Introspection facts for kids

This page is about the psychological process. For other uses, see Introspection (disambiguation).

Introspection is like looking inside your own mind. It means paying close attention to your own thoughts and feelings. In psychology, it's about observing your own mental state. In a spiritual sense, it can mean examining your soul.

Introspection is closely linked to human self-reflection and self-discovery. It's different from observing things outside yourself. When you introspect, you get a special look at your own thoughts and feelings. No one else can experience your mind exactly like you do. You can use introspection to understand many mental states. This includes your senses, body feelings, thoughts, and emotions.

People have talked about introspection for thousands of years. The philosopher Plato once asked, "…why should we not calmly and patiently review our own thoughts, and thoroughly examine and see what these appearances in us really are?" Introspection is important in many areas of philosophy. It is especially known for its role in epistemology, which is the study of knowledge. Here, introspection is often compared to perception, reason, memory, and testimony as a way to gain knowledge.

Introspection in Psychology
Introspection in Religion
Introspection in Fiction
See also

Introspection in Psychology

Early Ideas About Introspection

Many people think Wilhelm Wundt was the first to use introspection in experimental psychology. He is known as the father of this field. However, the idea was around long before him. For example, German philosopher-psychologists in the 1700s, like Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, used it.

Wundt's ideas about introspection are important to understand. He was influenced by physiologists like Gustav Fechner. They used a controlled type of introspection to study human sensory organs. Wundt built on this idea. He believed introspection was the ability to truly observe an experience. It was not just logical thinking or guesses.

Wundt set strict rules for using introspection in his lab. This was at the University of Leipzig. These rules made it possible for other scientists to repeat his experiments. This was key for psychology to become a modern science. Wundt wanted everything to be very precise. He gave clear instructions for all introspection observations:

The person observing should know when the process they want to observe will start.
They must focus closely and follow the process carefully.
Every observation must be repeated several times under the same conditions to be sure.
The conditions where the event happens must be found by changing things around. Then, related experiments should be changed in a planned way. This means sometimes removing certain things or changing how strong they are.

Edward Titchener's View

Edward Titchener was a student of Wilhelm Wundt. He was also an early leader in experimental psychology. After getting his degree from Wundt, he went to Cornell University. There, he started his own lab.

When Titchener arrived at Cornell in 1894, psychology was very new in the United States. Titchener helped bring Wundt's ideas to America. However, Titchener sometimes changed Wundt's ideas when he taught them. This was especially true for introspection. Titchener taught that introspection was only for breaking down consciousness into its parts. This is called qualitative analysis. But Wundt saw it as a way to measure the whole conscious experience. This is called quantitative measurement.

Titchener was only interested in the individual pieces of conscious experience. Wundt, however, focused on putting these pieces together. Titchener's ideas later became the basis for a short-lived psychology theory called structuralism.

Common Mistakes About Introspection

Some historians of psychology have made common mistakes about introspection. They often say:

Introspection was once the main way to study psychology.
Behaviorism, especially John B. Watson's ideas, made introspection seem invalid.
Scientific psychology completely stopped using introspection because of these criticisms.

However, introspection was not the main method. This idea spread because Edward Titchener's student, Edwin G. Boring, wrote influential history books. Boring gave Titchener's views too much importance. Many other psychologists criticized introspection, including Wilhelm Wundt. Knight Dunlap also wrote against self-observation. His arguments were not mainly from behaviorism.

Introspection is still used in psychology today, but often without using the name. For example, self-report surveys, interviews, and some fMRI studies rely on people looking inside their own minds. It's often the name, not the method, that has been dropped from psychology.

Newer Ideas About Introspection

After Titchener's death and the end of structuralism, introspection was used less. Later psychology movements, like functionalism and behaviorism, rejected it. They said it was not scientifically reliable. Functionalism disagreed with structuralism's narrow focus. It looked at the purpose of consciousness and other behaviors. Behaviorism focused on things that could be measured. It criticized introspection for being unreliable and too subjective.

