The aversive nature of self-awareness

In the ancient Greek philosophy, individuals thrived for Self-knowledge. Gnothi Seauton (“Know thyself”), was described by Plato as the oldest maxim written on the temple of Delphi. More toward the east of the world map, knowing the self also appeared to be a central incentive in the hindu philosophy, with the “four great sayings” teaching one to consider the self as inseparable from Brahman, the creating god. In China, Sun Tze also emphasized the importance of knowing oneself in order to not make mistake in the course of a battle. It appears that knowing the self is something that was often incentivized as a fundamental goal in order to achieve enlightenment and avoid self-perdition.

But if so, then why are we so often inclined to avoid directing our attention toward the self? When we are commuting, we are prone to look at our phones, or listen to the radio. In every waiting rooms, magazines are always there to distract the clients. Binge eating, alcohol consumption, sex, have been described as activities that could be driven by boredom. I would even confess that writing this article is mainly driven by boredom. To what extent would we go in order to avoid being alone with ourselves? Wilson et al. (2014) observed that – merely out of boredom – we could prefer inflicting ourselves painful electric shocks rather than staying alone in a room deprived of any distraction. It would appear that we do not like our minds to wander. And thus, we would prefer aversive stimulations to looking at ourselves in a silent room.

These considerations are neatly summed up in Pascal’s sentence: “Si notre condition était véritablement heureuse, il ne faudrait pas nous divertir d’y penser” (“If our condition was truly happy, we should not divert ourselves from thinking about it”, 1669/1978).

So, on the one hand, we have self-knowledge that is the pinnacle of important schools of thoughts, be them philosophical or religious, and on the other end we have humans avoiding self-focused attention at high costs. How can it be?

According to Pascal, distractions serve the purpose of helping us to avoid thinking about inevitable death. To be sure, knowing oneself does somehow reminds us of our own mortality.

But besides Pascal’s existential consideration, it would appear that the aversive aspects of self-focus could be related to one of self-awareness’ main function. Indeed, according to some theoretical accounts, self-focus is mainly for doing.

What I am, What I Should Be, What I Would Be.

What do I know about self-awareness? How should I write about the self-focused state? What should I emphasize in this short introduction to the subject I devoted myself to for the four past years? All those questions are necessary to prepare myself to describe the importance of considering the consequences of self-focus. But crucially for my point, these questions direct me to focus my attention toward knowledge I have acquired. I am figuring myself as a naïve reader and wondering about what sort of content I would be happy to read in order to gain further insights into this topic. What I am doing right now is focusing on myself in order to pursue a goal. Without such self-focus, it would be hard to imagine an efficient goal pursuit.

Indeed, whenever I am planning an action, I must take into account a certain model of the self – that is what I think I currently am, how I work, what I can and cannot do – in order to anticipate how to achieve my main task and, sometimes, develop a new model of the self – one that I would ideally be, or one that I ought to be.

Psychologists such as Duval and Wicklund (1972) call such processes self-to-standard comparisons. Comparing an actual state to a standard. And indeed, it is widely accepted as an important driver in goal pursuit, a strong motivational source (Diel et al., 2021; Gendolla et al., 2012). For Carver & Scheier (1981), comparing one’s state to a standard is the root of all goal pursuits, and since the publication of their cybernetic TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) model, the centrality of self-focused attention has never been questioned when it comes to self-regulation. We know for sure that performances are boosted upon self-exposure, mainly because motivation would be higher under such conditions and as such, individuals would be more prone to invest efforts in a task (Gendolla et al., 2012; Silvia, 2012; Silvia & Philips, 2013). Thus, self-focused state is a highly functional state. On top of that, self-awareness also fosters reflexive emotions (e.g., pride, guilt, shame, jealousy, envy) and would appear to be linked to creativity according to Silvia and O’brien (2004). So to come back to my main question: how come self-focused attention is avoided?

In a nutshell: it could be that comparing one’s current state to a standard is not something pleasant. Such self-to-standard comparisons, by enabling feelings of failing to achieve one’s goal might foster negative affects and make individuals particularly sensitive to self-threatening information.

