ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some way in which we are prone to mislead ourselves, often on basis of motives that are difficult to acknowledge. We are commonly reminded of the importance of empathizing with other people. Empathy is distinct from both sympathy and compassion. The chapter also considers what one might term "affective empathy", by which we imagine our way into another's affective situation, be it an emotion or a mood. A striking implication follows from both the practice of intellectual or affective humility, as well as that of empathizing, namely that these activities provide an opportunity to look at ourselves from an external vantage point. Whitcomb et al. advocates a characterization of intellectual humility as owning up to one's own limitations: first concerns those distorting processes to which most of us are prone, such as Fundamental Attribution Error. The second concerns awareness of any idiosyncratic limitations: perhaps the author vain about particular issues, and has a blind spot about others.
