Tem

December 1, 2010

Wilson, "Introspection and Self-Narratives"

• Introspection -- flashlight metaphor -- Freud's metaphor: archaeology

• Wilson doesn't support these metaphors, seems sceptical that we get such clarity, thinks evidence supports a different view:

• "Introspection is more like literary criticism in which we are the text to be understood. Just as there is no single truth that lies within a literary text, but many truths, so are there many truths about a person that can be constructed." 162

• Do we introspect too much?

• Real Estate story -- Do we know or show what we want?
• Analytic methods vs. Intuitive or behavioral

• People are "too good" at giving reasons for their feelings, but not necessary accurate when they do. They rarely say, "I don't know why I feel this way..."

• Major Claim -- Somtimes we use faulty information to decide what our reasons for our feelings are. Then, using faulty reasons, we actually may alter our feelings.

• Study in which subjects in one condition analyze their relationships and in a control condition others don't. Analyzed condition showed greater change in feeling.

• Which is the real you? The analyzed or unanalyzed? Wilson is saying that you shouldn't assume the analyzed is.

• Poster satisfaction study

• Wilson's advice isn't to act on impulse, but to delay rational analysis, in some situations, let yourself say "Not sure how I feel" -- gather external information and perceptions. Those in the poster study who knew a lot about art didn't experience a change in satisfaction.

• "The trick is to gather enough information to develop an informed gutfeeling and then not analyze that feeling too much." 172

• Wilson's advice: try to become aware of implicit feelings.

• Schultheiss and Brunstein study -- determined implicit feelings (such as need for power or affiliation) and then asked subject to predict their happiness in being in a situation that is geared to stimulate those needs. Subjects don't accurately predict impact of the experience (they are strangers to themselves). "Consistent with many studies that find that people are not very aware of their implicit motives, people who were high in the need for affiliation and power did not anticipate that the counseling session would make them any happier or feel more engaged than other participants." 174 But "goal imager" and "prefeeling" changed that.

• Rumination -- definition 175 -- increases depression in depressed.

• Pennebaker Study -- subjects write about negative experiences from their lives and it makes them happy? How to explain this? How is it different from rumination? -- Wilson claims that it's because writing involves construction of a meaningful narrative.

• [One lesson from the chapter: Be careful of the reasons and stories you use to narrate your experience. You might actually conform your experience (feelings) to the narrative. But the positive side of that . . . ? Could you prime someone to write a wise narrative?]