Damian Sendler To describe the psychological mechanisms that underlie biased self-assessment and propose pedagogical techniques to counter them.
Damian Jacob Sendler Strategies to address bias directly are unlikely to succeed because the psychological mechanisms that underlie bias self-assessment take place below our conscious awareness. Unconscious biases can be minimized by designing the learning experiences of students in such a way that they are not influenced by these mechanisms.
Dr. Sendler It is critical for the development and implementation of effective mitigation strategies to have a firm grasp on the psychological mechanisms that contribute to the most common forms of biased self-assessment. This is because accurate self-knowledge is so important for students and practitioners.
Professionals who regularly make life-and-health-altering decisions need to have unbiased self-knowledge.
1-5 As it turns out, Standard 4.1 of the 2016 Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education Standards and CAPE’s Domain 4 outcomes speak directly to this issue: Personal knowledge, skills, abilities, biases, and emotions can all be examined and reflected on by the new graduate in order to help or hinder future growth. Students and clinicians’ self-awareness, however, is often distorted, according to several lines of research in clinical education 6-14 Due to how deeply ingrained biases are and how the mechanisms that cause bias occur below our conscious awareness, we can’t achieve an objectively unbiased self-awareness. 15 Furthermore, this review shows that interventions that help students function despite their biases are more effective than interventions that directly attack the biases. This stance may appear pessimistic, but it is grounded in reality. Social and cognitive psychology has been unanimous on this point for the past 50 years. 15
Before considering a solution to a problem, it is important to determine its scope. Thus, this article examines how people’s perceptions of their character, abilities, and future prospects can be overestimated. Weak correlations between ability estimates and actual performance are one of the most common manifestations of distorted self-knowledge. There was only a moderately positive correlation reported in seven out of twenty papers in a meta-analysis of practicing physicians’ self-assessment accuracy; the remaining papers either reported non-significant or negative correlations. 16 According to Mabe and West, the correlation between self-assessment and external standards is 0.29. 17 When it comes to vague or ambiguous abilities, the correlations were at their lowest for managerial abilities and interpersonal abilities (0.04), while they were the highest for concrete abilities associated with prompt feedback (0.57). 17 Some other studies have looked at intelligence (r=0.20),18 academe (r=0.35),19 and workplace performance (r=0.20). 20 Self-assessment and actual ability have had only a weak or moderate correlation in the studies that have been conducted thus far.
Like one’s abilities, one’s traits are imperfectly known.
21 A personality test that measures openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness and neuroticism only correlates with related behaviors at (r=0.34) when the behaviors are performed in a laboratory and (r=0.27) when the behaviors are performed outside of a laboratory. 22,23 Researchers asked participants to wear an electronic recorder for several days to record the linguistic and behavioral correlates of traits that they had rated in a previous session in one of the most thorough investigations of the relationship between self-reports and behavior. R=0.27, which is the average correlation between one’s self-reports and actual behavior. 24 To test one’s self-awareness, one can compare one’s own self-descriptions to those of others in their social circle. It has been found that self-report ratings are in some cases inconsistent with the ratings of others. 25 Both the Big Five and the California Adult Q-Set have a (r=0.45) correlation with others’ ratings. 26-29 People’s self-awareness is flawed, regardless of how they rate their own actions or the ratings of others.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler People overestimate their abilities based on weak correlations between their self-assessment and their performance. However, more research shows that this underestimation is frequently an overestimation. 70 percent of high school students rated themselves above average in leadership ability, and 100 percent rated themselves above average in social skills in an early College Board survey. 30 Students who scored in the top one percent in terms of social skills comprised 25% of the class. 30 It’s important to point out that 94% of college professors believe their work is better than the work of the average professor before making generalizations about high school students’ immaturity. 31 People believe they are more moral and more popular than the average person in addition to their ability assessments. 32-34 Just as people tend to think of themselves as superior to the average in a wide variety of contexts, they also tend to think of themselves as more likely than the average to have positive experiences and less likely than the average to have negative ones.. 35,36 There is a strong belief among the majority of people that they are less likely than the general population to be diagnosed with cancer and divorced and more likely than average to live past the age of 80, have a child with a talent, travel to Europe or be recognized for their achievements. 36 Even in the face of contradictory evidence, such logical inconsistencies persist, a testament to the bias’s resiliency. 90% of Americans, including those who have been hospitalized as a result of car accidents they caused, believe that their driving ability is in the upper half. 37 Many incarcerated people believe that they are no less law-abiding or self-controlled than the average citizen. 38
Only a small percentage of the population, about 7% of the population, consistently exhibits accurate self-knowledge. They have realistic expectations of their abilities; their goals are attainable; and their sense of self-worth is grounded in reality. They have been diagnosed with clinical depression. 39-41 Our delusions sometimes lead us astray, but they also motivate us to get out of bed in the morning. Self-improvement has been linked to contentment, generosity, and perseverance. 42-49 It is therefore possible that completely accurate self-knowledge is both infeasible and unappealing. It’s possible that self-enhancement can lead to unhealthy relationships, risky behavior and poor academic performance if it’s not properly managed. 50-52 Because perfect self-knowledge is neither possible nor healthy, educators should seek to minimize biases in self-knowledge, but should also accept limited success in narrow domains.
