Research on the relationship between self-perceptions and evaluations from other people is reviewed. Studies of naturalistic interactions indicate that people's self-perceptions agree substantially with the way they perceive themselves as being viewed by others. However, there is no consistent agreement between people's self-perceptions and how they are actually viewed by others. There is no clear indication that self-evaluations are influenced by the feedback received from others in naturally occurring situations. When feedback from others is manipulated experimentally, self-perceptions are usually changed. However, methodological limitations such as the questionable external validity and strong demand characteristics of the experimental situations employed make the significance of these findings unclear. The available evidence is examined within a framework that considers the transmission, processing, and evaluation of judgments from others. Other means by which interaction may influence self-perceptions aside from direct evaluative feedback are considered. O wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! Robert Burns, To a LouseBurns's couplet expresses a concern about self-knowledge and its origins that is ancient and contemporary. Recently, a resurgence of interest in the self has flourished in many areas of psychology, especially in psychotherapeutic formulations that view cognitions about oneself as vital mediators in the maintenance and modification of behavior and in social psychological theories involving attribution, cognitive dissonance, and selfawareness. Understanding how attitudes about the self are developed and maintained has thus become increasingly important.When people are asked how they know that they possess certain characteristics, a typical answer is that they have learned about them from other people. A more forThe authors appreciate the comments of an anonymous reviewer on an earlier draft of this article.Requests for reprints should be sent to J. Sidney Shrauger,

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Nursery schoolers and first-and third-graders participated in an interview which assessed recall, comprehension, and perceived importance of three sources of self-knowledge: social feedback, self-observation, and social comparison. For recall measures, these sources were embedded in stories about a child making a self-discovery. Recall of all three sources improved with grade level, and feedback was the best remembered self-validational process. Comprehension was defined as the ability to identify the sources as depicted in line drawings, and it, too, increased with grade level. All three sources were well understood by older children, but preschoolers had difficulty with the concept of social comparison. Ratings of importance, also assessed using line drawings, were independent of grade level. When selecting their own "very best" source of self-knowledge, children cited self-observation most frequently. A supplementary sample of preschoolers nominated the best source of self-knowledge for other children rather than for themselves; under these instructions, feedback from others emerged as the preferred source.Self-perceivers increasingly engage in metacognitive appraisals of themselves as they gain in experience and cognitive complexity (Flavell, 1979(Flavell, , 1981). An example is an activity that could be called meta-selfperception: people can reflect upon their strategies for developing selfknowledge and validating the self-concept.Formal theories of self-conception have suggested three sources of self-knowledge (Rosenberg, 1979;Shaver, 1975;Wegner & Vallacher,

We used a content analytic methodology to search William Styron's memoir, Darkness Visible, for metaphors of depression, treatment, recovery, and psychological phenomena. Of the 1,383 metaphors identified, 55% dealt with depression. Treatment, recovery, and suicide metaphors represented 9%, 7%, and 6% of the sample, respectively. Inspection of Styron's metaphors suggested that he characterized depression and suicide as having a directionality that is down, in, and away and as a sequential process of suffering and adversity that is a form of malevolence and annihilation. In contrast, recovery is up, out, and through and characterized as a sequential process of return to a life of goodness and light. Our analysis indicated that the metaphor system of Darkness Visible is internally consistent: Metaphors for similar concepts show recurrent and compatible patterns whereas metaphors of opposing concepts contain opposing comparisons. Styon's metaphor system is also externally valid, in the sense that it reflects a number of interlocking cultural programs, including patterns of everyday thought, historical stereotypes of mental disorder, Western conceptions of emotion and mental illness, and literary traditions of the description of depression. We discuss the implications of our findings for public education about depression and for theories about the relationship between social cognition and social knowledge.To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression .

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