Reasoning about othersʹ reasoning

Are people more likely to engage in critical thinking when assessing othersʹ reasoning? And does this reasoning enhancement reflect their belief that others are more likely to be biased than themselves (the bias blind spot, BBS)? In three studies, participants who displayed BBS were better able to detect reasoning biases and performed better in reasoning problems when they were asked to examine responses that were said to come from other people than when those same responses were not attributed to other people. Participants who did not display BBS tended to do the opposite. This pattern was found to result from BBS participants engaging in more deliberate thinking when examining the responses of other people than when those answers are not given a social context (Study 2). Moreover, the better or worse performance that resulted from reasoning about othersʹ reasoning transferred to subsequent unrelated problems (Study 3).