Leonard Mlodinow has written a tremendous book, Subliminal – How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. One of the important topics covered in the book is the accuracy of your self-perception. It turns out that we have an inflated assessment of ourselves – called the “above-average effect”. Mlodinow writes, “Ironically, people tend to recognize that inflated self-assessment and overconfidence can be a problem – but only in others…If we probed – or, in many cases, simply bothered to pay attention – most of us would notice that our self-image and the more objective image others have of us are not quite in sync”.
Why are we so out of sync with reality when it comes to accurately assessing ourselves? Mlodinow explains, “Visual perception, memory and even emotion are all constructs, made of a mix of raw, incomplete and sometimes conflicting data. We use the same kind of creative process to generate our self-image. When we paint our picture of self, our attorney-like unconscious blends fact and illusion, exaggerating our strengths, minimizing our weaknesses, creating a virtually Picassoesque series of distortions in which some parts have been blown up to enormous size (the parts we like) and others shrunk to near invisibility. The rational scientists of our conscious minds then innocently admire the self-portrait, believing it to be a work of photographic accuracy”. Psychologists call this approach taken by our inner advocate “motivated reasoning”. “Motivated reasoning helps us believe in our own goodness and competence, to feel in control and to generally see ourselves in an overly positive light. It also shapes the way we understand our social environment and it helps us justify our preferred beliefs”.
So are we lying to ourselves when our self-evaluations are over-inflated? According to Mlodinow, “Because motivated reasoning is unconscious, people’s claims that they are unaffected by bias or self-interest can be sincere, even as they make decisions that are in reality self-serving”. Brain imaging studies reveal how our brains create our unconscious biases. “They show that when assessing emotionally-relevant data, our brains automatically include our wants and dreams and desires. Our internal computations, which we believe to be objective, are not really the computations that a detached computer would make but, rather, are implicitly colored by who we are and what we are after,
Are there boundaries to our exaggerated perceptions of ourselves? According to the author, the answer is yes. “In order for your inflated self-image to serve you well, to have survival benefits, it “must be inflated to just the right degree and no further. Psychologists describe this balance by saying that the resulting distortion must maintain the “illusion of objectivity”. The talent we are blessed with in this regard is the ability to justify our rosy images of ourselves through credible arguments, in a way that does not fly in the face of obvious facts”. In other words, our brains tell us that we can’t jump tall buildings in a single bound.
To counter the negative impact of the above-average effect, we must be objective. We have a tendency to “poke holes in evidence we dislike and plug holes in evidence we like”. The net effect is that we “amplify the intensity of the agreement”. Mlodinow advises us to “keep in mind that those who disagree with us are not necessarily duplicitous or dishonest in their refusal to acknowledge the obvious errors in their thinking. More important, it would be enlightening for all of us to face the fact that our own reasoning is often not so perfectly objective, either”. This is most important considering our subjective view of the world. “Other ways we find support for our worldviews (including our view of ourselves) include adjusting the importance we assign to various pieces of evidence and, sometimes, forgetting unfavorable evidence altogether”.
Mlodinow acknowledges that there is a benefit to our overly-optimistic view of ourselves. “Our unconscious is at its best when it helps us create a positive and fond sense of self, a feeling of power and control in a world full of powers far greater than the merely human”. Psychologists believe that there are many benefits to holding positive illusions about ourselves. The author writes that “as you confront the world, unrealistic optimism can be a life vest that keeps you afloat…Motivated reasoning and motivated remembering and all the other quirks of how we think about ourselves and our world may have their downsides, but when we’re facing great challenges (losing a job, disease, spending years studying to become a doctor or an accomplished violinist or ballet dancer, etc.), the natural optimism of the human mind is one of our greatest gifts”.
The key is to make it a point to overcome our biased perceptions of ourselves and others by purposely being objective while remaining optimistic.