Our introspection illusion

The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable. In certain situations, this illusion leads people to make confident but false explanations of their own behavior (called "causal theories) introspection is a process of construction and inference,  or inaccurate predictions of their future mental states. In our introspective processes memory also plays a contributory part. And how we employ our memories is selective and goal orientated.

When people mistake unreliable introspection for genuine self-knowledge, the result can be an illusion of superiority over other people, for example when each person thinks they are less biased and less conformist than the rest of the group.

Even when experimental subjects are provided with reports of other subjects' introspections, in as detailed a form as possible, they still rate those other introspections as unreliable while treating their own as reliable.  Correction for the bias may be possible through education about the bias and its unconscious nature

The phrase "introspection illusion" was coined by Emily Pronin.^[5] Pronin describes the illusion as having four components:

1. People give a strong weighting to introspective evidence when assessing themselves.
2. They do not give such a strong weight when assessing others.
3. People disregard their own behaviour when assessing themselves (but not others).
4. Own introspections are more highly weighted than others. It is not just that people lack access to each other's introspections: they regard only their own as reliable.

Introspection does not provide a direct pipeline to nonconscious mental processes. Instead, it is best thought of as a process whereby people use the contents of consciousness to construct a personal narrative that may or may not correspond to their nonconscious states.

Research continues to find that humans evolved only limited abilities to introspect