Know Thyself

Author(s): Timothy D. Wilson

Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 4, No. 4, The Next Big Questions in
Psychology (July 2009), pp. 384-389
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of Association for Psychological Science
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PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Know Thyself
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia

moved far beyond psychoanalytic theory and should put behind

ABSTRACT - Self-knowledge has never been

a central
us any
lingeringtopic
Freudophobia (the fear of becoming mired in
in empirical psychology. There are pockets
of
research
wishy-washy ideason
that are impossible to test). Methodological
self-knowledge in different subdisciplines
of the field, but
advances have put new tools at our disposal. I think we are in a

until now there has been little communication between

position to integrate diverse areas of research into a unified field

them. I believe that these areas will converge in of

the
next
inquiry.
few years into a cohesive study of how people form judgments about their past, current, and future selvesWHAT
and
about the accuracy of these judgments. I discuss theoreti-

IS THE FIELD OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE?

cal developments in this area, the costs of poor

selfFor the
most

part, the study of self-knowledge has focused on

knowledge, how people can know themselves better,

and of introspection about one's own internal states (
accuracy

some of the obstacles to the study of self-knowledgeattitudes,

.
beliefs, emotions, traits, motives). But the topic ca
construed more broadly to include questions of memory

calling one's past internal states) and prospection (predic

One of the most interesting problems in psychology, in my

one's future internal states). Knowing who we were, who we

opinion, is self-knowledge: how people form beliefs about

now, and who we will be in the future are all important face
themselves. This problem is so important that I have studied it
self-knowledge.
for much of my career. Or wait - is it the other way around?
One reason that self-knowledge has not been a cohesive t
Maybe I think self-knowledge is an important topic because I
in psychology is that research in these areas is spread ac

have spent so much time studying it. The fact that I am unsure of

subdisciplines of the field. Table 1 displays examples of how

the answer to this question illustrates my basic point: Selfareas of psychology have investigated people's knowledge a
knowledge is hard to acquire and is not always correct.
their past, present, and future selves. The list is arbitrary
One might think that "Know thyself would be a central theme

doubt, I have left off important areas of inquiry. It illustra

in psychological science. Certainly the average person on the
however, how researchers in different disciplines are conduc
street thinks of it as the sine qua non topic of psychology. A
research relevant to self-knowledge, often with little com
desire to figure themselves out is what draws many college
nication or cross-fertilization.

students to our introductory-level courses. They are quickly

The list illustrates some interesting gaps in research. F

disabused of this notion; few intro courses spend much time on

example, one might think that self-knowledge would be a cen
the topic (neither "self-knowledge" nor "self-insight" are major

topic in personality psychology, but there has not been m

topics in intro psych texts). That's not entirely a bad thing; part of

research on how people come to discern their own traits and

the fun of teaching intro courses is opening students' eyes to the
many important topics they never knew existed.

accuracy of this knowledge - possibly because doing so wo

be admitting that people can have traits of which they are

But the fact is we have a lot to say about the nature of selfaware (see Freudophobia above). The components of the study
knowledge and its limits. Why have we shied away from doing
self-knowledge are there, such as research on people's id
so? There are few courses on self-knowledge, and no journals or
graphic "if-then" construais of situations (Mischel, Shod
learned societies devoted to the topic. Perhaps the long shadow
Mendoza-Denton, 2002) and research on the narratives and
of psychoanalysis has made empirically minded psychologists
stories that people construct about themselves (e.g., McAd
reluctant to address questions about how well we know our2001). The former type of personality construct is though
selves. Or maybe it is just that these questions are hard to adbe largely nonconscious and difficult to verbalize, whereas
dress empirically. If so, these obstacles no longer exist. We have
latter is thought to be conscious and relatively easy to verba
A fruitful line of inquiry would be to connect these separate

Address correspondence to Timothy D. Wilson, Department of

of research,
examining how well people's conscious narrat
Psychology, P.O. Box 400400, University of Virginia, Charlottes
ville,
VA 22904-4400; e-mail: twilson@virginia.edu.

capture their nonconscious construais.

