Bias Blind Spot: Structure, Measurement, and Consequences
Abstract
People exhibit a bias blind spot: they are less likely to detect bias in themselves than in others. We report the development and validation of an instrument to measure individual differences in the propensity to exhibit the bias blind spot that is unidimensional, internally consistent, has high test-retest reliability, and is discriminated from measures of intelligence, decision-making ability, and personality traits related to self-esteem, self-enhancement, and self-presentation. The scale is predictive of the extent to which people judge their abilities to be better than average for easy tasks and worse than average for difficult tasks, ignore the advice of others, and are responsive to an intervention designed to mitigate a different judgmental bias. These results suggest that the bias blind spot is a distinct metabias resulting from naïve realism rather than other forms of egocentric cognition, and has unique effects on judgment and behavior. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, judgment and decision making.
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The bias blind spot often undermines judgment quality because people fail to correct for biases they do not know they have.
“This bias blind spot often undermines judgment quality, as people fail to correct for biases that they do not know they have (Scopelliti et al., 2015).”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Scopelliti et al., 2015
Democrats viewed the described biases more negatively than Republicans (p < .001, d = 0.85).
“The results of this study revealed that Democrats viewed the described biases (adapted from Scopelliti et al., 2015) more negatively than Republicans (p < .001, d = 0.85; Figure 2A).”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Scopelliti et al., 2015
The 14-item bias blind spot measure demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .82), supporting item aggregation.
“Consistent with prior work (Scopelliti et al., 2015), this 14-item measure demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .82), supporting item aggregation.”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Scopelliti et al., 2015
Viewing oneself as objective while perceiving bias in others has been linked with poor judgment and negative interpersonal interactions.
“Viewing oneself as objective while perceiving bias in others has been linked with poor judgment and negative interpersonal interactions (Kennedy & Pronin, 2008; Scopelliti et al., 2015).”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Scopelliti et al., 2015
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Resistance to Medical Artificial Intelligence
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“More recent theoretical assertions from Scopelliti et al. (2015) claim the BBS effect is a meta-bias that can be measured at the individual level.”
Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot
Walker, A. C., Collins, R. N., Walker, H. E. K., Fugelsang, J. A., & Mandel, D. R. (2026) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/01461672261439247 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
- Authors
- Scopelliti, I., Morewedge, C. K., McCormick, E., Min, H. L., Lebrecht, S., & Kassam, K. S.
- Affiliations
- City, University of London (GB)
- Boston University (US)
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- Venue
- Management Science
- Published
- 2015-10
- Volume
- 61
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 2468-2486
- ISSN
- 0025-1909 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5501
- OpenAlex
- W2137218243
- Cited by
- 183
- References
- 16
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 6.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Management Science (publishedVersion)
- City Research Online (City University London) (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Keywords
- bias blind spot, self-other judgment, naive realism, judgment bias, self-assessment of ability, self-enhancement, self-presentation, self-esteem, scale development
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