Illusions of Self-Knowledge

CHAPTER 21 Illusions of Self-Knowledge KATHERINE E. HANSEN EMILY PRONIN he valley of Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus in central Greece, is famous T for more than its awe-inspiring beauty. It is there that ancient Greeks trekked in the hopes of obtaining prophecies about themselves from the god Apollo. The path to self-knowledge was not easy. Coming from Athens, the typical prophecy seeker had to endure a nearly 200 km hike in the Mediterranean heat (prophecies were not offered in the wintertime). The answer to one's question ultimately came, via an Oracle channeling Apollo, in the form of mysterious, bordering on uninterpretable, riddles. Harnessing the wisdom of Apollo was a tough way to attain self-knowledge. It seems easier to sit down in a comfortable chair, rest our chin in our hand, and take a moment for self-reflection. Unfortunately, looking inward to attain self-knowledge is more difficult than it seems. The lenses through which we look are far from objective, and they can distort, cloud, and color what we see in ways that, for example, sometimes present us with overly positive self-views and other times present us with overly negative ones (Alicke, 1985; Dunning, Meyerowitz, &c Holzberg, 1989; Kru- ger, 1999). The problem goes deeper than such distortions: Self-reflection only reveals those things—memories, emotions, beliefs, motives—that occupy our current conscious experience. By focusing on what we find when we look inward, we blind ourselves to those things that are inaccessible via introspection (Nisbett ÔC Ross, 1980; Nisbett Sc Wilson, 1977; Wilson, 2002). For example, we may misread the cause of our current happy mood because we cannot consciously perceive the source (or activ- ity) of the neurochemical processes that have recently triggered our dopaminergic system, so we instead rely on what we can perceive, even if it is not truly diagnostic. This chapter focuses on illusions of self-knowledge. Those illusions can involve erroneous beliefs about what we are like, such as the illusion that we are smarter or prettier than we really are. Illusions of self-knowledge go deeper than that, though. They also involve erroneous beliefs about how self-knowledge is itself obtained. A 345 346 MOTIVES AND BIASES IN SELF-KNOWLEDGE fundamental illusion of self-knowledge is the illusion that it derives primarily from introspection, or looking inward (e.g., Pronin, 2009; Pronin ÔC Kugler, 2007). At the entrance to the Oracle of Delphi, visitors were greeted with the famous command "Know Thyself." It may seem ironic that this command was put forth in a loca- tion where people went to learn about themselves from an external source. Perhaps, though, the command had a different purpose—to remind people that self-knowledge can sometimes best be obtained by looking outward to the opinions of others, espe- cially those wiser than ourselves and with more detached perspectives, rather than by sitting and reflecting, chin in hand. In the discussion that follows, we first explore various illusions of self-knowledge and the role of inappropriate reliance on introspection in fostering these illusions. We begin by looking at the ways in which people misperceive things about themselves, such as traits and abilities, as a result of their systematic focus on internal information. These misperceptions commonly involve self-aggrandizing distortions that stem from people placing too much weight on things such as positive intentions as opposed to actual behavior. We then turn more directly to people's inappropriate faith in what they can learn about themselves by "looking inward," suggesting that a major illusion about self-knowledge is that self-knowledge itself derives from the unique ability to access one's own mental processes. After reviewing these major pitfalls in self-knowledge, the chapter examines their implications for social interaction—with a focus on consequences for interpersonal intimacy and social conflict. Finally, we describe a number of ways, rooted in the theoretical underpinnings of this chapter, in which illusions of self-knowledge may be overcome. The Introspection Illusion: A Guiding Framework People are constantly immersed in a world of their own desires, thoughts, and feel- ings; as a result, people tend to use that "inner world" as their primary source of information about themselves, even when other avenues of information could lead to a more accurate understanding. Research has documented people's overreliance on information gained by introspection. We have referred to this tendency as an introspection illusion—a disproportionate weighting of introspective information when assessing oneself, but not others (e.g., Pronin, 2008, 2009; Pronin, Berger, & Molouki, 2007; Pronin & Kugler, 2007). The problem with looking inward for self-understanding is multifold. For one, people do not have conscious access to much of the information that they would require to gain self-understanding. For example, if a person wants to know why he sometimes gets sad during the holidays or