Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious Consciousness is variously defined as subjective experience, or awareness, or wakefulness, or the executive control system of the mind. It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety of mental phenomena. Although humans realize what everyday experiences are, consciousness refuses to be defined, philosophers note : inner thoughts Thoughts are forms conceived in the mind, rather than the forms perceived through the five senses. Thought and thinking are the processes by which these concepts are perceived and manipulated. Thinking allows beings to model the world and to represent it according to their objectives, plans, ends and desires. Similar concepts and processes include, desires Motivation is the activation or energization of goal-orientated behavior. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but, theoretically, it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation. According to various theories, motivation may be rooted and sensations. It is a conscious mental and usually purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning Reasoning is the cognitive process of looking for reasons, beliefs, conclusions, actions or feelings, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings Feeling is the nominalization of "to feel". The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of warmth". In psychology, the word is, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul A soul is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach humans are souls; some attribute souls to all living things and even inanimate objects ; this belief is commonly called animism. The soul is often believed to exit the body and live on after a person’s death, and some religions posit. It can also be called contemplation The word contemplation comes from the Latin root templum . It means separating something from its environment and enclosing it in a sector. Contemplation is the Latin translation of Greek 'theory' (theoria). In a religious sense it is usually a type of prayer or meditation of one's self The self is a key construct in several schools of psychology, broadly referring to the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known. Current views of the self in, and is contrasted with extrospection Observation is either an activity of a living being , consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any datum collected during this activity, the observation of things external to one's self. Introspection may be used synonymously with and in a similar way to self-reflection.

As a method in science

Behaviorists Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior), is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. The behaviorist school of thought maintains that behaviors as such can be claimed that introspection was unreliable and that the subject matter of scientific psychology should be strictly operationalized in an objective and measurable way. This then led psychology to focus on measurable behavior rather than consciousness or sensation.^[1] Cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is a discipline within psychology that investigates the internal mental processes of thought such as visual processing, memory, thinking, learning, feeling, problem solving, and language accepts the use of the scientific method, but often rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation for this reason, especially concerning the causes of behavior and choice. Herbert Simon Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, computer science, public administration, economics, management, philosophy of science, sociology, and political science. With almost and Allen Newell Allen Newell was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department of Psychology. He contributed to the Information Processing Language (1956) and two of the earliest AI programs, the Logic Theory Machine (1956 identified the 'thinking-aloud' protocol, in which investigators view a subject engaged in a task, and who speaks his thoughts aloud, thus allowing study of his thought process without forcing the subject to comment on his thinking.

On the other hand, introspection can be considered a valid tool for the development of scientific hypotheses and theoretical models, in particular in cognitive sciences Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence, e.g., how information is represented and transformed in a brain or in a machine. It consists of multiple research disciplines, including psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, learning sciences, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and education. It and engineering. In practice, functional (goal-oriented To be goal-oriented is a concept that is included in the ontologies of systemics, cognitive science and engineering) computational modeling and computer simulation design of meta-reasoning and metacognition Metacognition is defined as "cognition about cognition", or "knowing about knowing." It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or for problem solving. Metamemory, defined as knowing about memory and mnemonic strategies, is an especially important form of are closely connected with the introspective experiences of researchers and engineers.

Introspection was used by German physiologist Wilhelm Wundt Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was a German medical doctor, psychologist, physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the founding figures of modern psychology. He is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology". In 1879, Wundt founded one of the first formal laboratories for psychological research at the in the experimental psychology Experimental psychology is a methodological approach rather than a subject and encompasses varied fields within psychology. Experimental psychologists have traditionally conducted research, published articles, and taught classes on neuroscience, developmental psychology, sensation, perception, attention, consciousness, learning, memory, thinking, laboratory he had founded in Leipzig in 1879. Wundt believed that by using introspection in his experiments he would gather information into how the subjects' minds were working, thus he wanted to examine the mind into its basic elements. Wundt did not invent this way of looking into an individual's mind through their experiences Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event. The history of the word experience aligns it closely with the concept of experiment; rather, it can date to Socrates Socrates was a Classical Greek philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato's dialogues are the most. Wundt's distinctive contribution was to take this method into the experimental arena and thus into the newly formed field of psychology.