384 Copyright i( 2009 Association for Psychological Science Volume 4 - Number 4

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Timothy P. Wilson

TABLE 1

Areas of Inquiry Into Self-Knowledge

Past knowledge (accuracy of recall Present knowledge (accuracy of Future knowledge (accuracy

Subdiscipline of one's past self) judgments about one's present self) predictions about one's future self)

Social psychology Accuracy of recall of one's past Limits of introspection (Nisbett & Affective forecasting (Gilbert &
attitudes and/or abilities (Ross, Wilson, 1977) Wilson, 2007; Wilson & Gilbert,
1989)
2003)

Accuracy

of

rec

affective reactions (Robinson & (Bargh, 1994) Griffen, & Ross, 1994)
Clore, 2002)

Dual process theories of attitudes and Temporal construal theory (Trope

information processing (see text for & Liberman, 2003)

references)

Personality Models of conscious narratives Models of nonconscious construais of

psychology about the self (e.g., McAdams, self and situations (e.g., Mischel
2001) et al., 2002)
Models of conscious narratives about

the self (e.g., McAdams, 2001)

Implicit and explicit measures of

personality traits (e.g., Asendorph

et al., 2002)
Comparisons of self-reports and peer
reports of personality (e.g., Vazire and

Mehl, 2008)

Cognitive Models of implicit and explicit The new look (Bruner & Goodman, Psychology of prediction (e.g.,
psychology memory (e.g., Schacter, 1996) 1947) Kahneman & Tversky, 1979)
Reconstructive memory (McNally, Models of implicit and explicit

2003) learning (e.g., Reber, 1993)

Developmental Autobiographical memory in Development of self-knowl

psychology childhood (Howe, 2004) (Ferrari & Sternberg, 1998)
Children's understanding of their own
and others' minds (e.g., Mitchell &

Neal, 2005)

Clinical psychology Repression (Erdelyi, 2006) Awareness of own personality Predictions of future fear and

disorders (Oltmanns & Turkheimer, panic (Rachman, 1994)

2006)
Alexithymia (Helmes, McNeill,
Holden, & Jackson, 2008)

Neuroscience Neural basis of autobiographical Effect of neurological damage Neural processes involved in
memory (e.g., Rubin, 2005) on self-knowledge (Gazzaniga & simulating the future (Schacter,
LeDoux, 1978) Addis, & Buckner, 2007)
"Liking" versus "wanting" (Berridge
& Robinson, 2003)

age.
Adult personality
develops across the life span
Researchers are beginning to look at these
connections,
such

Mroczek,
2008),
yet there is little research on whet
as Asendorpf, Banse, and Miicke's (2002) research
on
dissocianticipate
these changes. If they do not, they mig
ations between implicit and explicit measures
of extraversion,
choices
based
their current traits, dispositions, a
and Vazire and Mehl's (2008) research on whether
actors
or on
their

ences
thatbehaviors.
are not well suited for their future traits, d
acquaintances can best predict the actors'
daily

and preferences.
For example, Oishi, Whitchurch,
These exciting lines of research have the potential
to answer
Kurtz
(2008) found
age-old questions about how well people know
themselves
(see that middle-aged adults were h

novel
settings than they were in familiar settings and
Wilson, 2002, for a more complete discussion
of self-knowledge

that novelty (e.g., a different climate) would be valued

and personality research).

familiarity
(e.g., interactions with family and fri
There are also gaps in Table 1 in the "future
knowledge"

choosing
a how
retirement
location. However, adults who h
column. For example, I am unaware of any research
on
well

were as
happier
people can predict how their personalities retired
will change
they in familiar environments than th

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ijD

Know Thyself

novel environments and said that familiarity was more important

conscious inferences about oneself that may or may not b

than novelty when choosing a retirement location. These results

accurate.

suggest that the middle-aged adults were failing to anticipate

These theories typically adopt a more pessimistic outlook

how their dispositions and preferences would change in the

self-knowledge than psychoanalysis, because they view a lack

future.

access to mental processes as part of the architecture of the m

Researchers in the judgment and decision-making tradition

have studied the psychology of prediction, notably Kahneman

that can't be breached, rather than the results of motivati

forces that can be overcome (albeit with difficulty). As arg

and Tversky's (1979) seminal research and theorizing (e.g.,

elsewhere (Wilson, 2002; Wilson & Dunn, 2004), self-know

prospect theory). This research has revealed important princi-

edge is less a matter of careful introspection than of becomin

ples that guide people's predictions about the future, such as loss

excellent observer of oneself and deducing the nature of o

aversion - the belief that future losses will have a larger impact

nonconscious dispositions and preferences.

than will gains of the same magnitude. Loss aversion has been

found to influence people's decisions in many important domains, including investing, negotiation, politics, and health

THE CRITERION PROBLEM: WHAT IS THE TRUE SELF

AND HOW DO WE MEASURE IT?

