WHO am I? Most of us believe we can answer this question pretty well. Yet, you probably know someone who is self-deluded – which raises the uncomfortable possibility that you might be too. But how would you know?
In fact, the more we learn about self-knowledge, the clearer it is that we all lack insight into ourselves and how others see us. Benjamin Franklin was right when he wrote: “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” Human nature hasn’t changed in the intervening 250 years, but we do know more about why and when we struggle to see ourselves clearly. This, in turn, suggests there may be ways to improve self-knowledge. Here is our guide.
RULE 1 Think humble
Do you see yourself as a brilliant friend, wonderful cook, incredible singer or the cleverest person in your office? If so, you probably have “illusory superiority” – the belief harboured by many, in the West at least, that they are above average at everything from driving to performance at work.
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Research into the phenomenon indicates that – those we consider highly desirable or highly undesirable. For example, Simine Vazire, director of the Personality and Self-Knowledge Lab at the University of California, Davis, and colleague Erika Carlson found that students’ self-reports of intelligence bore almost no relation to results from IQ tests. Those with high self-esteem overestimated their smarts, while those with low self-esteem underestimated theirs, suggesting that when it comes to the qualities we associate most with self-worth, our judgements are based more on confidence than objectivity.
Physical attractiveness, another quality many of us care about, is very difficult to self-judge, for the same reason. “Our accuracy isn’t zero, but it’s close,” says Vazire.
Illusory superiority may have some advantages. We tend to think we are better than average because it makes us feel good, which in turn protects our mental health, says David Dunning at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who pioneered research documenting the phenomenon. . On the flip side, underestimating your abilities might protect you against failure if it makes you less likely to test yourself. “But any benefits pale in comparison with the costs of self-misperception,” says psychologist Zlatan Krizan at Iowa State University. He points out that to advance in life and society, we have to make choices about where to invest our efforts, and on what outcomes to stake our self-esteem. Inaccurate self-knowledge leads us to make poor choices, contributes to conflict with others, and ultimately causes us to fail in our endeavours.
How can you tell whether you are in thrall to a superiority complex? There are a few pointers. If you are judging a trait in which you have expertise or experience, then your self-knowledge is probably good. For example, professional athletes can better perceive their talents and weaknesses than amateurs, and doctors more accurately judge the extent of their medical knowledge than lay people. Conversely, the young and inexperienced are more likely to demonstrate poor self-insight in areas in which they have yet to gain experience. And , so are more accurate self-judges – at least when it comes to things like intelligence, reputation and their ability to control events.
Of course, some people are smarter than average. But if you want to know whether you are among them, it may be wiser to take an online test than trust your own judgement.
RULE 2 Remember that looks matter
There’s no getting away from it – people’s looks influence our judgements of them. We all make character judgements based on appearance within seconds of meeting someone. People with attractive faces are rated as being more outgoing, socially capable, intelligent and even sexually responsive than average. Men with large eyes, a smaller bridge to the nose and rounder faces are perceived as being submissive and naive. Those with wide, chiselled jaws are seen as possessing stereotypically masculine traits such as aggression. And people with mouths that curl down at the corners or eyebrows that form a V are considered untrustworthy.
Yet these assumptions aren’t that accurate. There is some evidence that , and as testosterone shapes both faces and behaviour, more masculine-looking men may indeed be more aggressive. But aside from that, . Nevertheless, the face you present to the world affects the way others perceive and interact with you.
Attractive people are more successful at job interviews and are paid more than their plain counterparts, for example. . And even after being told they have a history of cheating. Conversely, if you look untrustworthy you could pay a price. One study found that given descriptions of crimes and photographs of the “culprits”, volunteers required – and they were more confident in their decisions.
and use that to improve your own self-knowledge, though. It may seem obvious, but people who are more expressive, and better at engaging others, tend to be perceived more accurately – for good or ill. We can also compensate for the fact that other people’s judgements of us are influenced by our looks: if you are attractive, for example, asking others how intelligent or competent you are may not be the best route to accurate self-knowledge. And we should all avoid seeking feedback from people who look like us, as .
RULE 3 See what others see
Am I the person I think I am, or the one other people see? That may be a philosophical, rather than scientific, question, but your personal identity is bound up in your relationships with others – the people you interact with hold up a mirror in which you see yourself. How clear is that reflection?
The good news is that most of us have reasonable insight into how people in general see us. The bad news is that . One reason for this is that we assume others know more about us than they do. at the University of Florida found that when people were asked to consider how strangers would judge their skill at playing darts, they came to a conclusion using memories of past performances the strangers knew nothing about. It’s a simple mistake, but common. “People have difficulty knowing how they are viewed by others simply because they know too much about themselves,” the team concluded.
