The blind spot bias refers to when people are unaware of their own biases. In fact, most people believe they are actually more objective and less biased than they really are.
Even though a person may be confronted with information that points to their own bias, there is still a tendency todeny the possibility.
Pronin et al. (2002) were among the first to identify the blind spot bias specifically and described it aptly:
“…individuals are likely to conclude that they are somehow less subject to biases than the people whom they observe and interact with in their everyday lives” (p. 369-370).
Blind Spot Bias Examples
1. Job Interview Scenario: Blind spot bias can occur during job interviews, where an interviewer may not see their own subconscious bias towards a candidate that went to the same school as them. They may not realize this subconscious bias can result in unfair advantages for that specific candidate.
2. Winning a Game: Someone might credit their winning a board game to their strategy and skill, but overlook others’ same skills or the role of luck involved in their win. They are more likely attributing their rewards to personal merit while ignoring those same aspects in others.
3. Environmental Conservation: An individual is adamant about their efforts towards environmental conservation by engaging in recycling and energy-saving practices. However, they might overlook their consumption habits that contribute to waste, reflecting a blind spot bias.
4. Artistic Prowess: An artist who sees their work as innovative may not recognize their style’s similarity or influences from other artists. Their failure to acknowledge this connection is a manifestation of blind spot bias.
5. Driving Skill: Some drivers may believe they are safer and more efficient behind the wheel than others. But they might not realize their own risky behaviors on road, demonstrating blind spot bias.
6. Personal Fitness: A fitness enthusiast might take pride in their disciplined exercise routine. Yet, they may not realize their unhealthy eating habits, indicative of blind spot bias.
7. Investment Acumen: An investor may attribute their successful investments to their financial acumen, while neglecting the role luck may have played. This overestimation of personal skill exhibits blind spot bias.
8. Academic Success: A student may think their grades are a reflection of their intelligence alone. They may fail to factor in elements like a supportive learning environment and good health, making it a case of blind spot bias.
9. Judging Others’ Reactions: People quickly label others as overreacters or overly emotional, yet they pay little attention to their overreactions. This disregard for personal attitude while criticizing others is blind spot bias.
10. Office Politics: In the context of office politics, a person might think themselves as fair and objective, yet disregard their bias towards their favorite colleague. This is an instance of blind spot bias.
11. Consumption Habits: An individual may pride themselves on their low carbon footprint but overlook their excessive water usage. This selective observance of personal habits is a sign of blind spot bias.
12. Professional Competency: Professionals often believe they’re proficient in their roles but might ignore the mistakes they make. Not recognizing these errors is an evident demonstration of blind spot bias.
13. Parenting Style: Parents may think they are giving equal attention to all their children. Their inability to acknowledge favorite tendencies towards one child displays blind spot bias.
14. Cultural Preference: An individual might think they equally appreciate all cultures, failing to notice their bias favoring their own. This unnoticed bias falls under blind spot bias.
15. Internet Usage: Individuals often criticize others for spending too much time online. Despite this, they might not be aware of their own excessive usage, which shows blind spot bias.
16. Fitness Instructors: A fitness instructor might think they treat all students equally. However, they might unknowingly favor the more capable students, reflecting blind spot bias.
17. Sports Fans: Sports enthusiasts often hold on to the idea that they’re objective spectators. But, their overlooked biased viewpoints towards their favorite team means they’re exhibiting blind spot bias.
18. Fashion Choices: People may believe they don’t fall for trends, yet subconsciously emulate popular styles. This unnoticed pattern suggests blind spot bias.
19. Health Enthusiasts: A health enthusiast may take pride in their diet but overlook their lack of adequate sleep. This over-focus on certain health aspects while neglecting others identifies blind spot bias.
20. Ethical Consumers: An individual might think they’re ethical consumers by buying fair-trade products but disregard their carbon emissions from transportation. This selective ethical adherence indicates blind spot bias.
21. Personal Finance: A person might believe they have excellent money management skills, ignoring their excessive spending on luxury items. This tendency to overlook their money mismanagement reflects blind spot bias.
22. Expert Opinions: Professionals can unconsciously believe their ideas are superior due to their expertise. Their undervaluation of others’ inputs exemplifies blind spot bias.
23. Political Views: Individuals often think their political views are unbiased, yet are subconsciously skewed towards the party they support. Overlooking this inclination is an manifestation of blind spot bias.
24. Self-care Practices: A person might emphasize their regular exercise routine for their good health but disregard their stressful lifestyle. Their neglect of stress as affecting factors in overall health signals blind spot bias.
25. Workplace Performance: An employee may put all blame for a project delay on colleagues, failing to recognize their part in the setback. Their dismissal of personal responsibility is a clear representation of blind spot bias.
Detailed Examples
1. Jury Decisions and Bias
Justice is supposed to be blind. That’s why many statues depict Lady Justice as wearing a blindfold. Other items in the statue symbolize fair treatment and the power of authority.
Although being objective is the goal, jurors are people and people are prone to all kinds of biases.
