told that they are biased, they are unable to alter their biased perception. Role of introspection Emily Pronin and Matthew Kugler have argued that this phenomenon is due to the introspection illusion. In their experiments, subjects had to make judgments about themselves and about other subjects. They displayed standard biases, for example rating themselves above the others on desirable qualities (demonstrating illusory superiority). The experimenters explained cognitive bias, and asked the subjects how it might have affected their judgment. The subjects rated themselves as less susceptible to bias than others in the experiment (confirming the bias blind spot). When they had to explain their judgments, they used different strategies for assessing their own and others' bias. Pronin and Kugler's interpretation is that, when people decide whether someone else is biased, they use overt behaviour. On the other hand, when assessing whether they themselves are biased, people look inward, searching their own thoughts and feelings for biased motives. Since biases operate unconsciously, these introspections are not informative, but people wrongly treat them as reliable indication that they themselves, unlike other people, are immune to bias. Pronin and Kugler tried to give their subjects access to others' introspections. To do this, they made audio recordings of subjects who had been told to say whatever came into their heads as they decided whether their answer to a previous question might have been affected by bias. Although subjects persuaded themselves they were unlikely to be biased, their introspective reports did not sway the assessments of observers. Differences of perceptions People tend to attribute bias in an uneven way. When people reach different perceptions, they tend to label one another as biased while labelling themselves as accurate and unbiased. Pronin hypothesizes that this bias misattribution may be a source of conflict and misunderstanding between people. For example, in labeling another person as biased, one may also label their intentions cynically. But when examining one's own cognitions, people judge themselves based on their good intentions. It is likely that in this case, one may attribute another's bias to "intentional malice" rather than an unconscious process. Pronin also hypothesizes ways to use awareness of the bias blind spot to reduce conflict, and to think in a more "scientifically informed" way. Although we are unable to control bias on our own cognitions, one may keep in mind that biases are acting on everyone. Pronin suggests that people might