“We are pretty clueless at knowing what other individuals think of us”
Another thing to bear in mind is that how others see you depends on what they are like themselves. at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, indicates that people who are well adjusted – who positively view various aspects of their lives, including themselves and their relationships – are more accurate in their assessments of others than people who are less well adjusted. Being average, they view others as average, and most of us are. “But they may be less accurate for a specific person who is less similar to the average personality profile,” says Human. That’s because they have no particular insight into the qualities that make another individual unique – in fact, like everyone, they assume that others share their unique qualities. Less well-adjusted people do the same, and on top of that they tend to have distorted ideas about humanity in general.
The social group you are part of may also influence your perception of how others see you. when she asked small groups of men and women to interact socially. Afterwards she got them to evaluate one another for traits including self-control, maturity, openness and deceitfulness. Then everyone had to predict how each of the others in their group had rated them. This revealed that when women formed the majority of the group they were worse at judging how men saw them. And when they formed the minority their accuracy at judging how other women rated them nosedived to near zero. No such effects were seen in men.
Santuzzi suspects this may reflect who women are focusing their attention on in each setting. This fits with something Human found when looking for ways to improve people’s insights into others. “Simply asking people to try to form more accurate impressions does increase accuracy, presumably because this increases how much attention they pay to others,” she says.
RULE 4 Forget what you know
Having more information about yourself than others do can actually be a barrier to self-knowledge. . One long-running study, known as the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, asked children between the ages of 6 and 14 to evaluate themselves and their classmates on scales of aggression, likeability and social withdrawal. Two decades on, the ratings from peers were much more closely associated with adult personality attributes than the self-ratings. What’s going on here?
Being immersed 24/7 in your feelings and thoughts may give you greater insight into private attributes, such as neuroticism and conscientiousness, but . “If you ask me how kind and considerate I typically am, I’m likely to incorporate how kind and considerate I intend to be, and how considerate I feel inside, instead of really focusing on how kind and considerate I tend to act,” says Vazire. Other people simply judge us on what they see, making at least some of their assessments more accurate than our own.
This is particularly true when it comes to our skills and abilities. A review of research concluded that . However, it also revealed one exception: foreign-language ability. Our superior self-knowledge here is probably in large part thanks to frequent feedback, says Krizan, who co-authored the research. “If trying to speak a foreign language results in quizzical looks and confused faces, the feedback unequivocally indicates we are not doing well,” he notes.
In other areas of our lives useful feedback doesn’t tend to be the norm. Feedback may be forthcoming from our bosses but their insights are often vague. Outside work, you may have to actively seek feedback if you want to benefit from the wisdom of others to improve your self-knowledge. But remember, people’s impressions of you can be distorted by social situations and their own characteristics.
So who should you trust to give you honest feedback? That’s a question Vazire would very much like to answer – if only she can come up with a way of testing how personality influences these sorts of judgements. In the meantime, she has found that . She has another piece of advice, too. “The people closest to us have a lot of information, but some are also the most biased,” she says. This is especially true of our parents. “I wouldn’t really trust anything they say.”
The essential you
Your identity is comprised of a variety of physical and mental traits – things like personality, intelligence, experience, skills, habits, sexuality and attractiveness. But what really makes you “you”?
If asked to identify the essence of individuality, many psychologists point to personality, your unique combination of the five character traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. However, research by Nina Strohminger at Yale University challenges this. “What our studies show is that morality is essential to how others see you, and how they construct your identity,” she says.
when Strohminger and Shaun Nichols at the University of Arizona gave volunteers descriptions of individuals, and then changed different aspects of their identities. The individuals were deemed to have changed more if moral traits, such as honesty and loyalty, were altered or removed than if other psychological features, such as intelligence or a sense of humour, were changed.
Realising they could test this idea in the real world, Strohminger’s team began working with the families of people with dementia. showing that patients could develop depression, undergo changes in personality and even memory loss, and still be regarded by family members as essentially “the same person”. But when their moral behaviour changed – if they became dishonest, for example – they were seen as being a changed person (Psychological Science, vol 26, p 1469).
“Traditionally, morality has not been given much attention in scholarly work about the nature of personal identity,” says Strohminger. “Rather it was thought that memory and distinctive characteristics, including your personality, are what made you you.”
This article appeared in print under the headline “Who do you think you are?”