why he loves baroque music but not coun- try music, he may not have access to those reasons. At the heart of this problem is people's lack of appreciation for that fact about themselves. People introspect to gain self-knowledge because they do not recognize the limits of introspection. As Wilson, Hodges, and LaFleur (1995, p. 17) put it: "People are often unaware of their own unawareness." Reliance on introspection comes at the cost of not paying attention to another important source of information: behavior. People sometimes are suffi- ciently immersed in their inner lives that they disregard what they do outwardly. As Illusions of Self-Knowledge 347 this chapter explores, these tendencies are at the core of many of people's illusions of self-knowledge. Things We Think We Know about Ourselves That Are Not True People are confident that they know themselves (Dunning, 2005). This section reviews research suggesting that we know ourselves less well than we think we do, in part because we think ourselves better than we really are. In reviewing this research we begin to make the case for how people's reliance on introspection produces illusory self-knowledge. Enhancement Illusions When people are asked about what they are like, they can readily report on their traits and abilities ("I'm funny, a night owl, and a great salsa dancer"). Perhaps unsurprisingly, people's reports are often biased in a self-aggrandizing way. Despite the fact that it is a statistical impossibility, most people believe they are friendlier, smarter, more honest, and more persistent than the average person, a bias known as the "better-than-average effect" (Alicke, 1985). Academics like us are likely no exception: In a 1977 study, Cross reported that 94% of professors claimed to do better work than their peers. The correlation between self-perception and reality can thus be weak. Mabe and West (1982) conducted a meta-analysis on the relationship between self-assessment and objective performance across a variety of domains, finding a correlation of .29 in performance accounted for by people's self-perceptions. Correlations tended to be weak for assessments involving complex social skills (e.g., managerial competence) and stronger for assessments in which objective feedback was readily available. How- ever, even when objective measures are readily available, people's self-assessments often disregard the information provided by those measures. For example, the correlation between people's perceptions of their own intelligence and their performance on various measures of intelligence is about .2 to .3 (Hansford & Hattie, 1982). Ironically, most people insist that they are less susceptible than most other people to the better-than-average effect (Friedrich, 1996; Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002). Part of the reason for the better-than-average effect involves people's reliance on internal information. For instance, in assessing the impressiveness of her vocabulary, Jane may focus on all the arcane words that she knows but rarely ever uses, whereas her friend John can only observe the commonplace words that Jane uses in everyday speech. People's overreliance on introspection also prevents their considering others' abilities, even when they are explicitly assessing their own performance relative to those others (Kruger, 1999). When assessing their own relative competence at some- thing like riding a bicycle, people focus on how capable they are (e.g., rarely falling off the bicycle) and fail to note others' similar competence. This error can lead people to exaggerate their inabilities as well. For example, when thinking about how one cannot juggle, one may fail to consider that most other people cannot juggle either, a failure that can lead to the perception that one is less capable than average (e.g., 348 MOTIVES AND BIASES IN SELF-KNOWLEDGE Kruger, 1999; Moore & Small, 2007; Weinstein ôc Lachendro, 1982). Thus, apparent self-enhancement illusions may have less to do with a motivation to self-enhance than with the information that people use in making self assessments—information that can lead not only to self-enhancing views but also to self-deprecating ones. Unrealistic Optimism and Control Illusions People can be unrealistically optimistic about their personal outcomes. These illusions about the self can have benefits for mental and physical health, for example, by providing a buffer against random failures or facilitating psychological coping with grave medical conditions (e.g., Taylor ÔC Brown, 1988; Taylor, Lerner, Sherman, Sage, &c McDowell, 2003). Unrealistic optimism also can foster harmful beliefs and behaviors, such as when it seems to render unnecessary the sort of wise behaviors that could promote future health or economic security (e.g., Robins & Beer, 2001; Weinstein, 1980). Although unrealistic optimism has a self-aggrandizing flavor to it (fostering people's impression that their futures are uniquely rosy), the mechanisms underlying it go beyond a motivation to self-enhance.

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