“Introspection Illusion”

Introspection Illusion is defined as 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 (Wikipedia). Introspection tends to be the evidence one receives about their self as they look to their own thoughts and feelings, and adding an illusion to this mix adds a misty fog that people look through as they look inward. In this paper I will attempt to show how Introspection Illusion affects us not only in our day to day lives, but how it can also have a major impact on our financial decisions.
Introspection Illusion was first defined by Emily Pronin. She observed how people viewed their selves and how aware they were of their motives, thoughts and feelings. This awareness, however, is often weak and unreliable. Eric Schwitzgebel argues this case by stating that “introspection is unreliable in the sense that we are prone to ignorance and error in making introspective judgments about our own conscious experience,” (Smithies). In this sense, our inner motives, thoughts and feelings are strictly biased based on our limited understanding of the world surrounding and with little thought to the personal introspections of others around us. So why then do we rely so much on our introspection? Pronin claims that it is because they are intimate and comfortable, which makes it easy and safe to believe in the classic statement of “I think therefore I am.” Believing hard enough in something about your self makes it easy to believe it is actually true. When people rely on this hazy self-perception and self-belief, it often gives a sense of overconfidence and superiority over our peers. Thus, Introspection Illusion is born and affecting our decisions of how we spend our time, education and perhaps most important, our money.
We have learned