Afterthoughts on biases in history perception

Abstract

Contemporary social psychology describes various deformations of processing social information leading to distortions of knowledge about other people. What is more, a person in everyday life refers to lay convictions and ideas common in his/ her cultural environment that distort his/her perceptions. Therefore it is diffcult to be surprised that authors of narrations in which participants of history are presented use easily available common-sense psychology, deforming images of both the participants of history and their activities, as well as the sequence of events determined by these activities. Which cognitive biases, how often, and in what intensity they will be presented in historical narrations depend on statements of dominating common-sense psychology. The article outlines some biases made by historian-lay psychologists, such as attributional asymmetry or hindsight effects, whose occurrence in their thinking, as formed in the cultural sphere of the West, infuences history perception and conducted historical interpretations. © 2010, Versita. All rights reserved.