Introspection

Introspection is one of those powerful tools that we use to reflect upon ourselves and to understand the meaning and reason for our beliefs and actions.

Yet, introspection has huge flaws. We have a tendency for misattribution. We come up with reasons for our beliefs that are wrong. In fact the act of introspection can lead us astray and make us act in a way that dosnt match what we believe. There was an experiment where people were asked to rate a bunch of fine art and pop art posters. Some people were also asked to to write down why they liked each poster. Then each person got the chance to choose a poster to take home either a pop art or fine art poster. What the researchers found was that mostly everyone liked fine art. Those that had been asked to write down why they liked posters, however, rate both pop art and fine art about equal. They then rang each person and found those who hadn't been asked to write down the "why" were generally quite happy with their poster choices. While those that had reasoned about why they like posters were less satisfied with their poster choice.

This link to psych stuff is an interesting overview of the psychology behind introspection. There's also a paper here and a billion other pages by googling around. Especially worth looking at any of the "Nisbett & Wilson" works and the psychological experiments they ran. This then lead to various other research and slighlty varying ideas of introspection.

But the main point is, don't believe yourself because often your introspection will reflect hidden assumptions from the social group your in. It is important to reflect on yourself through many ways. Expose yourself to as many ideas / cultures / social groups as possible.