Self-Insight Dunning, David
2005, 20121012, 2005-02-17, 2012-10-12
eBook
People base thousands of choices across a lifetime on the views they hold of their skill and moral character, yet a growing body of research in psychology shows that such self-views are often ...misguided or misinformed. Anyone who has dealt with others in the classroom, in the workplace, in the medical office, or on the therapist's couch has probably experienced people whose opinions of themselves depart from the objectively possible.
This book outlines some of the common errors that people make when they evaluate themselves. It also describes the many psychological barriers - some that people build by their own hand - that prevent individuals from achieving self-insight about their ability and character.
The first section of the book focuses on mistaken views of competence, and explores why people often remain blissfully unaware of their incompetence and personality flaws. The second section focuses on faulty views of character, and explores why people tend to perceive they are more unique and special than they really are, why people tend to possess inflated opinions of their moral fiber that are not matched by their deeds, and why people fail to anticipate the impact that emotions have on their choices and actions.
The book will be of great interest to students and researchers in social, personality, and cognitive psychology, but, through the accessibility of its writing style, it will also appeal to those outside of academic psychology with an interest in the psychological processes that lead to our self-insight.
Background
To understand and care for men who self‐harm, it is important that healthcare professionals have understanding of how and why men self‐harm, men's experiences of self‐harm and what can be ...done to hinder or prevent self‐harm.
Aims
The aim of this study was to synthesize the existing knowledge on men who self‐harm, with a special emphasis on background, self‐harming methods, experiences and reported therapeutic interventions and/or care approaches.
Design
Scoping review of internationally published and grey literature, based on a methodological framework by Arksey and O’Malley.
Data sources
Systematic electronic database searches were conducted in CINAHL, MEDLINE (Ovid) and PsycINFO. From a total of 684 studies found, 24 studies met the inclusion criteria: full‐text, published in English, peer‐reviewed studies and grey literature including a focus on men who self‐harm, men aged between 18 and 65 years, and published between 2010 and 2019.
Results
Men's self‐harm was understood as being related to mental disorders, a means of affect regulation, a loss of self‐control, and a means of interpersonal communication. Self‐harm can be a positive or negative experience, and there is a wide variety in the methods that men use to self‐harm: sharp objects, injection, ingestion, without aids or riskful behaviour. Few studies reported on therapeutic interventions and/or care approaches for men who self‐harm.
Conclusion
Men's self‐harm should be understood as a complex, socially and culturally conditioned phenomenon and studied from a multitude of perspectives.
Impact
This scoping review concludes that self‐harm among men should be understood as a complex, socially and culturally conditioned phenomenon. To empower men and support their recovery from self‐harm, a person‐centred approach should be incorporated into research on the subject and practice.
Self-neglect covers a wide range of behaviours, from neglecting to care for one's personal hygiene and health to one's surroundings; this can include behaviours such as hoarding of objects and/or ...animals. As presentation of self-neglect cases vary greatly, assessment and support planning should be made on an individualised case by case basis. Self-neglect describes a Risks and Strengths assessment model which has been developed by practitioners as an aid to frontline workers across all sectors, as well as agencies holding responsibilities in Safeguarding Adults. It aims to support and structure the effective, timely and consistent assessment of risk in relation to key social and healthcare factors of self-neglect both on an individual case level and at a strategic level in contributing to community/locality needs analysis and reporting mechanisms; including annual Safeguarding Adults Board Reports.
Drawing from the author's psychological research on especially generative (that is, caring and productive) midlife American adults and on a reading of American cultural history and literature, this ...book identifies a prototypical story of the good life that many Americans employ to make sense of who they are, who they have been, and who they will be in the future. The central theme in this story is redemption — the deliverance from suffering to a positive status or outcome. Empirical research suggests that highly generative American adults are much more likely than their less generative counterparts to construe their lives as tales of redemption. Redemptive life stories promote psychological well-being, physical health, and the adult's commitment to making a positive contribution to society. But stories of redemption are as much cultural texts as they are individual psychological constructions. From the spiritual autobiographies composed by the Massachusetts Bay Puritans to the most recent episodes of the Oprah Winfrey Show, common scripts for the redemptive self may be found in religious accounts of conversion and atonement, the rags-to-riches stories of the American dream, and canonical cultural narratives about personal liberation, freedom, and recovery. The book examines the psychological and cultural dynamics of redemptive life narratives, including the role of American religion and self-help as sources for the construction of life stories and the broad similarities, as well as the striking differences in how African-American and Euro-American adults construct redemptive stories of the self. For all their psychological and cultural power, redemptive life stories sometimes reveal important limitations in American identity. For example, some versions of the redemptive self underscore the naïve expectation that suffering will always be overcome and the arrogance of seeing one's own life as the living out of a personal manifest destiny.