To be sure, I feel that I could improve my body condition by exercising more. Looking at my body for ten minutes a day could obviously motivate me to exercise more. But the downside would be that such body-checking might cause some kind of distress (Windheim et al., 2011). Hence, self-focused attention has been related to greater escape- but also failure-related thoughts accessibility (Selimbegović & Chatard, 2013; Monéger et al., 2020; Monéger et al., 2022). But individuals would be particularly prone to increased escape-thought accessibility when facing failure (Chatard & Selimbegović, 2011; Monéger et al., 2022b).

To be sure, things would become quite harsh for me if I realized that, although it is an important personal goal to be fit, and although I theoretically can change my body, despite all my efforts, my body does not change. I would then despise myself and come to think that I am worthless.

It is something truly difficult to face, the feeling that one is powerless to change. But it might even be more difficult to feel responsible for such change, yet you still keep failing. Abramson and Sackeim (1977) observed that depressive individuals where often qualified by feelings of responsibility over uncontrollable outcomes. They coined this the depressive paradox. Relatedly, Kim et al. (2011) identified a specific emotion labelled “maladaptive guilt”: the overwhelming feeling that one is responsible for things over which they have a very limited control. This emotion has been related to both depression and anxiety (Cândea & Szentagotai-Tătar, 2018; Kim et al., 2011), and it could be argued that it is one of the most unfair emotion. Such feelings of exaggerated responsibility associated to the evaluation of a limited self-control might be relevant to explain depressive states among alcohol dependent patients that are prone to self-focus (de Timary et al., 2008).

The Social and Clinical Relevance of the Self-Focused State

Self-focused state is central in most clinical contexts (Ingram, 1990). Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) might be one of the psychological disorder that interests me the most. BDD patients are characterised by an exaggerated concern over an imaginary (or a slight) defect in appearance. While studying BDD patients, Philips (2005), but also Veale (2004), underlined the odd relationships these patients have with self-focus. Some might dislike their appearance to the point of covering their mirrors in their houses (Shafran et al., 2004). But despite this clear aversion, these patients also appear to be obsessed with their appearances, often failing to avoid their self-reflection. Crucially, BDD patients exhibit biased self-focused attention with a particular attraction to the body parts they dislike the most (Greenberg et al., 2014). And this proneness to attend their despised body parts would be, according to Veale, a symptom that maintain the negative clinical conditions of these patients. They feel bad about their appearances, yet they cannot help looking at themselves and their disliked body parts, and such biased body checking fosters even more self-disgust (Veale et al., 20161).

“Ruminative vicious cycle” would be a fitting term for such psychological mechanism fostering pathological states. And even if we thread outside clinical settings, it appears such vicious cycles could maintain negative consequences associated to socio-economical deprivation. Accordingly, whereas it has been suggested that individuals from low socio-economical classes were prone to feelings of entrapment (Griffiths et al., 2012), my supervisors and I (under review in Self and Identity) observed that feelings of entrapment increased failure-words accessibility, and that this effect was magnified by self-focus (and vice-versa: feelings of entrapment magnified the effects of self-focus on failure-words accessibility). Participants reporting feelings of entrapment were faster to detect failure-related words, but this effect was stronger if those target words were cued with the participants first name (vs. a random string of letter). Independently of this entrapment effect, we also observed a main effect of name priming on latencies to detect failure-related words, hence indicating that self-directed attention alone could induce higher vigilance to failure-related cues in the environment.

The Pervasiveness of Self-Awareness

It thus appears that the ability to focus on the self, despite being a functional ability enabling goal pursuit, is also related to an array of negative outcomes. But the worst part of this suggestion is that the self is not a mundane object in one’s environment. Indeed, individuals are quite attentive to self-relevant cues: we encode more easily information when it is somehow self-related (e.g., Kim et al., 2018), we are able to maintain a constant vigilance toward the detection of self-related information (Tacikowski & Nowicka, 2010), and as soon as self-relevant information appears, our attention is automatically driven toward this information (Alexopoulos et al., 2012 ; Bola et al., 2021 ; Doradzińska et al., 2020 ; Wójcik et al., 2019). In the same way that we would be quick to detect a snake entering the room, we are reactive when it comes to hearing our name being called out or seeing our reflection on the surface of a dark reflexive screen. For instance, Wójcik et al. (2019) observed that presenting self-related picture (a controlled photo portrait of the participant) on one side of a computer screen elicited attentional capture (as indicated by faster reaction times to detect a target appearing where the self-related picture was primed). This attentional capture caused by self-relevant pictures occurred even though those pictures were pre- and post-masked and displayed for a very short duration (32 ms, participants were unable to consciously identify wether the primed picture was themselves or the portrait of someone else). Moreover, this attentional capture was also associated to neurophysiological evidence (i.e., activation of the N2pc) of preconscious treatment of the self. Such experimental apparatus (called a dot-probe task) indicating automatic capture related to self-relevant cues have been quite repeatedly replicated using either the participants’ names (Alexopoulos et al., 2012 ; Doradzińska et al., 2020) or pictures of their faces (Bola et al., 2021).

