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

The pessimistic conclusion that people have relatively poor insight into the weighting schemes they use when they make holistic judgements has been generally accepted among judgement researchers (e.g. Arkes, 1981; Balke, Hammond, & Meyer, 1973, Brehmer, 1984). The empirical research that supported this generalisation rested on indices of self-insight that were produced directly by the subjects. It was often the case that subjects were unable to correctly name even the single most important factor influencing their decisions, as indicated by a mathematical model of their judgement schemes. Using an alternate method of assessing self-insight, however, Reilly and Doherty (1989, 1992) found that subjects have far better self-insight than previously believed possible. The present paper employed the same methodology to investigate insight into the policy of another person as well as into oneself, and examined the relation of self-insight and other-insight to interpersonal conflict. Subjects were 50 dyads of university students. The results showed that: (1) subjects exhibited the expected high levels of self-insight via the recognition procedure; (2) subjects were able to identify the statistically generated policy of their roommate, thus exhibiting other-insight; (3) the ability to identify one's own policy is somewhat related to the ability to articulate one's own policy— that is, roommates with insight via recognition had higher indices of self-insight as measured by the traditional correlation method; (4) subjects who were able to identify their own policy were more likely to identify their roommate's policy and (5) individuals who possess self- and other-insight had less conflict in their roommate relationships.