Reports of the sources of self-knowledge1

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.

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