Person perception and self-awareness: Knowledge of influences on one's own judgments.

Abstract

Recent claims that people have no insight into the influences on their own beliefs, decisions, and behavior are overstated. In our research 96 judges watched 50 short interviews and rated the interviewees' intelligence, friendliness, or deceptiveness. They later estimated how the interviewees' characteristics had influenced their judgments. The correlation of the interviewees' characteristics with each judge's ratings is a measure of the degree to which the characteristics influenced that judge. Judges were moderately accurate at estimating the impact of characteristics on their judgments, with the mean correlation between the actual influence and their estimates being 42. To control for judges' use of a priori theories of causation, we had observers who did not see interviews or make person-perception judgments estimate how these characteristics would have influenced their judgments if they had made them. Judges' self-awareness remains even after controlling for observers' estimates of effects. Although judges showed self-awareness, their beliefs about what influenced them were also shaped by a priori theories about what should have influenced them. The degree of their selfawareness varied with the person-perception judgments they had made and the characteristics they were assessing.

Eyewitness identification: Retrospective self-awareness and the accuracy–confidence correlation.

“…Ericsson & Simon, 1980;Kraut & Lewis, 1982;Nisbett & Bellows, 1977;Nisbett & Wison, 1977;Rich, 1979;Smith & Miller, 1978;White, 1980). Indeed the RSA effect obtained in the present research supports the argument that people do have access to such information.…”

Self-insight, Other-insight, and Their Relation to Interpersonal Conflict

“…Most of the early studies of this sort used a between-subjects design, which was a major methodological limitation. Subsequent studies that focused on actor-observer differences using a within-subject design were able to show actors to be more accurate than observers in accounting for influences on the actor's behaviour (Gavanski & Hoffman 1987;Kraut & Lewis, 1982;Wright & Rip, 1981, Experiments 1 and 2). Although debate and methodologically sound research have weakened Nisbett and Wilson's very strong claims, there remained a general acceptance of the notion that people lacked insight into their higher thought processes (Wilson & Stone, 1985).…”

Attitudes toward Social Comparison as a Function of Self‐Esteem: Idealized Appearance and Body Image

“…No participant said that she compared herself with models in ads; however, this does not mean that no one actually compared with models in the ads. At issue here is the extent to which we have access to our cognitive processes and what affects them; experts in the field believe we do not have such access (Kraut & Lewis, 1982;Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) and cannot accurately report what influences us. In fact, three of the four identified themes (selectively scanning the ads visually, filtering images in the ads, and expressing dislike for ads that used unrealistically attractive models or that evoked unrealistic product expectations) represent strategies for dealing with social comparison by distancing oneself from images in ads.…”