Self-Knowledge of Personality: Do People Know Themselves?

The intuition that we have privileged and unrestricted access to ourselves – that we inevitably know who we are, how we feel, what we do, and what we think – is very compelling. Here, we review three types of evidence about the accuracy of self-perceptions of personality and conclude that the glass is neither full nor empty. First, studies comparing self-perceptions of personality to objective criteria suggest that self-perceptions are at least tethered to reality – people are not completely clueless about how they behave, but they are also far from perfect. Second, studies examining how well people’s self-perceptions agree with others’ perceptions of them suggest that people’s self-views are not completely out of synch with how they are seen by those who know them best, but they are also far from identical. Third, studies examining whether people know the impressions they make on others suggest that people do have some glimmer of insight into the fact that others see them differently than they see themselves but there is still a great deal people do not know about how others see them. The findings from all three approaches point to the conclusion that self-knowledge exists but leaves something to be desired. The status of people’s self-knowledge about their own personality has vast implications both for our conception of ourselves as rational agents and for the methods of psychological inquiry.