Monitoring your own thinking is what psychologists call metacognition (meta is Greek for “about”). Learning to be accurate self-observers helps us to stay out of blind alleys, make good decisions, and reflect on how we might do better next time. An important part of this skill is being sensitive to the ways we can delude ourselves. One problem with poor judgment is that we usually don’t know when we’ve got it. Another problem is the sheer scope of the ways our judgment can be led astray.
