Reports of the sources of self‐knowledge¹

Abstract

Abstract College students reported about the sources of their self‐knowledge in questionnaire ( N =118) and interview N = 42) sessions by generating self‐descriptive adjectives, specifying ad libitum how they knew they fit the chosen descriptors (reports the investigator later rated as mentioning self‐observation, social feedback, and social comparison processes), and formally ranking the importance of the three sources of self‐knowledge. Self‐observation appeared in subjects' reports more frequently than feedback from others or social comparison by a proportion of about 7:2:1; average rankings of importance followed the same order. Results were quite similar for both sets of subjects. Two mechanisms that could account for the observed results receive consideration: motivational bias involving self‐presentation, and information‐processing errors due to focus of attention and the underuse of consensus information.