Bias blind spot

Biological Parallel

Cleaner wrasse fish occasionally cheat by eating client fish mucus instead of parasites, but each individual wrasse appears blind to its own cheating while detecting it readily in others—continuing to monitor other wrasses for defection. This asymmetry is adaptive: detecting competitors' cheating protects your reputation advantage, while acknowledging your own cheating would trigger behavioral correction that sacrifices opportunistic gains. The bias blind spot—recognizing biases in others but not ourselves—reflects this evolved self-deception: admitting your cognitive errors provides no fitness benefit but constrains exploiting those same errors strategically.