Consciousness and Cognition xxx (2013) xxx–xxx

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Consciousness and Cognition

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/concog

Commentary
Introspection: The tipping point q
Anthony Ian Jack
Case Western Reserve University, Department of Cognitive Science, 609 Crawford Hall, Cleveland, OH 44106-7119, USA

If you are familiar with the history of psychology, you will know a simple narrative that is consistently imparted to under-
graduates: Psychology started out using the method of introspection, but that method was proven to be unreliable and re-
placed by proper scientific methods. The last four decades has seen a lot of evidence and argument to support this view. First,
Nisbett and Wilson (1977) published their seminal article showing how surprisingly inaccurate subjects’ reports of mental
processes can be (>7000 citations). Then the 1980s and 1990s saw various scathing methodological critiques of subjective
measures of awareness, and work by Wilson and Schooler (1991) suggesting that introspection can impair decision making
by diverting attention to irrelevant details. Yet perhaps the most damning demonstration was reported in Science magazine,
when Johansson, Hall, Sikstrom, and Olsson (2005) asked healthy young subjects to explain why they had just picked one of
two photos simultaneously presented to them. The experimenters cleverly switched the photos, slipping the subject the non-
preferred photo as though it were their choice. Amazingly, the subjects rarely noticed the switch, and proceeded without
hesitation to confabulate reasons that had nothing to do with the actual choice they made just seconds earlier. Instead they
referred to characteristics of the non-preferred photo they were now holding in their hand. In other words, these healthy
individuals behaved much like the split-brain patients Gazzaniga reported on in the 1970s: patients whose left brain ‘inter-
preter’ confabulated stories to explain the actions initiated by their right hemisphere. This dramatic demonstration poses a
challenge to those who advocate the use of introspective reports. If even healthy subjects produce such unreliable reports,
without any self-awareness or intent to deceive, then how can we ever trust the subject? It tempts one to the view, varia-
tions of which have been expressed by many influential thinkers (e.g. Chris Frith and Daniel Dennett) which is perhaps most
memorably stated by Daniel Wegner (2002): ‘‘It seems we have selves. It seems we have minds. It seems we are agents. It
seems we cause what we do. . . it is sobering and ultimately accurate to call all this an illusion.’’ In other words, if we want to
understand the mind, then we do best to leave that task to the hard scientists, since our own construct of it looks like little
more than a fantasy.
Nonetheless, a few of us have been challenging the march of scientific imperialism, fighting hard to reintroduce the sub-
jects’ point of view (Jack & Roepstorff, 2003). We have highlighted errors in the simplistic historical narrative that is so often
taught (Costall, 2006). We have shown how the methodological problems dissolve when we target convergence between
subjective and objective measures (Jack & Shallice, 2001). We have pointed out that demonstrations like those of Nisbett,
Wilson, Schooler, Johansson and Hall involve types of report which are fundamentally different from those championed
by the Introspectionists (Jack & Roepstorff, 2002). We have pointed to the clear necessity of introspective reports for under-
standing consciousness (Hurlburt & Schwitzgebel, 2007). Yet the key point, which critics of introspective reports have always
refused to recognize, is that our experiential understanding of our own minds is fundamentally different from, and at least to
some degree incompatible with, our understanding of the mind as a mechanism. At the same time, this experiential under-
standing is no less important than our mechanistic understanding of the mind. In fact it is more important. Our experiential
perspective guides our understanding of ourselves, and serves as the compass which aids our navigation through the social
world, allowing us to see, and ultimately connect to, the humanity in others.
The more nuanced arguments have always been on our side, encouraging the greater use of introspective evidence in psy-
chological science. Sadly, however, nuanced arguments rarely win debates – especially not in a field as theoretically bereft

DOI of original article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2013.02.004

q
Commentary on Petitmengin, C., Remillieux, A, Cahour, B., & Carter-Thomas, S. (2013). A gap in Nisbett and Wilson’s findings? A first-person access to
our cognitive processes. Consciousness and Cognition, this issue. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2013.02.004.
E-mail address: anthony.jack@case.edu

1053-8100/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2013.03.005

Please cite this article in press as: Jack, A. I. Introspection: The tipping point. Consciousness and Cognition (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.concog.2013.03.005
2 A.I. Jack / Consciousness and Cognition xxx (2013) xxx–xxx

and empirically focused as psychology. These arguments may have even had the reverse effect, making us sound like we are
offering whining rationalizations, just like the subjects with which we ally. Now the worm is turning. We have finally learnt
to beat the bullies at their own game – we are hitting back not with arguments, but with hard data. We now have spectacular
hard evidence which powerfully proves there is indeed a radical disjoin between experiential and mechanistic ways of
understanding. The brain networks we use to think about experience, both our own as well as those of others, have an antag-
onistic relationship with the brain areas we use to understand mechanism (Jack et al., 2012). Thinking of the mind as a mech-
anism literally turns off the brain areas we evolved for the purposes of understanding our own and other minds, and
similarly thinking about experience turns off the brain areas we use for understanding mechanism.
Introspection bashing serves an important social function for Psychology – it establishes its scientific status. The formula
for introspection bashing works just like other forms of bullying: Often, as in Johansson and Hall, it involves a slight of hand.
You set up the subject in a situation where they are likely to have nothing sensible to say, but where the social expectations
are engineered to make them think they should have something to say. Then you ridicule them for their errors and, voila, the
scientific method is publicly seen to triumph. This is the only rational explanation for why Science magazine was interested
in publishing a parlor trick, a term which quite literally describes the Johansson and Hall experiment. It isn’t scientifically
interesting to show that people make mistakes, that they rationalize their actions, unless doing so sheds light on mechanism.
The Introspectionists recognized this more than a century ago, and designed their methods to avoid it. What is interesting is
to show how we can elicit reliable reports of experience, so providing an opportunity to build bridges between the perspec-
tive of the subject and of the scientist. This is what the experiment by Petitmengin, Remillieux and Cahour (2013) does. It
demonstrates how we can shift people into a mode which gives them the space and opportunity to truly examine their own
experience, rather than pressuring them into providing rationalizations of their actions. When this more genuine and honest
second person approach to eliciting reports is adopted, then what we see is that Johansson and Hall’s parlor trick dissolves.
Even 45 min after they last saw the pictures, the participants (no longer subjects) reliably recognized when their choice was
switched.
It was an interesting experience to act as a reviewer on the many revisions of the Petitmengin et al. (2013) paper. While I
always saw the value of this important paper, there was another reviewer who was highly critical. They felt the study did not
shed sufficient light on mechanism. In fact, Petitmengin et al.’s (2013) findings shed rather more light on mechanism than
those of Johansson, Hall et al, which were published in the top impact general science journal. Petitmengin et al.’s (2013)
make a convincing case that their method of eliciting reports is successful in getting the participant to episodically remem-
ber, i.e. to ‘re-experience’, their moment of choice. In contrast, Johansson and Hall’s method distracts participants from
engaging in this cognitive act through social pressure to justify their action and by giving them a highly salient, and highly
deceptive, cue. Nonetheless, the real significance of the Petitmengin et al.’s (2013) paper does not lie in its ability to translate
between experiential and mechanistic modes of understanding. Its real significance is that by quelling the doubters, it opens
the door for future studies to do just that. Now we can get on with the real business of psychology: creating a unified science
of both brain and mind.

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Please cite this article in press as: Jack, A. I. Introspection: The tipping point. Consciousness and Cognition (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.concog.2013.03.005