(Camerer, 2000; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; McDermott,

2004). However, this literature has not focused much on the

To determine the accuracy of people's judgments about their

accuracy of such prospective judgments. Recent research sug-

past, present, and future selves, researchers need good measures

gests that loss aversion might involve an affective forecasting

of people's actual past, present, and future selves. This is rela-

error, because when people actually experience losses, they

tively straightforward when it comes to memory and prospection.

often find ways of minimizing their impact through rationaliza-

If researchers want to assess the accuracy of people's memories

tion and dissonance reduction (Kermer, Driver-Linn, Wilson, &

Gilbert, 2006). That is, people predicted that losses would have

for their past attitudes, for example, they measure people's attitudes at Time 1 and then ask them to recall these attitudes at

a bigger impact on them than gains would, but the losses did not

Time 2 (e.g., Ross, 1989). Similarly, if researchers want to assess

actually have a bigger impact once they occurred. Further in-

the accuracy of people's forecasts about their future affective

quiries into the accuracy of people's predictions about their

reactions, they ask them to make a prediction at Time 1 about

future reactions to events are likely to bear fruit.

how they will feel at Time 2, then measure how they actually feel

at Time 2 (e.g., Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). These questions con-

cern change over time, and the same dependent measure can be
THEORIES OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

administered at different time points to assess accuracy.

Matters are considerably more complicated when it comes to

There are no shortage of theories about self-knowledge.

assessingPsythe accuracy of people's concurrent self-knowledge,
choanalysis is the grandparent of them all, providing
combecausea the
assumption is that people might have internal states

prehensive explanation of how threatening information

is processes of which they are unaware. People's reand mental

repressed from consciousness. Since then, numerous

dualports about
their internal states must be compared with an inprocess theories have been proposed that posit the
existencemeasure
of
dependent
of those states, such as implicit measures,

separate information processing systems, with one of

them being
nonverbal
behavior, or peer reports. Personality researchers, for

much more available to consciousness than the other

(e.g.,
example,
have compared the accuracy of actors' reports of their
Bargh, 1994; Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006; Epstein,
1991;both behavioral measures and peers' assessments of
traits with
Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Gilbert, 1991; the
Greenwald
&
actors' traits
(e.g., Vazire & Mehl, 2008).

Banaji, 1995; Haidt, 2001; Jacoby, 1991; Kahneman

& FredThere
has been an explosion of research on this topic in social
erick, 2005; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Smith & DeCoster,
2000;fueled largely by methodological advances in
psychology,

Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Wegner, 1994). These theories

suggest
measures
of implicit attitudes such as evaluative priming (Fazio,
that Freud may have been too conservative in his
characterJackson,
Dunton, & Williams, 1995) and the Implicit Associaization of the unconscious. The architecture of the tion
mind
is such
Test
(Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). For example,
that a great deal of mental processing occurs outside
ofstudies
con- have found that implicit measures of self-esteem
several

scious awareness, not because thoughts and do

feelings
are highly with explicit measures of self-esteem and
not correlate
threatening to people, but because that is how the
hasimplicit measures do not correlate very highly with
that mind
different

evolved to work. The specific theories differ in their

descriptions
each
other (e.g., Jordan, Whitfield, & Zeigler-Hill, 2007; Krizan

of the exact nature of the two systems (e.g., unconscious,

& Suis, auto2008; Sakellaropoulo & Baldwin, 2007). Researchers

matic, slow learning, associative, implicit for one;

areconscious,
attempting to unravel this curious state of affairs, examining

controlled, fast learning, propositional, explicit for

the
other). as whether implicit or explicit measures corresuch
questions

For our purposes, the key distinction is that one late

system
is with
less neurological measures of approach and avoidmore
available to introspection, and it is up to the other
make
anceto
(De
Raedt, Franck, Fannes, & Verstraeten, 2008) and

JO

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Timothy D. Wilson

whether implicit or explicit measures have higher predictive

doubt, defensiveness, and narcissism (Bosson, Brown, Zeigler-

validity (e.g., of depression or narcissism; Campbell, Bosson,

Hill, & Swann, 2003; Briol, Petty, & Wheeler, 2006; Brunstein,

Goheen, Lakey, & Kernis, 2007; Franck, De Raedt, & De Houw-

Schultheiss, & Grassmann, 1998; Jordan, Spencer, Zanna,

er, 2007). But does this mean that people have self-evaluations

Hoshino-Browne, & Correli, 2003; Schultheiss, Jones, Davis, &

of which they are unaware? Researchers disagree on the answer

Kley, 2008; Shedler, Mayman, & Manis, 1993). As noted by

to this question (see, for example, Olson, Fazio, & Hermann's,

Briol et al. (2006), "Together, these studies suggest that having

2007, view that people are aware of their implicit self-esteem).

discrepant explicit and implicit self-dimensions is associated

Although it sometimes seems that these questions exceed the

with numerous consequences that often appear to be negative,

ability of our methods to answer them, I have great faith in the

unpleasant, or dysfunctional" (p. 156).

methodological creativity of my fellow social psychologists, and

I think we will see exciting answers to these questions in the

coming years.