The newer cognitive psychology movement has accepted that introspection can be useful. But it's usually only in experiments about internal thought. These experiments are done under controlled conditions. For example, in the "think aloud protocol", people are asked to say their thoughts out loud. This helps researchers study thinking without asking people to explain the process itself.

Even in the 1700s, some authors criticized introspection. David Hume said that thinking about a mental state often changes it. A German author, Christian Gottfried Schütz, noted that introspection needs attention. He also said it cannot reach unconscious thoughts. Immanuel Kant added that introspection experiments are hard to do if understood too strictly. Introspection can give hints about the mind, but it's not enough to prove knowledge about it.

Recent research on cognition and attribution has asked people to report their mental processes. For example, why they made a choice or how they reached a judgment. Sometimes, these reports are clearly made up. People might justify choices they didn't actually make. This suggests that these reports are not always based on direct access to mental content. Instead, judgments about one's own mind seem to be inferences from outward behavior. This is similar to how we judge other people. However, it's hard to know if these results only apply to unusual experiments. They might also show something about everyday introspection. The theory of the adaptive unconscious suggests that many mental processes, even important ones like setting goals, are hidden from introspection. It's even questionable how much researchers can trust their own introspections.

One important idea is that people, including researchers, can misunderstand their own experiences. Some researchers believe that people simply cannot be wrong about their own experiences. They might think this because their own introspections feel so clear. But studies show this is not always true. For example, if too much introspection leads people to make choices they later regret, they might have "lost touch with their feelings." This means people can be wrong about their own experiences.

Another question is how introspection can be trusted if researchers don't trust their own or their participants' introspections. There are three ways to gain trust:

Look for behaviors that show credibility.
Find common ground for understanding.
Develop trust to know when to give someone the benefit of the doubt.

This means that words are only meaningful if actions match them. If people talk about strategies, feelings, or beliefs, their actions must match these statements to be believed.

Even when their introspections don't give clear information, people still confidently describe their mental processes. They are "unaware of their unawareness." This is called the introspection illusion. It helps explain some cognitive biases and belief in paranormal things. When judging themselves, people trust their own introspections. But they judge others based on their behavior. This can lead to illusions of superiority. For example, people usually see themselves as less conformist than others. This seems to be because they don't feel any urge to conform when they introspect. Another common finding is that people see themselves as less biased than everyone else. This is because they don't introspect any biased thoughts.

One experiment tried to let subjects see others' introspections. They recorded people who were asked to say whatever came to mind while answering a question about their own bias. The people convinced themselves they were not biased. But their introspective reports did not change how observers judged them. When people were told to avoid relying on introspection, their judgments of their own bias became more realistic.

Introspection in Religion

Christianity

In Eastern Christianity, some ideas for human needs, like sober introspection (called nepsis), involve watching the human heart. They also involve understanding the conflicts of the human nous, which means heart or mind. This "noetic" understanding cannot be reached by just rational or logical thinking.

Jainism

Jains practice pratikraman (Sanskrit for "introspection"). This is a process of saying sorry for wrongdoings in daily life. It also reminds them not to do it again. Devout Jains often do Pratikraman at least twice a day. Many practice it on holy days like Samvatsari, or Forgiveness Day.

Hinduism

Introspection is encouraged in schools of thought like Advaita Vedanta. To know one's true nature, a person needs to reflect and introspect on it. This is what meditation helps with. Swami Chinmayananda especially stressed the role of introspection in five steps. He wrote about these steps in his book "Self Unfoldment."

Introspection in Fiction

Introspection (also called Rufus dialogue, interior monologue, or self-talk) is a way of writing in fiction. It is used to show a character's thoughts. As Renni Browne and Dave King explain, "One of the great gifts of literature is that it allows for the expression of unexpressed thoughts…"

According to Nancy Kress, a character's thoughts can make a story much better. They can make characters deeper, increase tension, and make the story's scope wider. Jack M. Bickham says that thought is very important in both a scene and a sequel.