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      Figure 4.1 Introspecting About Reasons Can Undermine Satisfaction

      Source: Adapted from Wilson, T. D., Lisle, D. J., Schooler, J. W., Hodges, S. D., Klaaren, K. J., & LaFleur, S. J. (1993). Introspecting about reasons can reduce post-choice satisfaction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 331–339.

      Clearly, using introspection as a way to understand our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors has its limits (Corallo et al., 2008; E. A. Locke, 2009). Not only might we fail to understand why we act as we do, even thinking about the reasons for liking something can reduce that liking. And here we see that how our understanding of the self is inextricably tied to the limits of our reasoning and the nature of rationality itself. Attempting to achieve rationality can have interesting, if unintended, consequences for the self.

      Introspection: Looking internally at the self to examine who one is, how one feels, and so forth

      Self-Perception

      As we’ve seen, introspection is an imperfect way to gain knowledge about who we are. What other means are at our disposal for gaining self-understanding? Well, how do you get to know other people when you don’t have direct access to their inner processes? One way is to simply ask them, but then of course you are relying on the questionable veracity of their introspection. Another strategy is to observe their behavior to see how they act in a variety of situations and under various conditions and use this as a guide to determine their attitudes and beliefs. Although not a perfect method, merely watching them could give us insights that asking them could not. The social psychologist Daryl Bem suggested that we can use the same method for gaining insight into our own selves: observe our own behavior. According to Bem’s (1967) self-perception theory, you can infer your attitude in this same way that a third party might do so: by watching your own behavior (Olson & Stone, 2005; Yee & Bailenson, 2009). Let me say that again: Bem argues that there are times when we rely on observations of our own behavior to figure out what our attitude, emotions, and personality traits are. This is particularly true when our attitudes are weak or ambiguous (Bem, 1967).

      Take for example the results of a study of environmental attitudes by Chaiken and Baldwin (1981). Based on their responses to a survey completed earlier in the semester, participants were classified as either holding well-defined or poorly defined attitudes toward protecting the environment. During the subsequent experimental session, participants were led to focus either on their past pro-ecology behaviors or their past anti-ecology behaviors. Finally, they again responded to several questions in which they indicated the extent to which they consider themselves environmentalists. Chaiken and Baldwin predicted that individuals with weak attitudes would, when completing the final attitude measure, infer their attitude toward the environment from the behaviors that they focused on. In this way people with weak attitudes would “observe” their own behavior to determine their attitude. Consequently, those focused on pro-ecology behaviors should identify themselves as pro-ecology, whereas those focused on anti-ecology behaviors should lean toward the anti-ecology attitudes. In contrast, individuals with strong preexisting attitudes would not need to resort to self-perception to infer their attitudes and therefore would not show any effects of the experimental manipulation.

      The findings were as predicted: Self-reported attitudes corresponded to whichever type of behavior participants with weakly defined attitudes concentrated on but not for those with previously well-defined attitudes. In short, consistent with self-perception theory, participants with weak attitudes relied on their own behavior to infer their attitudes (Chaiken & Baldwin, 1981). Two recent extensions of self-perception theory have shown that people’s perception of their own avatars—their virtual selves inserted into computer games or online social media—can affect their self-concept as well as their behavior (Yee & Bailenson, 2009) and that people may use their observation of the behavior of others to learn about themselves (see Figure 4.2).

      Other research has demonstrated that people may also infer their motivation from their behavior, which in turn has implications for whether they will engage in subsequent related behavior. Before discussing this research in class, I present my students with the following scenario: Say my daughter loves to read and does so with great frequency on her own (which is true). Now say I decide to reward her for reading over the summer by giving her $4 for every book she reads (which I don’t). By the end of the summer, I am deeply in debt to her and give her the money she earned. When school starts and I stop rewarding her for reading, is she likely to freely read even more, read about the same, or read less than she did before being offered the money? Most students believe that she will read more because she has been rewarded. In all likelihood, however, my daughter’s reading frequency would likely decrease, because she has now associated reading with money, and when the money stops, so too will the reading. As a consequence of my paying her to read, her intrinsic motivation—the desire to engage in a behavior simply because it is interesting or enjoyable—would be undermined by an extrinsic motivation—the desire to perform the behavior as a result of external rewards or pressures (Cerasoli, Nicklin, & Ford, 2014; Durik & Harackiewicz, 2007; Harackiewicz, Durik, & Barron, 2005). My daughter may reconstrue reading as something that she does for money rather than for sheer enjoyment. Hence she will infer that she must only be reading for money and may stop reading in the absence of this external reinforcement.

      Figure 4.2 Vicarious Self-Perception

      Source: Adapted from Study 2, Goldstein, N. J., & Cialdini, R. B. (2007). The spyglass self: A model of vicarious self-perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 402–417.

      How Facial Expressions Can Affect Your Emotions

      Participants who held a pen in their lips rated a comic as less humorous than those who held a pen in their teeth.

      This anecdote illustrates the overjustification effect, which occurs when one’s intrinsic motivation—such as enjoyment experienced by simply enacting the behavior—is weakened by the presence of extrinsic motivation (Forehand, 2000; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973; Lepper, Henderlong, & Gingras, 1999). In one study, giving small children a reward for playing with special, colorful felt-tipped markers made them less likely to voluntarily choose to play with those same markers later (Lepper et al., 1973). Although external rewards may sometimes deter desirable behavior, they are often useful. For instance, rewarding children by praising them for working hard rather than being smart can increase self-motivation and school achievement (Henderlong & Lepper, 2002).

      There is another arena where Bem’s self-perception theory offers a useful way of understanding oneself: emotion. Earlier we described how people may not always know how they feel, especially when introspection can itself change one’s feelings. Is it possible that, like with attitudes and motivation, observing our behavior may help us determine what we are feeling? According to the facial feedback hypothesis, the answer is yes, at least under certain circumstances (Dzokoto, Wallace, Peters, & Bentsi-Enchill, 2014). For instance, Strack, Martin, and Stepper (1988) showed cartoons to participants who evaluated their funniness while holding a pen either between their teeth or in their lips. Participants with the pen between their teeth—which just happens to produce a facial expression that

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