HOW CAN WE KNOW OURSELVES BETTER?

One possibility is that answers will come from neuroscience

research. Although there have been many exciting advances in
our understanding of the brain due to new technologies such as

fMRI, we need to be cautious about what neuroscience research

can offer psychological theories of self-knowledge. On the one

hand, neuropsychological studies enrich our understanding of

conscious and unconscious processes by examining the neural

correlates of psychological phenomena. For example, Lieberman (2000) pointed out that the phenomenological state of intuition and implicit learning processes both involve activation in

the basal ganglia, suggesting a theoretical link between these

constructs. On the other hand, it is unlikely that there are spe-

cific brain modules that are the seat of "the self," "the uncon-

scious," or "consciousness" (Beer & Ochsner, 2006; Willingham

& Dunn, 2003). Thus, a brain localization strategy is unlikely to

provide the royal road to the unconscious, definitively establishing the limits of conscious awareness.

It thus seems to be to people's advantage to discover what

under their mental hoods. But how can we do so, when so much

our mental lives is unavailable to introspection? It is not ea

but a number of routes are open to us. First, we can try to

objective observers of our own behavior (Bern, 1972). If we fi

ourselves making excuses to run into somebody, maybe we

them more than we thought. Second, we can try to see oursel

through the eyes of other people, at least considering the p

sibility that they have picked up on something about us that
have missed. As sung by Bonnie Raitt, "I hear them whisper,

won't believe it/They think we're lovers kept under covers

Maybe they're seeing, something we don't, Darlin"' (Eikha

1991).
Finally, we can try to learn about ourselves by reading and
assimilating findings from psychological science. Most of us pay

attention to medical findings that inform us about our bodies

(e.g., that smoking tobacco is harmful), and can learn about our

DOES SELF-KNOWLEDGE MATTER?

psychological selves in the same way. For example, after the

explosion of research on implicit prejudice, how many of us have

Human beings are the only species (as far as we entertained
know) that
hasthat we harbor biases of which we are unthe idea
the ability to reflect on itself and form metabeliefs
about
who
we medical findings, we can't always be sure
aware?
Just
as with
are, what happened to us in the past, and what is likely
to
happen
that research findings based on other people apply to us. We

to us in the future. Purely on the basis of intellectual

interest,
might want
to consider the possibility that they do, however, or
questions about the nature and limits of human
consciousness
complete
implicit measures of attitudes and personality that are
are worth pursuing. But there are also practical reasons
tothe
doWeb.
so.
available on

Consider the question of whether there are negative

In sum,conseresearchers in all areas of empirical psychology are
quences to having poor self-insight. At one extreme,
some argue
investigating
the nature of self-knowledge, and it is my hope that

that consciousness is largely epiphenomenal andthese

plays
a small lines of research will coalesce into a coherent
independent
or nonexistent role in steering human behaviortopic
(seethat
Flanagan,
makes its way into intro psych textbooks and college

1992, and Wegner, 2002, for reviews of this position).

If so,
curricula.
At what
last, college students who take intro psych might
difference does it make whether we have any insight
into the
find an answer
to their question about navel gazing, even if the
unconscious processes that are responsible for answer
our behavior?
- that self-knowledge is difficult to obtain and that furWhether or not we know how a fuel injector works,
example,might not help - is unwelcome.
therfor
introspection
or even that our car has one, our car still makes it to the grocery
store.

But it turns out that there are consequences to failing to un-

- The preparation of this article was aided

derstand ourselves. People who exhibit discrepancies Acknowledgments
between

by research grant BCS-0722915 from the National Science

implicit and explicit measures of their self-concepts or motives
Foundation. I thank Simine Vazire and Matthew Lieberman for
have been found to be especially low in emotional well-being

theirselfvery helpful comments.

and especially high in physiological reactivity, anxiety,

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Know Thyself

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