Inaccessible mental processes and confabulation

Psychological research on cognition Cognition is the scientific term for "the process of thought." Usage of the term varies in different disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive science, it usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to the development of and attribution Fritz Heider argued that, as an active perceiver of the events, the average person continuously or spontaneously makes causal inferences on why the events occur. Eventually, these inferences become beliefs or expectations that allow the person to predict and understand the events that they observe and experience. As such, attribution theory is has asked people to report on their mental processes, for instance to say why they made a particular choice or how they arrived at a judgement. In some situations, these reports are clearly confabulated.^[2] For example, people justify choices they have not in fact made.^[3] Such results undermine the idea that those verbal reports are based on direct introspective access to mental content. Instead, judgements about one's own mind seem to be inferences Inference is the process of drawing a conclusion by applying heuristics to observations or hypotheses; or by interpolating the next logical step in an intuited pattern. The conclusion drawn is also called an inference. The laws of valid inference are studied in the field of logic from overt behavior, similar to judgements made about another person.^[2] However, it is hard to assess whether these results only apply to unusual experimental situations, or if they reveal something about everyday introspection.^[4] The theory of the adaptive unconscious The adaptive unconscious is a set of mental processes influencing judgment and decision making, in a way that is inaccessible to introspective awareness. This conception of the unconscious mind has emerged in cognitive psychology, influenced by, but different from, other conceptions such as Sigmund Freud's suggests that a very large proportion of mental processes, even "high-level" processes like goal-setting and decision-making, are inaccessible to introspection.^[5]

Even when their introspections are uninformative, people still give confident descriptions of their mental processes, being "unaware of their unawareness".^[6] This phenomenon has been termed the introspection illusion and has been used to explain some cognitive biases A cognitive bias is the human tendency to draw incorrect conclusions in certain circumstances based on cognitive factors rather than evidence. Such biases are thought to be a form of "cognitive shortcut", often based upon rules of thumb, and include errors in statistical judgment, social attribution, and memory. Cognitive biases are a^[7] and belief in some paranormal Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena that are understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure. Paranormal phenomena are distinct from certain hypothetical entities, such as dark matter phenomena.^[8] When making judgements about themselves, subjects treat their own introspections as reliable, whereas they judge other people based on their behavior.^[9] This can lead to illusions of superiority. For example, people generally see themselves as less conformist Conformism is a term used to describe the suspension of an individual's self-determined actions or opinions in favour of obedience to the mandates or conventions of one's peer-group, or deference to the imposed norms of a supervening authority than others, and this seems to be because they do not introspect any urge to conform.^[10] Another reliable finding is that people generally see themselves as less biased than everyone else The bias blind spot is the cognitive bias of failing to compensate for one's own cognitive biases. The term was created by Emily Pronin, a social psychologist from Princeton University's Department of Psychology, with colleagues Daniel Lin and Lee Ross. The bias blind spot is named after the visual blind spot, because they do not introspect any biased thought processes.^[9] These introspections are misleading, however, because biases work sub-consciously. One experiment tried to give their subjects access to others' introspections. They made audio recordings of subjects who had been told to say whatever came into their heads as they answered a question about their own bias.^[9] Although subjects persuaded themselves they were unlikely to be biased, their introspective reports did not sway the assessments of observers. When subjects were explicitly told to avoid relying on introspection, their assessments of their own bias became more realistic.^[9]

