On Introspection and Self-Perception: Does Self-Focused Attention Enable Accurate Self-Knowledge?

Silvia, Paul J.; Gendolla, Guido H. E.

doi:10.1037/1089-2680.5.3.241

Cited by 155 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 118 publications

(276 reference statements)

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“…Indeed, decades of research (Carver & Scheier, 1998;Silvia & Duval, 2001a) show that the degree of self-focused attention directly affects the degree of self-to-standard comparison (e.g., Scheier & Carver, 1983). Increasing self-focus beyond baseline levels intensifies the affective and motivational consequences of the comparison process (Silvia & Gendolla, 2001). Likewise, decreased self-focus, such as in deindividuation (Diener, 1979), attenuates the effects of self-standard comparison.…”

Section: The Role Of Self-awarenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A lot of research shows that a person's level of self-focus determines the degree of self-standard comparison (Duval & Silvia, 2001). When self-focus is low, people are not very concerned with meeting their standards (Silvia & Gendolla, 2001). This position clearly suggests that self-focus moderates attribution for events that could potentially influence congruity between self and standards.…”

Section: Improvement Beliefs and Counterfactual Thoughtmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Self-awareness, probability of improvement, and the self-serving bias.

Duval

Silvia²

2002

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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214

154

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Abstract:The self-serving attributional bias-attributing success internally and failure externally-appears for many psychologists to have achieved the status of an empirical fact (Brown & Rogers, 1991). Researchers indeed find a consistent tendency for individuals to attribute success to self (e.g., Miller & Ross, 1975). Yet the literature on failure attributions shows a lot of variability. Many experiments find external attributions for failure (e.g., Snyder, Stephan, & Rosenfield, 1976. Many other studies, however, find internal attributions for failure (e.g., Ames, 1975;Ross, Bierbrauer, & Polly, 1974;Weary et al., 1982). In fact, Zuckerman's (1979) qualitative review reveals broad diversity in effects. Among 13 studies on attributions for failed interpersonal influence, for example, 5 found a self-serving pattern, 4 found a non-self-serving pattern, and 4 found no effects. A recent quantitative review found that the distribution of effect sizes ranged across positive and negative values (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999, p. 34); self-serving and non-self-serving effects were observed frequently. Article:The diversity of effects for failure attributions seems reasonable when we consider the costs of a dominant tendency toward defensiveness. As Nisbett and Ross (1980) argued The costs of willy-nilly distortions in perception are simply too high to make them a cure-all for the disappointed or threatened perceiver. In general, misperceptions make us less able to remedy the situations that threaten us or give us pain than do accurate perceptions. In a sense, they poorly serve the goals of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain in the long term. (p. 234) At a more general level, people have many motives and goals simultaneously (Heider, 1958;Lewin, 1935). The presence of contradictory effects suggests that unidentified moderators and additional motivations are operating. Our goal is to develop a model of self-serving attributions based on the interplay of two motivational systems, which we discuss in more detail below.Self-Enhancement and Self-Assessment Self-enhancement motivation engenders a preference for cognitions and interpretations that foster a positive self-concept. This general motive has broad psychological consequences (Dunning, 1999;Taylor & Brown, 1988). Research on self-understanding (Sedikides, 1993), for instance, shows that people seek self-knowledge in ways designed to yield flattering results. After self-reflecting, people preferred to ask highly diagnostic questions of themselves when the trait was highly self-relevant and positively valenced. When the trait was highly self-relevant and negatively valenced, people selected less diagnostic questions. People also generated questions judged to be more diagnostic when the trait was central to self and positive, as opposed to central and negative. Finally, people consistently affirmed possessing positively valenced traits and denied having negative traits.

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Section: The Role Of Self-awarenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Improvement Beliefs and Counterfactual Thoughtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-awareness, probability of improvement, and the self-serving bias.

