Chicago Booth Review Podcast Is Self-Awareness Always a Good Thing?

Shereen Chaudhry: Because one question that might come up with this is like, well then why does it look good when somebody's like, oh, I'm a bad dancer, or I'm really bad at math, it's expressing awareness of a flaw. Or I'm really lazy. It can be funny, right? But the difference is whether it impacts other people negatively.

Hal Weitzman: We typically think of self-awareness as being a good thing, but if someone behaves badly and is aware that they're behaving badly, is that worse than if they're blissfully unaware? Welcome to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, where we bring you groundbreaking academic research in a clear and straightforward way. I'm Hal Weitzman, and today I'm talking with Chicago Booth's Shereen Chaudhry about her research on the effects of self-awareness. When should we express self-awareness, and when should we convey that we weren't as self-aware as should have been? Shereen Chaudhry, welcome back to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast.

Shereen Chaudhry: Great to be here.

Hal Weitzman: We had such fun talking with you last time about apologizing that we had to be back to talk about self-awareness. What got you interested in this particular topic?

Shereen Chaudhry: So my co-author, Kristina Wald, who is a PhD student here, we were both very interested in self-awareness as something we observe in other people a lot and care about, especially when it's absent. But a lot of the work on perceiving other people actually focused on other traits like warmth and competence and morality. And it seemed like there was kind of missing piece, not looking at self-awareness, like what can we learn from others by judging their self-awareness?

So another thing is, for instance, we know that self-awareness seems to be a very positive thing in most cases. We like people who seem to be self-aware. There's even a saying, well, at least he's aware of it, when somebody's aware of their flaws. I think comedians who are really self-aware, I think it's a requirement to be self-aware as a comedian. They often break the fourth wall showing self-awareness, and that's part of why what they do is it works. But we were also wondering whether there are cases where self-awareness could be bad, knowing that somebody is self-aware is not a good thing, and that's kind of where we started this investigation.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Yeah. As you say, it's counterintuitive, and the experiments that you devised for this is so fun. You must tell us about them.

Shereen Chaudhry: What we did to kind of start off this paper, we recruited people off the streets of Chicago. So the University of Chicago has this really nice lab downtown called Mindworks. It's a sort of a museum/lab where people can come and learn about behavioral science and then take studies. So we would bring them in, and then we would tell them, "Oh, we're pairing you up with another participant, and one person is going to be the storyteller and the other person is going to be the listener." Now, in reality, the listener was always a confederate or a research assistant who is in on the game and who would behave in a very particular way according to our experiment.

And so what we asked people to do, participants, was to be the storyteller and to tell us about a challenging experience in their life. So tell their partner, the confederate, about a challenging experience, and the other person was going to listen. And they were going to rate this person on active listening.

Now, we had two conditions. In half the pairs, we told the confederate that they should actively listen. So that means nodding their head, making eye contact, giving feedback. Yes, that's interesting. Asking follow-up questions. The other half, we told them to be a very poor listener. Basically the opposite of all that. Don't ask questions, look away, fiddle with things, and so forth. It was really fun to watch the videos of that condition.

But then we crossed that with another set of two conditions where we had the listeners were going to either express that they were aware of being an active listener or not aware of being it, or aware of being a poor listener or unaware of being a poor listener. So the participants would tell their story to this active or inactive listener. Afterwards, they would rate the confederate on their active listening. We would then tell them, okay, we gave your partner a survey. We asked them how they came across, how they think they came across to you. Did they come across as a good listener or a bad listener?

So in the high self-awareness conditions, what that looked like was the active listeners, so the participant would get a piece of paper that had their partner's responses on it. And they would learn, oh, this person knows that they were a good listener, or this person knows they were a bad listener. In the low self-awareness, they would get the sheet telling them that the active listener thought they were a poor listener, or the poor listener thought they were a really good listener. And so afterwards, then the participant rated the confederate, how much do you like this person? How competent are they? And how much would you trust them?

And what we find is that for active listeners, they prefer the people who know they're active listeners. So self-awareness is really good when you're doing something nice, beneficial to the other person. So that kind of reflects what our intuition was. Self-awareness is this really great trait. However, for the poor listeners, people seem to prefer the low self-awareness poor listener. So if somebody was a poor listener and they were like, "Yeah, I know that I came across as a poor listener," people did not like that as much as when they said, "Oh, I think I was a really good listener."

So what does that tell us? That tells us that people are inferring intent towards other people from self-awareness. So essentially, if I'm aware of doing something nice, that makes me look like a really good person. If I'm aware of doing something bad, it makes me look like a very bad person. Essentially, it would be better to look like I don't realize I'm being mean or having a negative effect on other people. It looks bad to be aware that you're having this negative effect on other people. It'd be much better for you to pretend like you didn't know, or to really not know or to at least pretend like you don't know. And so self-awareness, we find, basically amplifies the effect of good and bad behavior on people's perception.

Hal Weitzman: That's fascinating. So if I'm aware of my bad behavior, I should pretend that I'm not aware.

Shereen Chaudhry: Right.

Hal Weitzman: Is that the conclusion?