Eastern spirituality

In Eastern Christianity Eastern Christianity refers collectively to the Christian traditions and churches which developed in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East, Northeastern Africa and southern India over several centuries of religious antiquity. The term is generally used in Western Christianity to describe all Christian traditions which did not, some of the concepts critical to addressing the needs of man such as sober introspection, called nepsis, are specific to watchfulness of the human heart and address the conflicts of the human nous Nous is a philosophical term for mind or intellect. Outside of a philosophical context, it is used, in English, to denote "common sense," with a different pronunciation (/naʊs/), heart or mind. Also noetic Noetic theory or noëtics is a branch of metaphysical philosophy concerned with the study of mind and intuition, and its relationship with the divine intellect. Among its principal purposes is to study the effects of perceptions, beliefs, and intention with respect to human consciousness understanding can not be circumvented nor satisfied by rationalizing or discursive thought (i.e. systemization).^{[citation needed]}

In fiction

Introspections (also referred to as internal dialogue, interior monologue, self-talk) is the fiction-writing mode In literature, a mode is an employed method or approach, identifiable within a written work. As descriptive terms, 'form' and/or 'genre' are often used inaccurately instead of 'mode' used to convey a character's thoughts. As explained by Renni Browne and Dave King, "One of the great gifts of literature is that it allows for the expression of unexpressed thoughts…" (Browne and King 2004, p. 117).

According to Nancy Kress, a character's thoughts can greatly enhance a story: deepening characterization, increasing tension, and widening the scope of a story (Kress 2003, p. 38). As outlined by Jack M. Bickham, thought plays a critical role in both scene and sequel A sequel is a work in literature, film, or other media that chronologically portrays events following those of a previous work (Bickham 1993, pp. 12–22, 50-58). Among authors and writing coaches, there appears to be little consensus regarding the importance of introspection ^[11] and how it is best presented.^[12]

See also

• Phenomenology Phenomenology is a philosophical movement. It was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl, expanded together with a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany, and spread across to France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work
• Phenomenology (psychology) In psychology, phenomenology is used to refer to subjective experiences or their study. The experiencing subject can be considered to be the person or self, for purposes of convenience. In phenomenological philosophy "experience" is a considerably more complex concept than it is usually taken to be in everyday use. Instead, experience (
• Psychonautics A psychonaut (deriving from the Greek ψυχή (soul) and ναύτης (sailor), that is, a sailor of the mind/soul) is a person who experiences intentionally induced altered states of consciousness in an attempt to investigate their mind, and possibly address spiritual questions through direct experience. Psychonauts tend to be pluralistic,
• Psychophysics Psychophysics is a discipline within psychology that investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and their subjective correlates, or percepts. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, more completely, as "the analysis of perceptual processes by studying
• Self-awareness Self-awareness is the awareness of the self as separate from the thoughts that are occurring at any point in time. Without self awareness the self perceives and believes the thoughts that are occurring to be who the self is. Self awareness gives one the option or choice to choose thoughts being thought rather than simply thinking the thoughts that
• Self-consciousness Self-consciousness is an acute sense of self-awareness. It is a preoccupation with oneself, as opposed to the philosophical state of self-awareness, which is the awareness that one exists as an individual being; although some writers use both terms interchangeably or synonymously. An unpleasant feeling of self-consciousness may occur when one
• Style (fiction) In fiction, style is the manner in which the author tells the story. Along with plot, character, theme, and setting, style is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction
• Mode (literature) In literature, a mode is an employed method or approach, identifiable within a written work. As descriptive terms, 'form' and/or 'genre' are often used inaccurately instead of 'mode'

Further reading

• Boring, Edwin G. (1953). "A history of introspection". Psychological Bulletin 50 (3): 169–189. doi A digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an electronic document or other object. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata:10.1037/h0090793. PMID A PMID is a unique number assigned to each PubMed citation of life sciences and biomedical scientific journal articles. The related Pubmed Central archive may additionally assign a separate number, a PMCID (PubMed Central Identifier), normally written with a PMC prefix 13056096. http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~knutson/aaa/boring53.pdf. Retrieved 2009-07-17.
• Anthony Jack, Andreas Roepstorff, ed (2003). Trusting the subject?: the use of introspective evidence in cognitive science. Imprint Academic. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 9780907845560.
• Wilson, Timothy (2002). Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Cambridge: Belknap Press. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-674-00936-3.
• Wilson, Timothy D. Wilson; Sara D. Hodges (1992). "Attitudes as Temporary Constructions". in Leonard L. Martin, Abraham Tesser. The Construction of social judgments. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 9780805811490.

