Self-perception of character

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Psychology - Social Psychology, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne (Wirtschafts- und Sozialpsychologie), course: Seminar: Self and Self-Insight, language: English, abstract: Do you know who you are? Can you accurately predict how you will behave in a certain situation? What do you know about your character traits? Research has shown that most people think they themselves know they character better than anyone else and could predict their future and daily behavior more accurately than anyone else (Pronin, Kruger, Savitsky&Ross, 2001; Vazire & Mehl, 2008). This sounds logical, because a person has accumulated

lots of information about himself as well as experience during his whole life and has privileged access to his feelings and thoughts. But do these predictions correspond with the

reality? Or are there motives that deform our self-evaluation? In this term paper I will analyze how we perceive ourselves, whether we accurately perceive our character traits and which factors influence our self-evaluation.