Feelings argues for the counter-intuitive idea that feelings do not cause behavior, but rather follow from behavior, and are, in fact, the way that we know about our own bodily states and behaviors. ...This point of view, often associated with William James, is called self-perception theory. Self-perception theory can be empirically tested by manipulating bodily states and behaviors in order to see if the corresponding feelings are produced. This volume presents hundreds of studies, all demonstrating that feelings do indeed follow from behavior. Behaviors that have been manipulated include facial expressions of emotion, autonomic arousal, actions, gaze, and postures. The feelings that have been induced include happiness, anger, fear, romantic love, liking, disliking, hunger, and feelings of familiarity. These feelings do not feel like knowledge because they are knowledge-by-acquaintance, such as the knowledge we have of how an apple tastes, rather than verbal, knowledge-by-description, such as the knowledge that apples are red, round, and edible. Many professional theories of human behavior, as well as common sense, explain actions by an appeal to feelings as causes. This book argues to the contrary that if feelings are information about behaviors that are already ongoing, feelings cannot be causes, and that the whole mechanistic model of human behavior as “caused” in this sense seems mistaken. It proposes an alternative, cybernetic model, involving hierarchically stacked control systems. In this model, feelings provide feedback to the control systems, and in a further elaboration, this model suggests that the stack of control systems matches a similar stack of levels of organization of the world.
Objectives
To investigate the prevalence and associated psychosocial factors of occasional and repetitive direct self‐injurious behavior (D‐SIB), such as self‐cutting, ‐burning, ‐biting, ‐hitting, ...and skin damage by other methods, in representative adolescent samples from 11 European countries.
Methods
Cross‐sectional assessment of adolescents was performed within the European Union funded project, Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE), which was conducted in 11 European countries. The representative sample comprised 12,068 adolescents (F/M: 6,717/5,351; mean age: 14.9 ± 0.89) recruited from randomly selected schools. Frequency of D‐SIB was assessed by a modified 6‐item questionnaire based on previously used versions of the Deliberate Self‐Harm Inventory (DSHI). In addition, a broad range of demographic, social, and psychological factors was assessed.
Results
Overall lifetime prevalence of D‐SIB was 27.6%; 19.7% reported occasional D‐SIB and 7.8% repetitive D‐SIB. Lifetime prevalence ranged from 17.1% to 38.6% across countries. Estonia, France, Germany, and Israel had the highest lifetime rates of D‐SIB, while students from Hungary, Ireland, and Italy reported low rates. Suicidality as well as anxiety and depressive symptoms had the highest odds ratios for both occasional and repetitive D‐SIB. There was a strong association of D‐SIB with both psychopathology and risk‐behaviors, including family related neglect and peer‐related rejection/victimization. Associations between psychosocial variables and D‐SIB were strongly influenced by both gender and country. Only a minor proportion of the adolescents who reported D‐SIB ever received medical treatment.
Conclusion
These results suggest high lifetime prevalence of D‐SIB in European adolescents. Prevalence as well as psychosocial correlates seems to be significantly influenced by both gender and country. These results support the need for a multidimensional approach to better understand the development of SIB and facilitate culturally adapted prevention/intervention.
Summary
Remarkably little is known regarding what people talk to themselves about (inner speech use) in their everyday lives. Existing self‐directed speech measures (e.g., thought sampling and ...questionnaires) either uniquely capture inner speech frequency and neglect its content or classify self‐reported thoughts instances in overly simplistic categories determined by the researchers. In the current study, we describe an open‐format thought listing procedure as well as a refined coding scheme and present detailed inner speech content self‐generated by 76 university students. The most frequently self‐reported inner speech activities were self‐regulation (e.g., planning and problem solving), self‐reflection (e.g., emotions, self‐motivation, appearance, behavior/performance, and autobiography), critical thinking (e.g., evaluating, judging, and criticizing), people in general, education, and current events. Inner speech occurred most commonly while studying and driving. These results are consistent with the self‐regulatory and self‐referential functions of inner speech often emphasized in the literature. Future research avenues using the open‐format inner speech listing procedure and coding scheme are proposed.
Background: Self‐harm (intentional self‐poisoning and self‐injury) in children and adolescents is often repeated and is associated with increased risk of future suicide. We have investigated factors ...associated with these outcomes.
Method: We used data collected in the Multicentre Study of Self‐harm in England on all self‐harm hospital presentations by individuals aged 10–18 years between 2000 and 2007, and national death information on these individuals to the end of 2010. Cox hazard proportional models were used to identify independent and multivariable predictors of repetition of self‐harm and of suicide.
Results: Repetition of self‐harm occurred in 27.3% of individuals (N = 3920) who presented between 2000 and 2005 and were followed up until 2007. Multivariate analysis showed that repetition was associated with age, self‐cutting, and previous self‐harm and psychiatric treatment. Of 51 deaths in individuals who presented between 2000 and 2007 and were followed up to 2010 (N = 5133) half (49.0%) were suicides. The method used was usually different to that used for self‐harm. Multivariate analysis showed that suicide was associated with male gender Hazard ratio (HR) = 2.4, 95% CI 1.2–4.8, self‐cutting (HR = 2.1, 95% CI 1.1–3.7) and prior psychiatric treatment at initial presentation (HR = 4.2, 95% CI 1.7–10.5). It was also associated with self‐cutting and history of psychiatric treatment at the last episode before death, and history of previous self harm.
Conclusions: Self‐cutting as a method of self‐harm in children and adolescents conveys greater risk of suicide (and repetition) than self‐poisoning although different methods are usually used for suicide. The findings underline the need for psychosocial assessment in all cases.
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