How Other People Sometimes Know Us Better than We Know Ourselves

Others Sometimes Know Us Better than We Know Ourselves
Name
Institution
It is common to find out that most people believe that they are more aware of themselves than anyone else would know them. However, the complete picture of true self is dependent on both the individual's perspective as well as the perspective of others who have had an opportunity to know him or her. Although one may claim that he/she knows self in totality, the truth is that an individual's perception of his/her personality contains crucial omissions. Harry Ingham and Joseph Luft made a great contribution towards understanding how a person may not be aware of some of his/her personality traits which are so obvious in the eyes of other people (Chapman, 2003). This paper is aimed at discussing how other people sometimes know us better than we know ourselves.
Harry Ingham and Joseph Luft developed an important tool commonly referred to as Johari Window that helps people to understand their personality. Although our perception of our own personality is largely accurate, there are some blind sports in our perception. Some of these blind sports may be attributed to lack of information or could be motivated by distortions in our self-perceptions. Consequently, other people can perceive some traits in us better than we can perceive. This is truer when motivational factors distort our self-perception. According to Johari window, the claim of others to know us better is also characterized by some omissions. These omissions too are associated with lack of some information or due to distortions in their perceptions (Chapman, 2003).
An individual's personality can be presented in four different categories namely the open self, blind self, hidden self and the unknown self. We are only conversant with the open self and hidden self-categories of our personality. Other people are also conversant with our open self-area which includes our attitudes, feelings, behavior, emotions, experiences, views, skills as well as other information about ourselves. However, some of this information may remain private to us hence unknown to others. We also have the hidden self-part of us which are known to others but unknown to us. The last domain is the hidden self which neither us nor others are aware of (Chapman, 2003). It therefore becomes clear that other people sometimes may know us better than we know ourselves because they have access to our open domain and in addition, our hidden domain of our personality.
Our knowledge about ourselves may also be inadequate due to biasness in our judgment. It is common that we have the tendency of making overly charitable self-assessments. According to Friedrich (1996) we may not perceive such tendencies of self enhancement in us but we are so quick to pinpoint such tendencies in...