Duval

Silvia²

2002

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Self Cite

214

154

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“…Either way, a previously held belief was strengthened. The conjunction of these facts suggests that descriptive introspection is a source of psychological stability (Silvia & Gendolla, 2001). …”

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confidence: 99%

The Why's the Limit: Curtailing Self‐Enhancement With Explanatory Introspection

Sedikides

Horton

Gregg

2007

Journal of Personality

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Self-enhancement is linked to psychological gains (e.g., subjective well-being, persistence in adversity), but also to intrapersonal and interpersonal costs (e.g., excessive risktaking, antisocial behavior). Thus, constraints on self-enhancement may sometimes afford intrapersonal and interpersonal advantages. We tested whether explanatory introspection (i.e., generating reasons for why one might or might not possess personality traits) constitutes one such constraint. Experiment 1 demonstrated that explanatory introspection curtails selfenhancement. Experiment 2 clarified that the underlying mechanism must (a) involve explanatory questioning rather than descriptive imagining, (b) invoke the self rather than another person, and (c) feature written expression rather than unaided contemplation. Finally, Experiment 3 obtained evidence that an increase in uncertainty about oneself mediates the effect. Introspection and Self-Enhancement 3The Why's the Limit: Curtailing Self-enhancement with Explanatory IntrospectionMost people, most of the time, see themselves through rose-colored glasses. Whether rating themselves as above-average on personality traits and abilities (Alicke, 1985) or believing themselves less susceptible to bias than the average person (Pronin, Yin, & Ross, 2002)-whether showing selective recall for flattering autobiographical episodes (Sanitioso, Kunda, & Fong, 1990) or engaging in social comparisons that validate a positive self-view (Dunning, 1999)-whether attributing their successes internally and their failures externally (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004) or thinking that their own future will surpass that of their peers (Weinstein, 1980)-people by and large evaluate themselves more favorably either than the objective facts warrant (Gosling, John, Craik, & Robins, 1998) or than external observers think justified (Epley & Dunning, 2000). Tellingly, people even believe that they outdo their own doppelgangers: they rate themselves more favorably than they rate their peers on the basis of identical behavioral evidence (Alicke, Vredenburg, Hiatt, & Govorun, 2001). Moreover, egocentric biases like the better-than-average effect are pervasive existing not only in (selfpromoting) individualistic cultures, but also in (self-deprecating) collectivistic cultures (Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003).All such phenomena can be viewed as forms of self-enhancement. Although perhaps irrational in the normative sense-half of us being forever doomed to be below average 1 -selfenhancement is nonetheless linked to substantial benefits. These include good psychological health (Taylor, Lerner, Sherman, Sage, & McDowell, 2003), better coping with physical illness (Taylor et al., 2003) and traumatic loss (Bonanno, Rennicke, & Dekel, 2005), greater persistence in the face of adversity (Taylor & Brown, 1988), and good social adjustment (Donnellan, Trzesniewski, Robins, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2005).However, self-enhancement is also linked to several substantial costs. Intrapersonal costs include imprudent risk...

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“…Accuracy has been a pest in many areas of psychology, such as the accuracy of beliefs about the self (Silvia & Gendolla, 2001), the accuracy of impressions of other people (Funder, 1995), and the accuracy of judgments of one's future feelings (Gilbert & Ebert, 2002), but creativity research has not yet recognized accuracy's peskiness.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research on accuracy goes awry when researchers choose an inapt criterion. In some cases, no criterion for accuracy exists, so judgments can be neither accurate nor inaccurate (Silvia & Gendolla, 2001). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Discernment and creativity: How well can people identify their most creative ideas?

Silvia

2008

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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182

165

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How well can people judge the creativity of their ideas? The distinction between generating ideas and evaluating ideas appears in many theories of creativity, but the massive literature on generation has overshadowed the question of evaluation. After critically reviewing the notion of accuracy in creativity judgments, this article explores whether (1) people in general are discerning and (2) whether some people are more discerning than others. University students (n ϭ 226) completed four divergent thinking tasks and then decided which responses were their most creative. Judges then rated the creativity of all of the responses. Multilevel latent-variable models found that people's choices strongly agreed with judges' ratings of the responses; overall, people were discerning in their decisions. But some people were more discerning than others: people high in openness to experience, in particular, had stronger agreement between their decisions and the judges' ratings. Creative people are thus doubly skilled: they are better at generating good ideas and at picking their best ideas.

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On Introspection and Self-Perception: Does Self-Focused Attention Enable Accurate Self-Knowledge?

Cited by 155 publications

References 118 publications

Self-awareness, probability of improvement, and the self-serving bias.

Self-awareness, probability of improvement, and the self-serving bias.

The Why's the Limit: Curtailing Self‐Enhancement With Explanatory Introspection

Discernment and creativity: How well can people identify their most creative ideas?

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