The DOI matches its Crossref record; 66 of the 67 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes.
Abstract
Evidence is reviewed which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Subjects are sometimes (a) unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, (b) unaware of the existence of the response, and (c) unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes.
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In the citing paper
“they can also often be unfaithful accounts of individuals' cognitive processes (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977).”
From Language Models Don't Always Say What They Think: Unfaithful Explanations in Chain-of-Thought Prompting (2023) · cites this paper as Nisbett and Wilson, 1977
In the citing paper
“One often is not aware of why one loves, hates, likes, or dislikes (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977; Wilson, 2002).”
From Impulsive action: emotional impulses and their control (2014) · cites this paper as Nisbett and Wilson, 1977
In the citing paper
“In addition, adolescent samples may be likely to underreport mental health symptoms [48,49]”
From Feasibility and effectiveness of a web-based positive psychology program for youth mental health: Randomized controlled trial (2014) · cites this paper as [49]
In the citing paper
“the extent to which people have introspective access to psychological processes has been disputed”
From Unawareness of Attitudes, Their Environmental Causes, and Their Behavioral Effects (2025) · cites this paper as Nisbett & Wilson 1977
In the citing paper
“It is also important to emphasize that many of these top-down influences occur automatically and without awareness (Kunda, 1990; Nickerson, 1998; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Wilson & Brekke, 1994).”
From Biased and biasing: the hidden bias cascade and bias snowball effects (2025) · cites this paper as Nisbett & Wilson, 1977
In the citing paper
“they may be unable to infer cognitive processes such as EF (Nisbett and Wilson 1977)”
From Executive Function Deficits in Daily Life Prospectively Predict Increases in Depressive Symptoms (2014) · cites this paper as Nisbett and Wilson 1977
In the citing paper
“They may, nonetheless, prefer TRI due to social convention (i.e. they use it because others seem to use it [57] or because they are accustomed to relying on it [58]).”
From Digital Identity: The effect of trust and reputation information on user judgement in the Sharing Economy (2018) · cites this paper as [57]
In the citing paper
“Considerable experimental evidence indicates that some features of human emotion and motivation cannot actually be accessed well via introspection or described in subjective reports (Nisbett and Wilson, 1978; Wilson and Schooler, 1991; Schwarz, 1999; Dijksterhuis et al., 2006; Schooler and Mauss, 2010; Greenwald and Banaji, 2017; Torre and Lieberman, 2018).”
From Evolving Concepts of Emotion and Motivation (2018) · cites this paper as Nisbett and Wilson, 1978
In the citing paper
“The perceived transparency of human decision-making stems from a belief that introspection provides direct access into the psychological processes by which people make decisions 17 .”
From Understanding, explaining, and utilizing medical artificial intelligence (2021) · cites this paper as [17]
In the citing paper
“Because selfreports can diverge from underlying cognitive processes (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977), these analyses are interpreted as complementary indicators of monitoring correspondence rather than proof of a unitary metacognitive-dependence construct.”
From College students' metacognitive awareness of generative-AI reliance: an experimental study of decision confidence and attribution bias (2026) · cites this paper as Nisbett and Wilson, 1977
Citations
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Involuntariness in Hypnotic Responding and Dissociative Symptoms
Dell, P. F. (2010) · Journal of Trauma & Dissociation · doi:10.1080/15299730903317964 · Cited by 23
“Kirsch and Lynn directly tie their theory of involuntariness to the work of Nisbett and Wilson (1977), Libet (1985), Bargh (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Bargh & Ferguson, 2000), Gollwitzer (1993), and Wegner (Wegner, 2002, 2003, 2005), all of whom report research which strongly suggests that all D ow…”
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“While some researchers argue about the accuracy of self-reported data (Ericsson & Simon, 1980; Nisbett &Wilson, 1977), self-reporting can be subject to bias because participants may not be able to assess themselves accurately, or they may interpret the survey item wording differently from what was…”
Effects of a strategic self-talk intervention on attention functions
Galanis, E., Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Comoutos, N., Papaioannou, A., Morres, I. D., & Theodorakis, Y. (2022) · International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology · doi:10.1080/1612197x.2021.1963304 · Cited by 23
“Nisbett and Wilson (1977) argued that individuals cannot accurately report on complex cognitive processes underlying their behaviour, thus often basing their responses on a priori hypotheses.”
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Laukkonen, R., Friston, K., & Chandaria, S. (2025) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106296 · Cited by 45
“…blindness (Mack, 2003; Kouider and Dehaene, 2007), visual and sensory illusions (Eagleman, 2001; Laukkonen and Tangen, 2017), as well as introspective, cognitive, and behavioral confabulations (Nisbett and Schachter, 1966; Nisbett and Wilson, 1977; Maier, 1931; Wegner, 2002; Wei-skrantz, 1986).”
