PSYC 215 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Bus Driver, Hindsight Bias, Timothy Wilson
16 May 2012
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Document Summary
The self is an important tool with which the human organism makes its way through human society and thereby manages to satisfy its needs. To be effective at this, the human self has taken shape in a way that is marked by some deep, powerful drives. Among these drives is a strong concern with how one is perceived by others. This drive mostly serves the goal of survival or reproduction. However, it is human tendency to care broadly about what other people think of you; even people that you do not depend on for survival or reproduction. Some brain researchers claim that the self is an illusion, mostly because they cannot find an area of the brain that corresponds to the self. But we know the self exists because of how we act in our everyday lives. Without the self, how would we know who we were in relation to others, and who, for example, a bill belongs to.
