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Knowing about bias doesn't fix it
Smart minds rationalize
The tempting belief is that knowing about impostor syndrome or overconfidence, plus being smart, solves the problem. High IQ actually correlates positively with motivated reasoning. A cognitively agile mind can slice and dice a story that sounds more convincing, to itself and to others, about why every belief is true and every prediction is a sure thing.
Catching bias later
Spotting bias never becomes automatic. Mistakes keep happening: a bad event still feels like pure bad luck, and the catch comes afterward, ideally a bit more often and a bit faster over time. A small improvement in catching them compounds into better decisions and better outcomes.
Counting lapses that way changes the response to them. Instead of berating yourself for every one, you can celebrate doing it one fewer time.
Why do smarter people rationalize better?
Yale law professor Dan Kahan and colleagues published a 2012 study in Nature Climate Change on how people judge risks. People with greater scientific literacy and numeracy were more polarized, not less, on the risks of climate change. A later Kahan study of numeracy found that people with strong math skills were less accurate at reading a data table when the correct answer cut against their political position. More skill at handling data gave them more tools for reaching the conclusion they preferred.
Why do we spot bias in others but not ourselves?
Psychologists Emily Pronin, Daniel Lin, and Lee Ross named the bias blind spot in a 2002 paper. Participants rated themselves as less affected by a list of common biases than the average person. In a 2012 study, Richard West, Russell Meserve, and Keith Stanovich found that people with higher cognitive ability showed the same blind spot as everyone else. Knowing a bias exists did not make the participants see it in themselves.