Irene Scopelliti
City, University of London, Cass Business School, Faculty Member
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
From failures of intelligence analysis to misguided beliefs about vaccinations, biased judgment and decision making contributes to problems in policy, business, medicine, law, education, and private life. Early attempts to reduce decision... more
From failures of intelligence analysis to misguided beliefs about vaccinations, biased judgment and decision making contributes
to problems in policy, business, medicine, law, education, and private life. Early attempts to reduce decision biases with
training met with little success, leading scientists and policy makers to focus on debiasing by using incentives and changes
in the presentation and elicitation of decisions. We report the results of two longitudinal experiments that found medium
to large effects of one-shot debiasing training interventions. Participants received a single training intervention, played a
computer game or watched an instructional video, which addressed biases critical to intelligence analysis (in Experiment 1:
bias blind spot, confirmation bias, and fundamental attribution error; in Experiment 2: anchoring, representativeness, and
social projection). Both kinds of interventions produced medium to large debiasing effects immediately (games ≥ −31.94% and videos ≥ −18.60%) that persisted at least 2 months later (games ≥ −23.57% and videos ≥ −19.20%). Games that provided personalized feedback and practice produced larger effects than did videos. Debiasing effects were domain general: bias reduction occurred across problems in different contexts, and problem formats that were taught and not taught in the
interventions. The results suggest that a single training intervention can improve decision making. We suggest its use alongside improved incentives, information presentation, and nudges to reduce costly errors associated with biased judgments and decisions.
to problems in policy, business, medicine, law, education, and private life. Early attempts to reduce decision biases with
training met with little success, leading scientists and policy makers to focus on debiasing by using incentives and changes
in the presentation and elicitation of decisions. We report the results of two longitudinal experiments that found medium
to large effects of one-shot debiasing training interventions. Participants received a single training intervention, played a
computer game or watched an instructional video, which addressed biases critical to intelligence analysis (in Experiment 1:
bias blind spot, confirmation bias, and fundamental attribution error; in Experiment 2: anchoring, representativeness, and
social projection). Both kinds of interventions produced medium to large debiasing effects immediately (games ≥ −31.94% and videos ≥ −18.60%) that persisted at least 2 months later (games ≥ −23.57% and videos ≥ −19.20%). Games that provided personalized feedback and practice produced larger effects than did videos. Debiasing effects were domain general: bias reduction occurred across problems in different contexts, and problem formats that were taught and not taught in the
interventions. The results suggest that a single training intervention can improve decision making. We suggest its use alongside improved incentives, information presentation, and nudges to reduce costly errors associated with biased judgments and decisions.
Research Interests:
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... more
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.
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.