The influence of prior belief on scientific thinking
Evans, J. S. B. T. (2002) · The Cognitive Basis of Science · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511613517.011 · Cited by 22
Pennington, C. R., Monk, R. L., Heim, D., Rose, A. K., Gough, T., Clarke, R., Knibb, G., Patel, R., Rai, P., Ravat, H., et al. (2023) · Psychology of Addictive Behaviors · doi:10.1037/adb0000919 · Cited by 22
“Finally, in a bid to overcome potential issues of social desirability when assessing sensitive attitudes toward substance use (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Tourangeau & Yan, 2007), we employed an indirect measure of discrimination (Jones et al., 2022) that assessed the magnitude of fi nancial rewards and…”
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King, C. A., Gipson Allen, P. Y., Ahamed, S. I., Webb, M., Casper, T. C., Brent, D., Grupp-Phelan, J., Rogers, T. A., Arango, A., Al-Dajani, N., et al. (2024) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291723003112 · Cited by 22
“First, because individuals struggle to report change in attitudes, emotions, and cognitive states (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), we simply asked adolescents to report their experiences/ states during each 24-hours over the 48-hour period rather than the change in experiences/states between the case-and…”
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Selective attention in perfectionism: Dissociating valence from perfectionism-relevance
Howell, J. A., McEvoy, P. M., Grafton, B., Macleod, C., Kane, R. T., Anderson, R. A., & Egan, S. J. (2016) · Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2016.01.004 · Cited by 20
Thompson, W. C. (2023) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2301844120 · Cited by 20
“Research on human judgment indicates that decisions can be influenced by contextual factors without the decision-maker even realizing it (16).”
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De Raedt, R., Hertel, P. T., & Watkins, E. R. (2015) · Clinical Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/2167702615584309 · Cited by 20
“Self-reports of cognitive phenomena commonly lack validity (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).”
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“While arguing against the use of verbal reports in general, Nisbett and Wilson recognized that verbal reports could be accurate in some contexts, particularly when they are elicited quite close in time to the application of the stimulus (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).”
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Gendron, M., Mesquita, B., & Barrett, L. F. (2020) · Culture, Mind, and Brain · doi:10.1017/9781108695374.010 · Cited by 20
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Nedergaard, J., Christensen, M. S., & Wallentin, M. (2021) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2021.103102 · Cited by 14
McMahan, E. A., Cloud, J. M., Josh, P., & Scott, M. (2016) · Ecopsychology · doi:10.1089/eco.2015.0068 · Cited by 15
“In addition, participants may not be consciously aware of the function (or functions) their preferences evolved to serve (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992) and may therefore be unable to articulate the instrumental rationale that underlies their preferences.”
Turtle, Task Ninja, or Time Waster? Who Cares? Traditional Task-Completion Strategies Are Overrated
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“Under these conditions, people may unknowingly act outside of their best interests and generate post hoc explanations for their behavior that align with social expectations but do not reflect its underlying cause (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).”
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Unawareness of Attitudes, Their Environmental Causes, and Their Behavioral Effects
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State and Trait Emotion Regulation Diversity in Social Anxiety
Daniel, K. E., Larrazabal, M. A., Boukhechba, M., Barnes, L. E., & Teachman, B. A. (2023) · Clinical Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/21677026231151956 · Cited by 14
“Given that people tend to recall and report behavioral activities more accurately than cognitive activities (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Vazire & Mehl, 2008), data on the behavioral, avoidance-oriented strategies may have allowed for a more reliable comparison between the two groups.”
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Dechesne, M., & Bandt-Law, B. (2019) · Cognition and Emotion · doi:10.1080/02699931.2018.1460322 · Cited by 13
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“The introspection illusion (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) is people’s tendency to place more confidence in introspective information that they can access directly (Ross & Ward, 1996).”
Kinds of Access: Different Methods for Report Reveal Different Kinds of Metacognitive Access
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Mind over body: interfering with the inner voice is detrimental to endurance performance
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Does It Make Sense to Speak of Introspection in Large Language Models?
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“Alternative accounts of introspection reject the presumption of immediacy and down-grade the notion of privileged access (Gopnik, 1993; Hill, 2009; Johansson et al., 2006; Nisbett and Wilson, 1977; Schwitzgebel, 2008; Spener, 2018).”
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“While not all states are equally accessible to introspection (Berger et al., 2016), and people’s self-reports are sometimes unreliable (e.g., Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Skinner, 1984; Schwitzgebel, 2008), introspection has been a vital empirical tool in a variety of domains.”
Krause, K. L., Stewart, K. E., Cassin, S. E., & Antony, M. M. (2018) · Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy · doi:10.1891/0889-8391.32.4.241 · Cited by 1
“(2002) make between clinical perfectionism and this population. Fifth, the quality of data collected in the current study may have been limited by the self-report format. Selfreport data collected with the RGAS could be subject to inaccurate reporting or demand characteristics. Participants may not endorse the experie…”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D.
- ORCID
- Wilson, Timothy D.
- Venue
- Psychological Review
- Published
- 1977-05
- Volume
- 84
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 231-259
- ISSN
- 0033-295X (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1471
- OpenAlex
- W2164558494
- Cited by
- 11,317
- References
- 67
- Citations by year
- 2026: 297 · 2025: 273 · 2024: 198 · 2023: 373 · 2022: 260 · 2021: 346 · 2020: 432 · 2019: 492 · 2018: 345 · 2017: 335 · 2016: 334 · 2015: 360 · 2014: 333 · 2013: 323 · 2012: 362
- FWCI
- 129.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Review (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Cognitive Science and Education Research
- Keywords
- self-reflection, introspective access, causal judgment, salience, higher-order cognition
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