Developing the Bias Blind Spot: Increasing Skepticism towards Others

Hypothesized drivers of the bias blind spot—cognitive sophistication, introspection bias, and conversational processes

Individuals often assess themselves as being less susceptible to common biases compared to others. This bias blind spot (BBS) is thought to represent a metacognitive error. In this research, we tested three explanations for the effect: The cognitive sophistication hypothesis posits that individuals who display the BBS more strongly are actually less biased than others. The introspection bias hypothesis posits that the BBS occurs because people rely on introspection more when assessing themselves compared to others. The conversational processes hypothesis posits that the effect is largely a consequence of the pragmatic aspects of the experimental situation rather than true metacognitive error. In two experiments (N = 1057) examining 18 social/motivational and cognitive biases, there was strong evidence of the BBS. Among the three hypotheses examined, the conversational processes hypothesis attracted the greatest support, thus raising questions about the extent to which the BBS is a metacognitive effect.

Procedural (in)justice in children: Children choose procedures that favor their ingroup

Research has shown that both ingroup bias and concern for procedural justice emerge early in development; however, these concerns can conflict. We investigated whether 6- to 8-year-old children are more influenced by procedural justice versus ingroup favoritism in a resource allocation task. In our first study, children played a novel spinner game in which they chose among fair, ingroup favoring, and outgroup favoring procedures to decide whether a resource would go to an unfamiliar ingroup or outgroup recipient. We found that 6- to 8-year-olds overall chose ingroup favoring procedures. However, this tendency decreased with age; whereas younger children were more likely to select procedures that were advantageous to their ingroup, older children (7- and 8-year-olds) mostly chose fair procedures. Our second study investigated the motivations underpinning children's choices by testing whether children's fair procedure choices were in part driven by a desire to appear fair. Here we varied whether children made procedure choices in public, allowing them to manage their reputation, versus in private, where reputational concerns should not guide their choices. We found that from 6 to 8 years of age children chose ingroup favoring procedures and that this tendency was slightly stronger when choosing in private. Taken together, our research suggests that ingroup favoritism often trumps procedural justice in resource allocation tasks, especially for younger children and especially when reputation is not in play.

Patient and provider perspectives on reducing risk of harm in primary health care: a qualitative questionnaire study in Sweden

Objective: To explore how patients, that had experienced harm in primary care, and how primary providers and practice managers understood reasons for harm and possibilities to reduce risk of harm.Design: Inductive qualitative analysis of structured questionnaires with free text answers.Setting: Primary health care in Sweden.Patients/subjects: Patients (n = 22) who had experienced preventable harm in primary health care, and primary care providers and practice managers, including 15 physicians, 20 nurses and 24 practice managers.Main outcome measures: Categories and overarching themes from the qualitative analysis.Results: The three categories identified as important for safety were continuity of care, communication and competence. With flaws in these, risks were thought to be greater and if these were strengthened the risks could be reduced. The overarching theme for the patient was the experience of being neglected, like not having been properly examined. The overarching theme for primary care providers and practice managers was lack of continuity of care.Conclusion: Primary care providers, practice managers and patients understood the risks and how to reduce the risks of patient safety problems as related to three main categories: continuity of care, communication and competence. Future work towards a safer primary health care could therefore benefit from focusing on these areas.Key pointsCurrent awareness:  • Patients and primary care providers are rather untapped sources of knowledge regarding patient safety in primary health care.Main statements:  • Patients understood the risk of harm as stemming from that they were not properly examined.  • Primary care providers understood the risk of harm to a great extent as stemming from poor continuity of care.  • Patients, primary care providers and practice managers believed continuity, communication and competence play an important role in reducing risks.

Transgender and Cisgender Children's Stereotypes and Beliefs About Others' Stereotypes

Early in childhood, children already have an awareness of prescriptive stereotypes- or beliefs about what a girl or boy should do (e.g., "girls should play with dolls"). In the present work, we investigate the relation between children's own prescriptive gender stereotypes and their perceptions of others' prescriptive gender stereotypes within three groups of children previously shown to differ in their prescriptive stereotyping-6-to-11-year-old transgender children (N = 93), cisgender siblings of transgender children (N = 55), and cisgender controls (N = 93). Cisgender and transgender children did not differ in their prescriptive stereotypes or their perceptions of others' prescriptive stereotypes, though the relationship between these variables differed by group. The more cisgender control children believed others held prescriptive stereotypes, the more they held those stereotypes, a relation that did not exist for transgender children. Further, all groups perceived the stereotypes of others to be more biased than their own stereotypes.

Causal illusions in children when the outcome is frequent

Causal illusions occur when people perceive a causal relation between two events that are actually unrelated. One factor that has been shown to promote these mistaken beliefs is the outcome probability. Thus, people tend to overestimate the strength of a causal relation when the potential consequence (i.e. the outcome) occurs with a high probability (outcome-density bias). Given that children and adults differ in several important features involved in causal judgment, including prior knowledge and basic cognitive skills, developmental studies can be considered an outstanding approach to detect and further explore the psychological processes and mechanisms underlying this bias. However, the outcome density bias has been mainly explored in adulthood, and no previous evidence for this bias has been reported in children. Thus, the purpose of this study was to extend outcome-density bias research to childhood. In two experiments, children between 6 and 8 years old were exposed to two similar setups, both showing a non-contingent relation between the potential cause and the outcome. These two scenarios differed only in the probability of the outcome, which could either be high or low. Children judged the relation between the two events to be stronger in the high probability of the outcome setting, revealing that, like adults, they develop causal illusions when the outcome is frequent.

Perspectives on Perspective Taking: How Children Think About the Minds of Others

Perspective taking, or "theory of mind," involves reasoning about the mental states of others (e.g., their intentions, desires, knowledge, beliefs) and is called upon in virtually every aspect of human interaction. Our goals in writing this chapter were to provide an overview of (a) the research questions developmental psychologists ask to shed light on how children think about the inner workings of the mind, and (b) why such research is invaluable in understanding human nature and our ability to interact with, and learn from, one another. We begin with a brief review of early research in this field that culminated in the so-called litmus test for a theory of mind (i.e., false-belief tasks). Next, we describe research with infants and young children that created a puzzle for many researchers, and briefly mention an intriguing approach researchers have used to attempt to "solve" this puzzle. We then turn to research examining children's understanding of a much broader range of mental states (beyond false beliefs). We briefly discuss the value of studying individual differences by highlighting their important implications for social well-being and ways to improve perspective taking. Next, we review work illustrating the value of capitalizing on children's proclivity for selective social learning to reveal their understanding of others' mental states. We close by highlighting one line of research that we believe will be an especially fruitful avenue for future research and serves to emphasize the complex interplay between our perspective-taking abilities and other cognitive processes.