Knowing vs. Knowing

The British Psychological Society asked a bunch of psychologists to describe "one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves." Many of the responses are like these:

David Buss: One nagging thing that I still don’t understand about myself is why I often succumb to well-documented psychological biases, even though I’m acutely aware of these biases. One example is my failure at affective forecasting, such as believing that I will be happy for a long time after some accomplishment (e.g. publishing a new book), when in fact the happiness dissipates more quickly than anticipated.

Norbert Schwartz: One nagging thing I don’t understand about myself is why I’m still fooled by incidental feelings. Some 25 years ago Jerry Clore and I studied how gloomy weather makes one’s whole life look bad -- unless one becomes aware of the weather and attributes one’s gloomy mood to the gloomy sky, which eliminates the influence. You’d think I learned that lesson and now know how to deal with gloomy skies. I don’t, they still get me.

In other words, being an expert in how the mind works doesn't help much in making your own mind work better.