Shereen Chaudhry: Yes. [inaudible 00:06:53] awareness.

Hal Weitzman: That makes sense. I was just thinking when you're talking, I was just at the airport the other day and someone was smoking right in front of my kids as we were waiting for a taxi. We couldn't really move. And I was thinking, that person must know what they're doing because they themselves actually were pushing a buggy and had kids themselves. So I was thinking, this is quite an odd situation. But I absolutely felt the feeling you're talking about. That makes perfect sense.

The other part I'm intrigued by, so if I were listening, and I'm deliberately doing it rather than naturally doing it because I'm just naturally a good listener, but I'm not really aware that I'm consciously trying, that's somehow better. Goes against the wisdom of one direction. You don't know you're beautiful, that's what makes you beautiful. But if you're aware, then somehow you are-

Shereen Chaudhry: Well, this is an interesting point that came up a lot when we would give talks on this paper that, oh, it seems like you can be strategic about doing something good, and that would be bad. You're being manipulative. But it seems like people don't treat being aware of, at least this basic self-awareness, of being aware that you're being nice as manipulative or strategic. They might do so in certain cases where there's a reason to think that manipulation can be at play, where you're listening really carefully to your boss, or to somebody that you like, or are trying to become friends with. But people seem to not make this inference that the other person's being manipulative.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. I should have asked you before, did you have a hypothesis? Were you surprised by the results?

Shereen Chaudhry: No, we weren't. We had a theory going in, this is not a fun explanation, but it's like we really thought carefully about what we expected to happen. And so we expected there to be this interaction where it's going to amplify what you think of a good listener, and it's going to amplify what you think of a bad listener.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. So self-awareness, it can be good, but it can obviously be bad. That makes sense. This makes me think of the classic interview question. Because if you do something bad, and then you're trying to correct it, that's seen as a virtue. I used to be terrible listener, but I'm really working on that, Shereen, and somehow I'm almost better than if I were naturally a good listener anyway.

Shereen Chaudhry: Yes, that's right. So what I think is going on there is that you're not expressing self-awareness at the time that you're doing the bad thing. You're expressing that after the fact I'm aware of it and I'm trying to correct that. Or that it's something you kind of do automatically, or don't have as much control over. Then again, it's not driven by bad intent, it's driven by a lack of control or willpower or something. And so people don't make as negative attributions.

So for instance, if I was to give advice to somebody about how to use self-awareness, maybe in a feedback at a job, with your boss or something, self-awareness does look good, but using it kind of like forward-looking. I realized that maybe my work wasn't as good in the past, it's something I'm working on, or I don't pay attention to this specific detail. It's really unintentional. I'm aware of it though, and I'm trying to change it going forward. And that sends a different signal than if you're aware of doing something in the moment.

And the other element is whether it's a thing that affects other people negatively. Because one question that might come up with this is like, well then why does it look good when somebody's like, oh, I'm a bad dancer, or I'm really bad at math. It's expressing awareness of a flaw. Or I'm really lazy. It can be funny. But the difference is whether it impacts other people negatively. So we have an experiment where we ask people to read a scenario about a situation where a coworker is aware of being lazy on a project, but in one condition, they don't work with that coworker, and in another condition, they're on a project with that coworker. And so the coworker is like, "Yeah, I know I'm being lazy."

So in the second case, that laziness is negatively affecting you, and the fact that they're aware of it means they should change their behavior, otherwise they clearly have negative, like they don't care about me or my outcomes. And so if the bad behavior has negative impact on other people, then that's when this is at play. Otherwise, it could flip and have this positive effect that, okay, at least they're aware of their flaws.

The other thing that matters is whether it's something they have control over, as I was saying. You can say, this is something that's out of my control. I need more willpower to fix it. So we had a study where we told people to imagine being at a concert, and there's somebody in front of you and they're blocking your view. In one condition, they're blocking your view because they stood up out of their seat. In another condition, they're blocking your view because they're just tall. They're still sitting down, but they're just very tall. And in the latter case, self-awareness did not have as negative of an effect as in the former case, where they have control over whether they're blocking the person's view. If you're causing a negative impact, but you don't have control over causing that negative impact, then people penalize you less for the self-awareness.

Hal Weitzman: That's interesting. You wouldn't expect them to sort of make themselves smaller in order to let you see.

Shereen Chaudhry: Well, you might. It probably differs across-

Hal Weitzman: As a short person-

Shereen Chaudhry: ... individuals.

Hal Weitzman: ... this is a big deal for me.

Shereen Chaudhry: There might differences in how much control people think others have over their behavior and things.

Hal Weitzman: If you're enjoying this podcast, there's another University of Chicago Podcast Network show that you should check out. It's called Not Another Politics Podcast. Not Another Politics Podcast provides a fresh perspective on the biggest political stories, not through opinions and anecdotes, but through rigorous scholarship, massive data sets, and a deep knowledge of theory. If you want to understand the political science behind the political headlines, then listen to Not Another Politics Podcast, part of the University of Chicago Podcast Network.