Hence, it would appear that we are physiologically equipped to detect self-related information early. It might be a matter of survival to know when something concerns us. Or maybe it is that we merely learned to quickly react to self-related information given the centrality of the self in our cultures. To be sure, during early childhood, I would not be surprised to learn that the baby’s name is one of the most frequent word uttered to his or her ears.

Whatever reasons might drive us to automatically direct our attention toward self-relevant information, it is crucial to understand what the consequences of such self-focus are. Inasmuch as our minds are heavily biased toward self-relevant cues, we should evaluate to what extent the state resulting from such self-directed attention is aversive or pleasant. And to the extent that such self-directed attention happens repeatedly throughout a mundane day, one might argue that even a small negative consequence could bear important implications. It is precisely because self-directed attention is so common, that I am interested in how it could foster positive or negative experiences.

Concluding Thoughts

Somehow, we are dealing with an act that can happen either automatically or deliberately, and that, – while being essential to self-regulation and goal pursuit – might be at the same time the cause of negative affects that could worsen some clinical outcomes. In other words, self-awareness matters, but we should watch out for backlashes.

Despite being investigated since the ancient Greece, we are only starting to grasp the mechanisms behind the aversive aspects of self-focused attention. We should thrive to find how to avoid these backlashes without avoiding the self.

Ignoring oneself is not something desirable. But surely there might be contextual elements that might foster a positive experience of the self. A context permitting something that is neither self-persecution nor indifference, but a self-compassionate setting wherein one could learn from his or her mistakes and try to improve oneself.

1: Note that in Veale et al (2016), mirror gazing was associated to increased body dissatisfaction and self-reported sadness among across both BDD patients and non-clinical samples. However this effect was more pronounced for BDD patients. These results are consistent with those of Windheim et al. (2011) who also observed a negative effect of mirror gazing for both BDD patients with and healthy patients.

References

• Abramson, L. Y., & Sackheim, H. A. (1977). A paradox in depression: Uncontrollability and self-blame. Psychological Bulletin, 84(5), 838–851. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.84.5.838

• Alexopoulos, T., Muller, D., Ric, F., & Marendaz, C. (2012). I, me, mine: Automatic attentional capture by self-related stimuli. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(6), 770–779. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.1882

• Bola, M., Paź, M., Doradzińska, Ł., & Nowicka, A. (2021). The self-face captures attention without consciousness: Evidence from the N2pc ERP component analysis. Psychophysiology, 58(4), e13759. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13759

• Cândea, D. M., & Szentagotai-Tătar, A. (2018). Shame-proneness, guilt-proneness and anxiety symptoms: A meta-analysis. Journal of anxiety disorders, 58, 78–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2018.07.005

• Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1981). Attention and Self-Regulation: A Control-Theory Approach to Human Behavior. New York: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5887-2

• Chatard, A., & Selimbegović, L. (2011). When self-destructive thoughts flash through the mind: Failure to meet standards affects the accessibility of suicide-related thoughts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(4), 587–605. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022461

• de Timary, P., Cordovil de Sousa Uva, M., Denoël, C., Hebborn, L., Derely, M., Desseilles, M., & Luminet, O. (2013). The associations between self-consciousness, depressive state and craving to drink among alcohol dependent patients undergoing protracted withdrawal. PloS One, 8(8), e71560. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071560

• Diel, K., Grelle, S., & Hofmann, W. (2021). A motivational framework of social comparison. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(6), 1415–1430. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000204

• Doradzińska, Ł., Wójcik, M. J., Paź, M., Nowicka, M. M., Nowicka, A., & Bola, M. (2020). Unconscious perception of one’s own name modulates amplitude of the P3B ERP component. Neuropsychologia, 147, Article

