Are We Rational in Understanding Ourselves?

ntroduction

Are we rational in understanding ourselves? Understanding ourselves is the fundamental key when we are in company with other people or solving problems. It is important for making decisions. However, if we understand ourselves in a subjective way, this may affect our decisions. I am going to examine whether we understand ourselves objectively. I am going to present my answer in the following perspectives: appearance, abilities, consistency and responsibilities.

Appearance

Perception of attractiveness

Appearance is important in our social interaction. Most people judge others by appearance.The lecture note said that human have a strong need for positive self–evaluation which includes positive evaluation of one's appearance. Individual's own positive evaluation of attractiveness will be increasing though strongly over time. That means whatever how we become in the future, uglier or more wrinkles, we still think we are more beautiful than before. This makes us feel better.

Moreover, according to Radwan,M.F., our brains get used to possessing the images we often see. This can explain why we always think that the pop stars whose posters or advertisements seen in everywhere are more attractive. This affects our judgment on our appearance. Our perception of attractiveness is changed easily. We can see we do not understand ourselves rationally through perception of attractiveness.

Abilities

Self-presentation

Self presentation is a behavior we intend to maintain an impression in others mind, most are positive impression. Refer to lecture note, we engage in self-presentational behavior as we have a strong need for positive self-evaluations. We tend to perform our best in front of others or even create a positive image in others mind. We may want to convince others we possess good qualities. For example, most eastern people think that female should be a caring person and obey others. Eastern female will listen to their husband and seldom make their decision themselves even they have their own ideas. Female actively monitor their image as a responsible and caring person in order to satisfy others' expectations. People may even change their behavior in different situation to match the situational requirement. This shows that people may not really know their authentic personality. We do not understand ourselves precisely.

Besides, according to our notes, we engage in self-serving explanations of success and failure. We will make internal attributions for the success achiever to boost our self view. We will make external attributions for the failure to minimize negative implications of the failure to the self. For example, students get high marks in a test. They will think