The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions

See also Association Bias (ch. 48); Loss Aversion (ch. 32); Salience Effect (ch. 83);
Contagion Bias (ch. 54)

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67
BE YOUR OWN HERETIC
Introspection Illusion
Bruce is in the vitamin business. His father founded the company when
supplements were not yet a lifestyle product; a doctor had to prescribe them.
When Bruce took over the operation in the early 1990s, demand skyrocketed.
Bruce seized the opportunity with both hands and took out huge loans to expand
production. Today, he is one of the most successful people in the business and
president of a national association of vitamin manufactures. Since childhood,
hardly a day has passed without him swallowing at least three multivitamins. A
journalist once asked him if they do anything. He replied: ‘I’m sure of it.’ Do you
believe him?
I have another question for you. Take any idea you are 100% sure of, perhaps
that gold will rise over the next five years. Perhaps that God exists. Perhaps that
your dentist is overcharging you. Whatever the belief, write it down in one
sentence. Do you believe yourself?
I bet you consider your conviction more valid than Bruce’s, right? Here’s why:
yours is an internal observation, whereas Bruce’s is external. Crudely put, you
can peek into your own soul, but not into his.
In Bruce’s case, you might think: ‘Come on, it’s obviously in his interest to
believe that vitamins are beneficial. After all, his wealth and social status depend
on the success of the company. He has to maintain a family tradition. All his life
he has gulped down pills, so he’ll never admit that it was a waste of time.’ For
you, however, it’s a different story: you have searched deep inside. You are
completely impartial.
But how pure and honest is internal reflection? The Swedish psychologist
Petter Johannson allowed test subjects to glimpse two portrait photos of random
people and choose which face was more attractive. Then he showed them the
preferred photo up close and asked them to describe the most attractive features.
However, with a sleight of hand, he switched the pictures. Most participants failed
to notice and proceeded to justify, in detail, why they favoured the image. The
results of the study: introspection is not reliable. When we soul-search, we

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contrive the findings.
The belief that reflection leads to truth or accuracy is called the 
introspection
illusion
. This is more than sophistry. Because we are so confident of our beliefs,
we experience three reactions when someone fails to share our views. Response
1: Assumption of ignorance. The other party clearly lacks the necessary
information. If he knew what you know, he would be of the same opinion. Political
activists think this way: they believe they can win others over through
enlightenment. Reaction 2: Assumption of idiocy. The other person has the
necessary information, but his mind is underdeveloped. He cannot draw the
obvious conclusions. In other words, he’s a moron. This reaction is particularly
popular with bureaucrats who want to protect ‘stupid’ consumers from
themselves. Response 3: Assumption of malice. Your counterpart has the
necessary information – he even understands the debate – but he is deliberately
confrontational. He has evil intentions. This is how many religious leaders and
followers treat disbelievers: if they don’t agree, they must be servants of the devil!
In conclusion: nothing is more convincing than your own beliefs. We believe
that introspection unearths genuine self-knowledge. Unfortunately, introspection
is, in large part, fabrication posing two dangers: first, the 
introspection illusion
creates inaccurate predictions of future mental states. Trust your internal
observations too much and too long, and you might be in for a very rude
awakening. Second, we believe that our introspections are more reliable than
those of others, which creates an illusion of superiority. Remedy: be all the more
critical with yourself. Regard your internal observations with the same scepticism
as claims from some random person. Become your own toughest critic.