Uncomfortable Truths

Beliefs help humans make sense of the world, allowing us to understand our past and present and to predict and control our future. Our most elaborate beliefs are explanations of ourselves — who we are, what we are like and why we do the things we do. Forty years of psychological research reveal that humans are superb at generating explanations for their behavior but not accurate explanations. Self-explanations appear to say more about human capacity for telling a good story than the quality of self-insight. But identifying and giving up false beliefs is not so simple. Like possessions, we hold on to beliefs about ourselves long past their usefulness.