How well do we know ourselves


?
  • Created by: Shannon
  • Created on: 18-02-16 14:03
View mindmap
  • How well do we know ourselves
    • Introspection
      • What is it?
        • The practice of looking inward to analyse our memories, thoughts, feelings, motives and intentions
          • We are confident in our own powers of introspection
      • Common cultural assumptions about introspection
        • Provides accurate information about our personal knowledge, attitudes etc
        • That greater introspective self-awareness is the key to wisdom and success
        • The introspective self-awareness is the key to psychological health
    • Introspection illusion
      • We see our introspetive insights as true and believe that they provide  a more reliable source of information than other kinds of evidence
      • Illusion of authenticity
        • Our beliefs about our own knowledge, feelings and attitudes are often mistaken
    • Why is introspection often inaccurate
      • We tend to overlook situational influences on our behaviour
        • Overlooks the fact though our thoughts and actions are often influenced by situational factors
      • Much of our psychological life operates below the threshold of conscious awareness
        • Introspection relies on conscious information about our psychological states and processes
      • We often confabulate
        • What is it?
          • Automatically filling in gaps in our conscious awareness
            • Allows us to makes sense of unfolding events
              • Consistent with out preferred life narratives
        • Apparent in people's accounts when their conscious awareness has been impaired
        • Common feature of autobiographical memory
        • Verbatim memories
          • Detailed memories of a past event
        • Gist memories
          • Encapsulate the basic meaning of an event, but not the specific details
            • We unconsciously fill in the specific details by confabulating
    • Two parallel psychological process
      • Implicit - automatic
        • - Habitual - Not subject to conscious awareness - Early learned
        • Implicit memories and attitudes are stored in our pre-frontal cortex
      • Explicit - controlled
        • -Conscious  - Deliberative - Acquired later in life - Very slow and energy consuming
        • Conscious memories and attitudes are stored in our pre-frontal cortex
    • Misperception of our own emotional stress
      • Dutton and Aron (1974)
        • Some evidence fro heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety
        • Attractive researcher approaches men, and asks them to fill out a questionnaire
          • Condition 1: On an ordinary bridge
          • Condition 2: On a really scary suspension bridge
          • Afterwards the researcher gave the men her contact details in case they had any further questions
          • Results
            • Men who had been approached on the scary bridge were more likely to contact the researcher to ask her out
          • Conclusion
            • Untitled
    • Carpenter et al (2013)
      • Lecturers fluency increases perceptions of learning without increasing actual learning
      • Students are taught about why Calico cats are usually female
        • They were then asked to estimate how much they would be able to remember after the lecture
          • After a 10min distractor task to recall all that they could about the topic
            • findings
              • Students who had the fluent lecturer thought they had learnt more than those who had the dis fluent lecturer
                • However, there was no diffference in the amount of info accurately recalled
            • Conclusion
              • Students who had seen the fluent lectue considerably overestimated their learning
                • fluent lectueres made subject look easy
    • Students in the bottom 25% of their class greatly overestimated their own performance
      • Higher performers underestimate their relative abilities
    • Why we often fail to recognise our own incompetence
      • Skills needed to recognise comptence is the same as skills needed to produce comptenence
        • Our pre-existing views of competence affect our estimations of our performace
    • Epley and Dunning (2000)
      • Feeling 'holier than thou'
        • Students are asked: 1. Whether they would buy a daffodil for charity 2. how many they would buy 3. how many on average other students would buy
          • They were then given the opportunity to do so
            • Results
              • 83% said they would buy a daffodiil
              • 56% predicted that other students would do so too
              • Students predicted that theywould  buy 2
              • Other students would buy on average - 1.6
              • Conclusion
                • Students assumed that they would be more generous than average
                  • Only 43% bought a daffodil
                  • Average bought 1.2
                  • Their predictions of other people's behaviour were more accurate than their predictions of their own
    • Why are our estimations of our future behaviour inaccurate
      • We underestimate the likely power of the situation
      • Don't use sufficient use of the data provided by our past behaviours
      • Over-influenced by our images of our possible future self
        • Optimism bias
          • More common in Western (individualist) than in Eastern (collectivist) cultures
      • Affective forecasting
        • Prediction of one's own future emotional state
        • Errors of affective forecasting
          • Something good = whole life happier
            • Our raised mood after positive events is only short lived
          • Something bad = Never get over it
          • We are more emotionally resilient then we think
          • Gilbert et al (1998)
            • Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting
              • Student football fan anticipate that if their team won they would be more happy for the next 2-3 days
                • By the following day, all of the students were back to their normal mood level
    • Nisbett and Wilson (1977)
      • Telling more than we can know
        • We often believe that we know the reasons why we think, feel and act as we do but we are often mistaken
      • People asked to evaluate the quality of clothing in a shopping mall and asked to explain their preference
        • Findings
          • Preferences was influenced by position - preferrered items on the right hand side
    • People who have little self-insight
      • Unhappy
      • Have trouble sustaining relationships
      • Delusional
      • The adapative unconsious - makes us resilient

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Psychology resources:

See all Psychology resources »See all Self and Social Context resources »