Philosophy, self-knowledge, and personality in Iranian teachers and students of philosophy.

Abstract

Like psychology, philosophy apparently operates from a commitment to the belief that self-knowledge should be a goal of disciplinary and personal development. Iranian teachers and students of philosophy responded to a Philosophical Orientations Scale created for this study that assessed the possible content of a high school philosophy course, along with instruments measuring self-knowledge, need for cognition, the five-factor model, anxiety, depression, and perceived stress. As the authors hypothesized, self-knowledge predicted higher levels of a philosophical orientation, even after controlling for the variance explained by need for cognition and openness to experience. Philosophical orientations and self-knowledge were also correlated with psychological adjustment, and teachers scored higher than students on these two sets of constructs. These data supported the hypothesis that personal and disciplinary interests in an adaptive self-knowledge converge in philosophy.