  • principles associated with that weighting that is, that it does not extend to how people treat others introspections
  • it can lead people to disregard information conveyed by their own (but not others) behavior, 
  • it is rooted not only in peoples unique access to their introspections but also in the unique value they place on them. 
Over-valuing of personal introspections occurs in a variety of domains, including judgment and decision making, personal relationships, and stereotyping and prejudice.

An understanding of it sheds light on theoretical concerns involving the actor observer bias, self-enhancement, temporal distance effects, and the perception of free will.

Peoples unique valuing of their introspections likely has deep roots, but this introspection illusion also causes problems. It can foster conflict, discrimination, lapses in ethics, and barriers to self- knowledge and social intimacy. Understanding its sources and effects may help alleviate some of those problems.
The Introspection Illusion.
Emily Pronin (2009) Elsevier Inc. 41 p. 1-67

Illusion of Explanatory Depth
illusion_of_explanatory_depth.pdf
File Size: 183 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Illusions of Will and Agency

Illusion of control

Tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events.  
Thompson, Suzanne C. (1999), "Illusions of Control: How We Overestimate Our Personal Influence", Current Directions in Psychological Science (Association for Psychological Science) 8(6): 187–190

Reactance
(Defiance
Oppositional)
The urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.

Restraint bias
The tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint in the face of temptation.