Self-Perception Processes
Wilson's work is based on the assumption that people are not always aware of why they feel the way they do. Bem's self-perception theory makes a similar assumption. The theory is concerned with how people explain their behavior. It argues that people don't always know why they do what they do. When this occurs, they infer the causes of their behavior by analyzing their behavior in the context in which it occurred. Outside observers of the behavior would reach a similar conclusion as the individual performing it. The individuals then draw logical conclusions about why they behaved as they did.
"Individuals come to "know" their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and/or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs. Thus, to the extent that internal cues are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer, an observer who must necessarily rely upon those same external cues to infer the individual's inner states." (Bem, 1972, p.2)
The theory has been applied to a wide range of phenomena. Under particular conditions, people have been shown to infer their attitudes, emotions, and motives, in the same manner described by the theory.
Similar to introspection, but with an important difference: with introspection we directly examine our attitudes, feelings and motives. With self-perception processes we indirectly infer our attitudes, feelings, and motives by analyzing our behavior.
Read more about this topic: Self-knowledge (psychology), Sources of Self-Knowledge, The Psychological World
Famous quotes containing the word processes:
“The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)