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HOW CAN I IDENTIFY MY PSYCHOLOGICAL BLIND SPOT?
BBC Science Focus
|January 2025
In the 1950s two American psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, proposed a way of thinking about psychological blind spots - things you don't know about yourself - that they called the 'Johari Window' (the term is a combination of their first names).
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Picture a two-by-two grid, like a window.
In one quadrant of the Johari Window is all the things you know about yourself and that other people know about you. Luft and Ingham called this 'free activity', in reference to all the information about you that's freely shared and available.
In another quadrant is all the stuff you know about yourself, but that other people don't know about - you could think of these as your private beliefs or ways that you behave when no one else is around.
The other two quadrants are filled with your blind spots. One of the quadrants contains knowledge and information about you that no one knows - not you and not the people who know you. It's tricky to think what this might be, but perhaps you're changing beneath the surface, slowly shifting in your political beliefs, say, or maybe your tastes in music or film are gradually evolving.
This story is from the January 2025 edition of BBC Science Focus.
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