Self-knowledge biases are difficult to overcome because the mechanisms that drive them operate below the level of conscious awareness.
53 In order to change processes we are unaware of, it is difficult. Self-serving reasoning, biased hypothesis testing, and biased recall are three of the most common cognitive tools people use to dissipate threatening information and enhance positive information.
Self-serving attitudes about success and failure are common, with people blaming themselves for their own success or failure on their own abilities rather than external factors like bad luck or distraction.
Damian Sendler
Among other findings, researchers found that students and teachers each attributed student success to themselves, but blamed each other for student failure. 56-58 The validity of an exam was more likely to be questioned by test takers who did not do well than by test takers who did well. 59 When drivers aren’t in the classroom, they attribute accidents and near misses to external factors like the weather or other drivers. 60 Regardless of the field, attributions of success and failure are made in the service of self-improvement rather than accuracy. 54
Defining competence in terms of one’s own interests is another common occurrence when evaluating someone’s abilities against a set of ambiguous or subjective criteria.
61 Empathy is regarded as the most important leadership quality by empathic people, and as a result, they make excellent managers. Since decisiveness is the most important leadership quality, these people are also competent leaders. Whether or not a person finds a particular quality appealing has more to do with whether or not he or she possesses it than with the quality’s inherent merits. 61
Biased hypothesis testing can also be used for self-enhancement purposes. People often ask themselves, “Can I believe this?” when confronted with information that supports a positive self-view. To be able to say yes, you simply need enough evidence to back up your claim. People ask, “Must I believe this?” when information contradicts a positive self-view. A positive answer to this question necessitates a substantial amount of evidence. 62,63 As a result, when presented with evidence that both confirms and contradicts their preexisting beliefs, people tend to strengthen their beliefs. 64 Methodology is more likely to be attacked when research criticizes social groups with which people identify. 65 When self-assessing, people often ask themselves if their desired conclusion is true, and determine that it is once they have gathered enough asymmetrically vetted evidence to support their belief. An analogous process occurs in the background to that of self-serving attributions and definitions:
Because people tend to remember more self-enhancing information than self-critical information, memory serves as an additional source of bias when testing hypotheses about themselves.
66,67 Positive qualities stick in people’s minds longer than negative ones do, and the latter tends to be forgotten more readily than the former. 68-71 Even memories can be rewritten for the sake of self-improvement.. It was discovered that students had an increasing tendency to exaggerate their actual test scores in their memories. 72 Many hypotheses are not only tested in a biased manner, but they are also bolstered by studies that use biased recall. It is possible for people to believe that their assessments of themselves are objective because of the combination of biased recall, self-serving reasoning, and biased hypothesis testing: They can rationally link their traits to positive outcomes and can easily explain away any deficits because they are based on memories and alternatives have been considered. People are less likely to adjust their self-assessments when they have the impression of objectivity, so it’s no surprise that most people think they’re more objective than the average person.
Self-serving reasoning by students is severely restricted when criteria are generated by someone else. Because of this, Dunning and colleagues found that participants’ assessments of athleticism, artistic ability, and extracurricular involvement showed very little positive bias when they were assessed using externally generated criteria. 76 Student self-assessment of ambiguous soft skills may benefit the most from these findings. An effective communicator has a specific set of traits and abilities that should be identified by educators, then students should be asked to self-assess on those traits and abilities. Educators may conclude, for example, that good communicators maintain eye contact, are succinct, and ask follow-up questions. There is less of a positive bias when students are asked how often they engage in these activities than when they are asked how good they are at communicating. Students are deprived of the opportunity to develop their own, self-serving definitions of what constitutes effective communication when the standards are established by someone else.
