Think you’re self-aware? Think again | Oliver Burkeman

Genuine self-knowledge relies on coming to see yourself as a stranger

The psychologist Tasha Eurich reports that 95% of people think they’re self-aware – that is, conscious of what really makes them tick and how they come across to others – yet only about 10-15% of us truly are. The discrepancy shouldn’t come as a surprise, since one thing people with no self-awareness are going to lack self-awareness about, you’d assume, is their lack of self-awareness.

Doubtless you’re familiar with this phenomenon: your world is probably full of people – friends, colleagues, bosses – who seemingly haven’t a clue how others really see them. But, of course, the real question is whether that’s also true of you. Or, in my case, me. Perhaps we’re no better, when it comes to self-knowledge, than the prisoners in one 2013 study, mostly violent criminals, who judged themselves to be kinder and more trustworthy than most people – and, most disconcertingly of all, no less law-abiding than the average non-prisoner.

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