Notes

1. ^ Wilson, Robert Andrew; Keil, Frank C. (Eds.) (2001). The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS). Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-262-73144-7. http://books.google.com/?id=-wt1aZrGXLYC&printsec=frontcover. Cf. p.xx
2. ^ ^{a b} Nisbett, Richard E.; Timothy D. Wilson (1977). "Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes". Psychological Review 8: 231–259. , reprinted in David Lewis Hamilton, ed (2005). Social cognition: key readings. Psychology Press. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 9780863775918.
3. ^ Johansson, Petter; Lars Hall, Sverker Sikström, Betty Tärning, Andreas Lind (2006). "How something can be said about telling more than we can know: On choice blindness and introspection". Consciousness and Cognition (Elsevier) 15 (4): 673–692. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2006.09.004. PMID 17049881.
4. ^ White, Peter A. (1988). "Knowing more about what we can tell: 'Introspective access' and causal report accuracy 10 years later". British Journal of Psychology (British Psychological Society) 79 (1): 13–45.
5. ^ Wilson, Timothy D.; Elizabeth W. Dunn (2004). "Self-Knowledge: Its Limits, Value, and Potential for Improvement". Annual Review of Psychology 55: 493–518. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141954. PMID 14744224.
6. ^ Wilson, Timothy D.; Yoav Bar-Anan (August 22, 2008). "The Unseen Mind". Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 321 (5892): 1046–1047. doi:10.1126/science.1163029. PMID 18719269.
7. ^ Pronin, Emily (January 2007). "Perception and misperception of bias in human judgment". Trends in Cognitive Sciences (Elsevier) 11 (1): 37–43. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.001. ISSN 1364-6613. PMID 17129749.
8. ^ Wegner, Daniel M. (2008). "Self is Magic". in John Baer, James C. Kaufman, Roy F. Baumeister. Are we free?: psychology and free will. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195189636. http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic67047.files/2_13_07_Wegner.pdf. Retrieved 2008-07-02.
9. ^ ^{a b c d} Pronin, Emily; Matthew B. Kugler (July 2007). "Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blind spot". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (Elsevier) 43 (4): 565–578. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.05.011. ISSN 0022-1031.
10. ^ Pronin, Emily; Jonah Berger, Sarah Molouki (2007). "Alone in a Crowd of Sheep: Asymmetric Perceptions of Conformity and Their Roots in an Introspection Illusion". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (American Psychological Association) 92 (4): 585–595. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.4.585. ISSN 022-3514. PMID 17469946.
11. ^ Fiction writing: The importance of your characters thoughts - Thoughts on Writing - Helium - by Mike Klaassen
12. ^ Fiction writing: How to write your characters thoughts - Writing Tips - Helium - by Mike Klaassen

References

• Schultz, D. P. & Schultz, S. E. (2004). A history of modern psychology (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
• Bickham, Jack M. (1993). Scene & Structure. Writer's Digest Books. ISBN 0-89879-551-6.
• Browne & King (2004). Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print. New York: Harper Resource. ISBN 0-06-054569-0
• Gillespie, A. (2006). Descartes’ demon: A dialogical analysis of ‘Meditations on First Philosophy.’[1] Theory & Psychology, 16, 761-781.
• Gillespie, A. (2007). The social basis of self-reflection [2]. In Jaan Valsiner and Alberto Rosa (Eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Socio-Cultural Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kress, Nancy (August 2003), Writer's Digest.

External links

• "Introspection" article by Eric Schwitzgebel in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Introspection in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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