Do You Really Want To Know?
Triple Self Portrait
One time honored technique of train-the-trainer programs is to video tape a trainer’s presentation for critique and analysis. Often painful for the new trainer, seeing and hearing oneself from the point of view of the student or attendee can stimulate a shift in perception and lead to improved presentation skills if the trainer can recover from the initial shock.
One reason this techniques might not work is reported at the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest blog. Apparently we have a blind spot concerning our ability to read our own body language.
“A fascinating study has shown that we’re unable to read insights into ourselves from watching a video of our own body language. It’s as if we have an egocentric blind spot. Outside observers, by contrast, can watch the same video and make revealing insights into our personality.”
Perhaps the fact that outside observers can read things about us that we are blind to goes to support the old addage that “The first thing you teach in any course is who you are.” (Once again, the Medium is the Message.)
The reviewer at the BPS suggests the answer to this is rooted in cognitive dissonance and the role it plays in hampering (in this case) self-perception.
What was going on? Why can’t we use a video of ourselves to improve the accuracy of our self-perception? One answer could lie in cognitive dissonance – the need for us to hold consistent beliefs about ourselves. People may well be extremely reluctant to revise their self-perceptions, even in the face of powerful objective evidence. A detail in the final experiment supports this idea. Participants seemed able to use the videos to inform their ratings of their “state” anxiety (their anxiety “in the moment”) even while leaving their scores for their “trait” anxiety unchanged.
Details of the study can be found here: “We’re unable to read our own body language.”
Hofmann, W., Gschwendner, T., & Schmitt, M. (2009). The road to the unconscious self not taken: Discrepancies between self- and observer-inferences about implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues. European Journal of Personality, 23 (4), 343-366 DOI: 10.1002/per.722