When given clear and quantifiable evaluation criteria, people are less likely to exhibit positive bias. A study by Dunning and colleagues found participants to have a greater positive bias when self-assessing ambiguous positive (e.g. sensitive, sophisticated and sensible) or negative (e.g. neurotic, impractical and foolish) characteristics rather than specific positive (e.g. thrifty, studious and punctual) or negative characteristics. 76 This makes EPAs, which are entrusted professional activities (EPAs), particularly useful bias-mitigation tools for the American Association of College of Pharmacy because of their inherent measurability and specificity. 77 At least one general ability and several specific and quantifiable supporting tasks make up each EPA. Student self-assessment is likely to be less biased if students are asked about the extent to which they perform each of the supporting tasks, rather than a broad ability or trait that can be redefined in a self-serving manner Student assessment of patient assessment skills should be less biased when students are asked whether they can collect medical histories from patients, discuss a patient’s medication use experience, determine a patient’s medication adherence, and use health records to determine a patient’s health-related requirements. Self-serving redefinitions of patient assessment skills are easy because they are vague. They’re not as important. There are many ways to use the EPA’s structure to help educators create their own self-auditing standards, even if students aren’t using them. Instead of asking students to describe their abilities in broad strokes, educators should create specific criteria for competence and ask students to self-assess according to the criteria. It has been suggested that the use of EPAs and externally generated competence criteria as bias reduction tools is supported by Dunning’s findings. However, there is currently no field research on the use of EPAs or externally generated competence criteria. For the time being, the majority of research is being conducted in the lab rather than the classroom.
When the ability in question is modifiable, positive bias is also reduced. As part of the Dunning study, participants learned that they would take a test measuring “integrative orientation,” a fictional trait that was either described as modifiable or fixed, before taking the test. 78 It was found that participants were equally interested in additional feedback after success and failure when “integrative orientation” was characterized as modifiable, but participants were more interested in additional feedback after success when it was characterized as fixed. 78 Similarly, Lockwood found that participants’ beliefs about their own ability to improve were the main determinant of whether or not they found examples of excellent performance demoralizing or inspirational. 79 In order to minimize the threat to the self, educators should provide clear guidance on improvement strategies whenever possible. This minimizes the likelihood that underlying biasing mechanisms will be activated. As Marsh and Roche found, providing concrete guidance and feedback is one of the most effective ways to improve performance. Some research has been done on the effectiveness of guided feedback for students while Marsh and Roche were primarily concerned with teacher evaluations. 80 Third-year medical students were asked by Lane and Gottlieb to evaluate their performance on 21 core elements of a medical interview they had just completed. One or two faculty members who had seen the videotape and rated the student’s performance also spent 20-30 minutes with each student reviewing the videotape. For example, a faculty member or members suggested ways to improve a student’s performance during an interview. An additional test one week later revealed that the gap between student self-ratings and faculty ratings had narrowed significantly. There was no control condition in this study, but the results show that non-threatening feedback and guidance reduce self-assessment bias significantly. In addition to providing students with feedback, videotapes can be useful in documenting students’ performance in an objective, real-time manner. A videotape review significantly improved trauma resuscitation skills among surgical residents, according to Scherer and colleagues. 81
Instructors aren’t always the best source of feedback. Additionally, peer review has been linked to better grades, more time spent on a task, critical thinking, and a chance to practice professionalism and social skills. 82,83 There is a stronger correlation between instructor evaluations and student self-evaluations, suggesting that students can act as instructors if they are provided with clear criteria for evaluation. 84 They asked undergraduates to review one another’s writing assignments and either provide a quality rating or both a quality rating and qualitative feedback. Students who received both the rating and feedback performed better than those who only received the rating, suggesting that students benefit from peer feedback with additional guidance, according to the study’s findings. Students were not asked to self-assess in this study. 85 Peer review, on the other hand, has a number of notable drawbacks to consider. Since competence in a domain is required to judge competence in a domain, as Kruger and Dunning suggest, less knowledgeable students are not in an ideal position to provide feedback. 86 Recruiting, training, and providing clear assessment criteria, such as a rubric, to multiple reviewers are all essential for the success of peer review. 87 Despite their flaws, concrete assessment criteria and guidance for improvement are both effective because they either avoid or limit the effectiveness of biasing mechanisms. Some strategies, on the other hand, focus on the mechanisms themselves. Self-reflection on one’s own thoughts, biases, and behaviors is the most common technique.
Damian Jacob Sendler
Because many people’s mental processes88-92, especially those that bias self-knowledge, are hidden from view, the success of self-reflection is likely to be limited.
53 Self-reflection can even be harmful in some cases. 93,94 When people reflect on the reasons for their preferences or behaviors, self-reflection can lead to suboptimal choices, overconfidence, and a lack of attitude-behavior consistency. 93-96 Participants were given the option of choosing between two posters (one artistic and one humorous) without any manipulation or after reflecting on why they liked or disliked each poster. A more artistic poster was chosen by those in the reflection condition, but they were less satisfied with their choice three weeks later than those in the control condition. Participants’ preferences for consumer goods and college courses were found to be less in line with experts’ ratings when they reflected on their own than those of students who did not think about their choices at all. 94 Wilson’s research primarily focused on preferences, but other researchers found that contemplation could lead to suboptimal decisions when a rationally better option was readily available. 97
It’s possible that self-reflection weakens the connection between one’s attitudes and one’s subsequent actions in addition to encouraging poor decisions.