107564. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107564

• Gendolla, G. H. E., Richter, M., & Silvia, P. J. (2008). Self-focus and task difficulty effects on effort- related cardiovascular reactivity. Psychophysiology, 45(4), 653–662. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00655.x

• Greenberg, J. L., Markowitz, S., Petronko, M. R., Taylor, C. E., Wilhelm, S., & Wilson, G. T. (2010). Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Adolescent Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 17(3), 248–258. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpra.2010.02.002

• Griffiths, A. W., Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Taylor, P. J., & Tai, S. (2014). The prospective role of defeat and entrapment in depression and anxiety: a 12-month longitudinal study. Psychiatry research, 216(1), 52–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2014.01.037

• Ingram, R. E. (1990). Self-focused attention in clinical disorders: Review and a conceptual model. Psychological Bulletin, 107(2), 156–176. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.107.2.156

• Kim, K., Jeon, Y. A., Banquer, A. M., & Rothschild, D. J. (2018). Conscious awareness of self-relevant information is necessary for an incidental self-memory advantage. Consciousness and cognition, 65, 228-239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2018.09.004

• Kim, S., Thibodeau, R., & Jorgensen, R. S. (2011). Shame, guilt, and depressive symptoms: a meta- analytic review. Psychological bulletin, 137(1), 68–96. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021466

• Monéger, J., Chatard, A., & Selimbegović, L. (2020). The Mirror Effect: A Preregistered Replication. Collabra: Psychology, 6(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.321

• Monéger, J., Chatard, A., Selimbegović, L. (2022a). The Defeated Self: Evidence that Entrapment moderates First Name Priming effects on Failure-Thought Accessibility. Self and Identity. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2022.2099454

• Monéger, J., Chatard, A., & Selimbegović, L. (2022b). (Eye-)tracking the escape from the self: guilt proneness moderates the effect of failure on self-avoidance. Cognition & emotion, 1–15. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2022.2126441

• Pascal, B. (1978). Pensées. Gallimard (Original work published 1669).

• Phillips, K. A. (2005). The broken mirror: Understanding and treating body dysmorphic disorder. Oxford University Press.

• Shafran, R., Fairburn, C. G., Robinson, P., & Lask, B. (2004). Body checking and its avoidance in eating disorders. The International Journal of Eating Disorders, 35(1), 93–101. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.10228

• Silvia, P. J. (2012). Mirrors, masks, and motivation: Implicit and explicit self-focused attention influence effort-related cardiovascular reactivity. Biological Psychology, 90(3), 192–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.03.017

• Silvia, P. J., & O’Brien, M. E. (2004). Self-awareness and constructive functioning: Revisiting “the human dilemma”. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23(4), 475–

489. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.23.4.475.40307

• Silvia, P. J., & Phillips, A. G. (2013). Self-Awareness Without Awareness? Implicit Self-Focused Attention and Behavioral Self-Regulation. Self and Identity : The Journal of the International Society for Self and Identity, 12(2), 114–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2011.639550

• Tacikowski, P., & Nowicka, A. (2010). Allocation of attention to self-name and self-face: An ERP study. Biological psychology, 84(2), 318-324.

• Veale, D. (2004). Advances in a cognitive behavioural model of body dysmorphic disorder. Body image, 1(1), 113–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1740-1445(03)00009-3

• Veale, D., Miles, S., Valiallah, N., Butt, S., Anson, M., Eshkevari, E., Gledhill, L. J., & Baldock, E. (2016). The effect of self-focused attention and mood on appearance dissatisfaction after mirror- gazing: An experimental study. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry, 52, 38–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2016.03.002

• Wilson, A. C., Mackintosh, K., Power, K., & Chan, S. W. Y. (2019). Effectiveness of self-compassion related therapies: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Mindfulness, 10(6), 979–995. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-018-1037-6

• Windheim, K., Veale, D., & Anson, M. (2011). Mirror gazing in body dysmorphic disorder and healthy controls: effects of duration of gazing. Behaviour research and therapy, 49(9), 555– 564. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2011.05.003

• Wójcik, M. J., Nowicka, M. M., Bola, M., & Nowicka, A. (2019). Unconscious detection of one’s own image. Psychological Science, 30(4), 471–480. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618822971