The legal system (in the U.S. for example) exerts a great deal of effort to minimize juror bias. This starts with the jury selection process, attempting to balance the racial and ethnic make-up of the jury, sequestering, and proceeding to the very end with the judge’s instructions.
However, because of the blind spot bias, even jurors that try to be fair and impartial may still show bias. For example, jurors may exhibit an affinity bias and unconsciously see evidence favorably for defendants that are similar to themselves on various political or demographic variables.
By its very definition, the blind spot bias means that people are not aware it is happening.
For a dramatic portrayal of the blind spot bias, the 1957 courtroom drama 12 Angry Men is still a classic.
2. Cross-Cultural Congregating
Living and working in a foreign country has never been easier. With remote working, it’s possible to have a job with a company on one continent while living on another.
That may make work easier, but there can be other issues with working in a foreign country. One of those is encountering an underlying vibe of not being completely welcome in that new homeland.
It’s just natural to prefer others that look and talk like themselves. This plays out in social gatherings all the time. The locals will have a tendency to sit near each other and converse, while at the same time, the foreigners at a party will have all congregated near each other as well.
Both groups will say that they welcome others and want to be inclusive, but the power of the blind spot bias makes it difficult for them to see reality.
3. The Job Interview
Having a great resume will get you in the door for an interview, but after that, it’s all up to the applicant. Or at least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
Unfortunately, interviews are conducted by people, and people aren’t perfect. If the interviewer is in an unpleasant mood for some reason, this can color their perceptions. An applicant’s responses to questions can be spot-on, but they aren’t processed that way.
That might be okay if the interviewer was aware of how their mood can affect their judgement. However, the blind spot bias tells us that is usually not the case.
The interviewer makes their decision regarding the applicant and decides to reject them for the job. It doesn’t matter how much other people point out the applicant’s stellar resume and references, the interviewer will never believe they let a bad day influence their objectivity.
4. Grading Essays
Grading the essays of an entire class can be exhausting. It only stands to reason that after a while, teachers might get a little less precise in their evaluations – but they’ll likely be reticent to admit it because they suffer from blind spot bias.
Less precision opens the door to bias. Once a teacher’s cognitive capacity starts to decline, be it for overuse or otherwise, their objectivity may start to wane. That’s only natural.
It’s also quite likely that the teacher is unaware that their grading criteria have drifted. Instead of being completely, 100% neutral and objective, other variables come into play. One of those variables might be how the student’s parents act towards the teacher, or if the student is outgoing or friendly, or shy and withdrawn.
None of those biases are going to be intentional, it’s just the way it is. People are not nearly as objective as they think. The blind spot bias means that people are also unaware of that failing.
5. Bank Loans and AI
Some biases are more consequential than others. Rating your best friend’s pie as great even though it tastes horrible may be bad judgement, but it’s not a really big deal.
In other situations, however, a bias can have quite severe ramifications. Take the case of bank loans. Most bank loan officers are confident that they judge each loan application based solely on objective factors. The research says otherwise.
Loan officers favor those that fit certain demographic profiles. Even if they fail to recognize their bias, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
This is one reason many experts in FinTech are pushing for AI to take over this decision-making process. How can a computer algorithm be biased against someone’s ethnicity?
As stated by Bartlett et al. (2019)“Algorithmic decision-making can reduce face-to-face discrimination in markets prone to implicit and explicit biases” (p. 2).
In fact, “…FinTech algorithms discriminate 40% less than face-to-face lenders” (Bartlett et al., 2019, p. 6).
Conclusion
The blind spot bias makes us blind to our own biases. It doesn’t matter how firmly we think of ourselves as objective processors of data, the fact remains that we are full of bias.
We point the fingers at others and then commit the same error. We say we like foreigners but still hang-around our local friends.
Bank loan officers will claim to be neutral, but still end up rejecting far too many applicants that don’t fit a certain demographic profile. The scales of justice may be equal and lady justice blindfolded, but the jurors still have eyes.
We can all strive to be fair, but bias is a part of the human animal. Until we all have AI chips implanted in our frontal lobes, that is the way it will be for a long time to come.
References
Bartlett, R., Morse, A., Stanton, R., & Wallace, N. (2019, November). Consumer-Lending Discrimination in the FinTech Era. Paper published by the University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved from: https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/morse/research/papers/discrim.pdf
Ehrlinger, J., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L.D. (2005). Peering Into the Bias Blind Spot: People’s Assessments of Bias in Themselves and Others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 680 – 692.
Pronin, E., Lin, D.Y., & Ross, L.D. (2002). The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 369 – 381.Scopelliti, I., Morewedge, C. K., McCormick, E., Min, H. L., Lebrecht, S., &Kassam, K. S. (2015) Bias blind spot: Structure, measurement, and consequences. Management Science, 61(10), 2468-2486. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.2096
Dr. Cornell has worked in education for more than 20 years. His work has involved designing teacher certification for Trinity College in London and in-service training for state governments in the United States. He has trained kindergarten teachers in 8 countries and helped businessmen and women open baby centers and kindergartens in 3 countries.
This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.