95,96 Wilson and LaFleur found that students who reflected on why they would or would not perform a given behavior made less accurate and more overconfident behavioral predictions than participants who didn’t reflect. 95 As in Wilson’s study, participants who thought about their attitudes before reporting them had lower attitude-behavior correspondence than those who did not think about their attitudes prior to recording them. 98 A person’s ability to anticipate their own behavior can be harmed by excessive self-reflection, which can lead to poor decisions. Since the primary causes of behavior and preference are frequently either implicit or difficult to express, this happens. Reasons derived from self-reflection that do not match the person’s actual motivations will lead to incorrect predictions and choices. 94,98
Self-reflection can be useful in some circumstances. When self-reflection is focused on traits rather than abilities, preferences, or behaviors, and is written down and explanatory rather than descriptive, it can result in a less – but still statistically significant – positive bias.. 99 It is common for people to reflect on why they have (or do not have) certain characteristics. What causes me to be irritable, empathetic, logical, and so on??” Self-descriptive self-reflection, on the other hand, occurs when people consider whether or not they possess certain characteristics. Do you think I’m happy? Bias appears to be reduced only when self-explanatory self-reflection is documented. A list of both positive and negative traits was presented to the participants, which they were asked to read and then reflect on either in writing or internally. Participants who wrote explanatory self-reflection had significantly less bias than those who did not. As a bias mitigation tool, educators should ask students to write down their thoughts and to engage in explanatory – rather than descriptive – self-reflection. There will be some progress in eliminating bias, but it will be incremental. As a bias mitigation tool, self-reflection is not as effective as other types of reflection in all situations. There are many ways to use reflective practice to help students become better critical thinkers and problem solvers, for example. 100,101 That’s the focus of this paper; however, self-reflection is an effective method for reducing self-bias.
Self-assessment bias can be reduced by using accountability manipulations.
102 When participants expected to defend their work in front of an expert, Sedikides and colleagues discovered that their self-assessments became significantly less positive as a result of pre-emptive self-criticism they engaged in. All participants were asked to write an essay defending their side of a debate. One-half of participants were instructed to write an essay, while the other half were told that they would later justify their response to a logician. A grade was assigned based on the essay’s clarity of thought, style, flow, and logic as well as its overall persuasiveness after the accountability manipulation was completed. There was a significant difference between the accountability group and the control group in terms of the grades they assigned to themselves. As a result, rather than simply producing self-evaluations, students should attempt to justify them. However, these studies were not designed to determine if self-enhancement had been eradicated from the human condition. Even though accountable students gave themselves lower grades than unaccountable students, their final scores could have been higher than the ones assigned by the teacher.
Instructors should not be overjoyed even if bias-related tactics appear to be working because the effect of one intervention on one outcome cannot distinguish correction from debiasing. When one’s estimate is corrected, the mental processes responsible for biasing that estimate remain unaffected. One way to self-correct is to say something like, “I noticed that I’ve overestimated my performance on the last two patient interview exercises. My next exercise estimate should be lowered by half a letter grade. As a result, it is important to note that this student did not address the issue of explaining away weaknesses or preferentially recalling strengths when making academic performance estimates. Although debiasing is a method of changing one’s mental processes, it has a wide-ranging impact on one’s life. 103,104 Some students say, “This intervention taught me that I tend to overestimate my exercise scores by relying on my past successes and dismissing my past failures,” A more accurate estimate of my strengths and weaknesses is something I intend to work on in the future.” Due to the alterations made to the student’s brain, he or she may perform more objectively on similar tasks in the future, but this is not guaranteed. Correcting and debiasing are not distinct concepts in general education or clinical education. For self-knowledge interventions to achieve debiasing, additional research is needed to identify the types of interventions – if any – that accomplish this.
Sendler Damian Jacob Understanding the psychological mechanisms that contribute to the most common forms of biased self-assessment is essential for developing and implementing effective mitigation strategies for professional students and clinicians. These mechanisms are described, and strategies for avoiding them are discussed, but this is only a first step in mitigating biased self-assessment. A lot more research is needed to figure out how effective mitigation strategies are in the classroom, even though there has been some good work done in this area. 105,106 Whether or not debiasing is possible in the real world should also be investigated in future research. A gloomy picture of human cognition has been painted, but it is worth noting that humans do well most of the time and that even small interventions can have significant mitigating effects when implemented correctly.
