Introspection Illusion
We believe our introspective reports accurately reflect our actual mental processes.
The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states. When people introspect about why they feel or believe something, they often confabulate plausible-sounding reasons that have no causal connection to their actual mental processes. Studies show people confidently explain choices that were actually determined by factors they are unaware of.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life Choice Blindness In experiments where participants are covertly given a different jam than the one they chose, they still confidently explain why they prefer the taste of that jam — a taste they never actually evaluated.
Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.
Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.
Ben believes his fear of flying is purely logical, based on statistics he's read. He doesn't see that the fear started after a traumatic turbulence experience on his first flight.
After a job interview, you feel you performed brilliantly because you recall the moments where you spoke confidently. You don't realize you glossed over several questions you stumbled on.
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
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