Overcoming the illusion of will and self‐fabrication: Going beyond naïve subjective personal introspection to an unconscious/conscious theory of behavior explanation

Naïve subjective personal introspection includes the failure to recognize the confirmability of one's own attitudes and personal meanings learned explicitly from self‐examining such topics and explaining one's own behavior. Unconscious/conscious theory of behavior explanation follows from unifying the research on unintended thought–behavior with folk explanations of behavior. This article describes advances in research confirming own attitudes and personal meaning and suggests the need for applying multiple methods to overcome the fundamental attribution error, inherent cultural prejudices, and the general bias toward self‐fabrication. The discussion is valuable for achieving a deep understanding of how customers think, advancing from subjective to confirmatory personal introspection, and understanding the need to apply research tools useful for enlightening knowledge and overcoming the inherent bias within subjective personal introspection. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.