Shereen, in the first half, we talked about self-awareness and how self-awareness can be a negative thing, even though we typically don't think of it in that way, and how you might mitigate some of that, showing that you've been working on it, improving it. You've also got related research that talks about the credibility dilemma. Tell us about that and tell us how it feeds into self-awareness.

Shereen Chaudhry: So the credibility dilemma describes situations where you feel that somebody doesn't, you don't have credibility on a certain thing. Maybe people don't think that you have athletic ability in a certain domain, or you're not very good at math, but you want to convince them otherwise because you do have evidence of that. You won some math award, you performed really well in a tournament, and you want to reveal this information.

So we find, first of all, we survey people, and find that this is a very common situation that people face at work. They want to basically brag or self-promote about something, but it's to somebody they think won't necessarily believe them because the person has this prior impression about them being bad or low ability on that domain.

And so the question is, how can you brag or self-promote in these situations and have it be believed or credible? And one thing we asked is we were wondering whether expressing self-awareness about the other person's prior impression would help them see it as more credible. So I know you think I'm not that good, or I know it seems like I'm not the best runner, but I have run several marathons, and actually one time I won a medal. So could that help, expressing self-awareness? On the one hand, it could just bring attention-

Hal Weitzman: Self-awareness about the other person's perception of your abilities.

Shereen Chaudhry: Yes, that's right. That's right. On the one hand, it could backfire, right? You're bringing attention to the fact that the other person has this negative impression. So it could be a very risky strategy. On the other hand, it shows that you have this perspective taking ability, which is a very valuable thing, and is one reason we like self-awareness so much in other people. And so that's kind of the idea behind this paper is can you address the credibility dilemma by showing self-awareness about the other person's perspective?

Hal Weitzman: Okay. And so what you find is that-

Shereen Chaudhry: You can.

Hal Weitzman: ... you can.

Shereen Chaudhry: Yes. Yes. So these credibility disclaimers, using credibility disclaimer saying, I know I don't seem that smart, or it may seem strange or surprising that this is the case, but, and then the information that you want to share that could make you look better. That that looks better, makes a person seem more likable and makes their statement seem more credible than if they just say the statement without a credibility disclaimer.

Hal Weitzman: So this is related because, again, if I'm not self, if I'm... Oh, hang on. Is it related? So if I'm not self-aware, and I just say, look, do you know I won a medal in for my marathon running, then I'm not being self-aware. So that's less credible than if I say, I know that I haven't run very well the last few years, but actually I used to be pretty good.

Shereen Chaudhry: Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Hal Weitzman: All right. So that's how I gained credibility. I mean, again, this is making me think of this thing about the interview question about what's your biggest weakness, and me saying something I used to be bad at and now I'm good at, or I'm working on it.

Shereen Chaudhry: Well, here's another example that I think might speak more to the MBA audience that we have. I think a lot of our students want to imagine themselves pitching new startup ideas to VC firms, private equity. And some of them may not have very much experience. And it may be very clear to the investors that this person doesn't have very much experience, but maybe they think they have enough experience or a specific skill set that is valuable, and they kind of have to say that in a credible way. They could say, I know it seems like I might not have that much experience because I've only worked in my family business, but I've actually spent this many hours working on accounting principles, or whatever it is that is relevant. And that could be perceived better and more credible than just saying it without the acknowledgement.

Hal Weitzman: It also makes me think of this conversational gambit where someone says, look, I'm not an expert, but, and then you come out with some genius sort of savant type idea. I don't know anything about AI, but what about this? And suddenly, I'm a genius, but I'm also self-aware.

Shereen Chaudhry: Right. So I think that what you're describing conveys self-awareness, and I think it probably also serves this dual function, which the credibility disclaimers do as well, which is that if you just say something about AI, and you write on completely different topics, then I, as the listener, immediately am like, well, who are you to say that? Why are you saying that? I have this kind of defensive reaction. And by you saying I'm not an expert, well, now that disarms that defensive reaction. Or you just saying, I won a medal in-

Hal Weitzman: [inaudible 00:18:14]. I know nothing.

Shereen Chaudhry: Well, it's like at least he knows.

Hal Weitzman: Here's something.

Shereen Chaudhry: Right? At least he knows. Or you won a medal in marathon running. And I'm just like, "Yeah, I've seen you run. You can't run." But if you say, I know, I don't seem, then I can't say that. It's deflated what I could say. Again, I think that that's why self-awareness often works for comedians. They make fun of themselves before somebody else can. It deflates insults.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Well, Shereen Chaudhry, I don't know a lot about psychology, but this has been a fascinating conversation. I've enjoyed it. I hope you have as well.

Shereen Chaudhry: I have too.

Hal Weitzman: Thank you very much for coming on the Chicago Booth Review Podcast.

Shereen Chaudhry: Thank you so much.

Hal Weitzman: That's it for this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, part of the University of Chicago Podcast Network. For more research, analysis, and insights, visit our website at chicagobooth.edu/review. When you're there, sign up for our weekly newsletter so you never miss the latest in business-focused academic research.

This episode was produced by Josh Stunkel. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe, and please do leave us a five-star review. Until next time, I'm Hal Weitzman. Thanks for listening.