How well do we know ourselves
- Created by: Shannon
- Created on: 18-02-16 14:03
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- 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
- The practice of looking inward to analyse our memories, thoughts, feelings, motives and intentions
- 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
- What is it?
- 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
- Allows us to makes sense of unfolding events
- Automatically filling in gaps in our conscious awareness
- 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
- Encapsulate the basic meaning of an event, but not the specific details
- What is it?
- We tend to overlook situational influences on our behaviour
- 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
- Implicit - automatic
- 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
- Dutton and Aron (1974)
- 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
- Students who had the fluent lecturer thought they had learnt more than those who had the dis fluent lecturer
- Conclusion
- Students who had seen the fluent lectue considerably overestimated their learning
- fluent lectueres made subject look easy
- Students who had seen the fluent lectue considerably overestimated their learning
- findings
- After a 10min distractor task to recall all that they could about the topic
- They were then asked to estimate how much they would be able to remember after the lecture
- 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
- Skills needed to recognise comptence is the same as skills needed to produce comptenence
- 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
- Students assumed that they would be more generous than average
- Results
- They were then given the opportunity to do so
- 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
- Feeling 'holier than thou'
- 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
- Optimism bias
- 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
- Student football fan anticipate that if their team won they would be more happy for the next 2-3 days
- Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting
- Something good = whole life happier
- 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
- Findings
- Telling more than we can know
- People who have little self-insight
- Unhappy
- Have trouble sustaining relationships
- Delusional
- The adapative unconsious - makes us resilient
- Introspection
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