This article argues that (a) ego, or self, is an organization of knowledge, (b) ego is characterized by cognitive biases strikingly analogous to totalitarian information-control strategies, and (c) these totalitarian-ego biases junction to preserve organization in cognitive structures. Ego's cognitive biases are egocentricity (self as the focus of knowledge), "beneffectance" (perception of responsibility for desired, but not undesired, outcomes), and cognitive conservatism (resistance to cognitive change). In addition to being pervasively evident in recent studies of normal human cognition, these three biases are found in actively functioning, higher level organizations of knowledge, perhaps best exemplified by theoretical paradigms in science. The thesis that egocentricity, beneffectance, and

Recent constraint-satisfaction models of explanation, analogy, and decision making claim that these processes are influenced by bidirectional constraints that promote coherence. College students were asked to reach a verdict in a complex legal case involving multiple conflicting arguments, including alternative analogies to the target case. Participants rated agreement with the individual arguments both in isolation before seeing the case, and again after reaching a verdict. Assessments of the individual arguments (including the competing analogies) shifted so as to cohere with their emerging verdict. Information about the character of the defendant in the initial case triggered a cascade of "spreading coherence", influencing decisions made about a subsequent case involving very different legal issues. Participants ' memory for their initial positions also shifted so as to cohere with their final positions. The coherence shifts were simulated by a constraint satisfaction model. The results demonstrate that an alogical process of constraint satisfaction can transform highly ambiguous inputs into coherent decisions. Bidirectional Reasoning 3 One of the most deep-rooted assumptions about human reasoning is that the flow of