How well do you know yourself? It’s a question many of us struggle with, as we try to figure out how close we are to who we actually want to be. In a new report in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist Timothy D. Wilson from the University of Virginia describes theories behind self-knowledge (that is, how people form beliefs about themselves), cites challenges psychologists encounter while studying it, and offers ways we can get to know ourselves a little better.
The study of self-knowledge has tended to focus on how accurate we are at determining our own internal states, such as our emotions, personality, and attitudes. However, Wilson notes that self-knowledge can be broadened to include memory, like recalling how we felt in the past, and prospection, predicting how we will feel in the future. Knowing who we were and who we will be are as important to self-knowledge as knowing who we are in the present. And while a number of researchers are conducting studies that are applicable to those various facets of self-knowledge, Wilson observes that there is not much communication between them, one reason this field is challenging to investigate.
Although it can be fairly simple to assess how people’s attitudes change over time--that is, have them predict how they will feel at certain time and then actually measure their feelings at that time-- it is more difficult to measure people’s current self-knowledge accurately. Some methods of acquiring accurate information on a person’s feelings or their personality are to compare reports from their peers and study their nonverbal behavior. However, Wilson has "great faith in the methodological creativity" of his "fellow social psychologists" and is confident that questions raised by these types of experiments will be answered in the next few years.
Although Wilson acknowledges all the interesting findings that have come out of new technologies, such as fMRI, he cautions that those type of studies may not be very relevant to studying issues associated with self-knowledge.
There are a number of theories that aim to describe self-knowledge by a dual-process model, pitting the unconscious against the conscious. Wilson notes that these theories are pessimistic in that they view the unconscious as something that cannot be breached. However, he remarks that "self-knowledge is less a matter of careful introspection than of becoming an excellent observer of oneself."
Wilson suggests some ways that can help us learn more about ourselves, such as really attempting to be objective when considering our behaviors and trying to see ourselves through the eyes of other people. Another way of knowing ourselves better is to become more aware of findings from psychological science. Wilson concludes, "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 psychological selves in the same way."
我们到底有多了解自己？当我们试图弄清“我是谁”和“我想成为谁”之间的距离时，这就成为我们许多人时常纠结的问题。美国弗吉尼亚大学心理学家蒂莫西·威尔逊在《心理科学透视》（心理学科协会期刊）上发表一份新的报告，其将自我认识原理概述为自我信念的形成过程，并列举心理学家在这一领域的研究中遇到的挑战，以及提及一些进一步了解自我的方法。
自我认知的研究重点放在对内在自我状况的确定感上，比如，我们的情感，人格以及态度。而威尔逊同时也指出，自我认知可以延展到记忆以及自我预期方面，比如回忆过往的自我感受，和预测我们未来的感受。了解过去的自己以及预期的自己与了解现在的自己，对研究自我认知来说是同等重要的。虽然，现在有一些研究人员对上述几个方面进行了应用研究，但威尔逊指出他们之间没有多少交流，其原因之一是这一领域研究调查是颇具有挑战性的。
虽然，通过使被试预测他们未来某时的感来源：考试大受并实际测量他们正在那时的心情，就能相当简单的评估人的态度是如何随时间不断变化的。但对人们当前对自我认知的精确测量却是较困难的。为了获取被试感受和人格方面的准确信息，研究人员运用了将其报告与其同伴报告对比以及非语言行为等研究方法。不过，老威对其“ 同道的社会心理家”在“方法创新方面”有“足够的信心”，其相信这类研究中的一些疑问和困难将在未来几年内得到解答。
尽管威尔逊承认几乎所有有趣的发现都是通过新技术找到，如功能磁共振成像(fMRI)，但他提醒到，这类研究不一定同自我认知的研究相关。
现在有很多的理论旨在通过双重加工模型解释自我认知，更侧重于无意识。威尔逊指出，这些理论是悲观的，因为他们把无意识当做是不能被违背的东西。他说，“自我认识最重要的是做一个出色的自我观察者而不是一个细心的内省者。”
为了帮助我们进一步了解自己，老威提供了一些建议。比如，在审慎我们自己的行为时做到尽量客观，并尝试用他人的视角来看待自己。另一条了解的自己的途径是，关注心理学科的发现和研究成果。老威总结到：“我们大多数人都很关心医学上的发现，如吸烟有害健康等。我们也可以用同样的方式来关注自己的内心。”
