The proposed defence of attributing one's own unacceptable or disowned qualities to other people.
Freud's 1894 mechanism. Related biased-perception effects have empirical support, but the classic defensive mechanism and its causal interpretation remain controversial, and the specific direction of projection has not replicated well.
In practice
- Psychoanalytic mechanisms remain culturally load-bearing and lack the evidential basis of the experimental entries here.
- The specific direction of projection has not replicated well, and the durable observation is the weaker one that people are poor judges of their own motives.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation, Freud's, is defensive: a disowned quality is attributed outward to reduce discomfort. Another, better supported, is social projection, in which people use themselves as the model for others and produce the same appearance without any defence.
- In its favour
- Social projection and the false consensus effect are well documented: people do over-attribute their own traits and views to others.
- Against it
- The specific defensive form, in which the disowned trait is attributed to others, has replicated poorly, and it is hard to distinguish from ordinary self-based inference.
- Standing
- Psychoanalytic defence mechanisms remain culturally load-bearing but lack the evidential basis of the experimental entries here.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Theories of the mind, from the lab to the bookshop