Self-knowledge

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Self- knowledge or mirror self-recognition (MSR) is the ability of a living being to recognize itself in the mirror . This ability is considered to be an indication that the living being is self-aware, that is, can differentiate its own being from that of other conspecifics. Self-knowledge is considered a foundation of self-confidence .

In the classic experimental setup, a conspicuous mark is made on the body of the test subject. Living beings with self-knowledge recognize themselves in the mirror and then try to examine or remove the mark on their own body (and not on the mirror image). Living beings without self-knowledge cannot provide this transfer service; they either find the mirror image uninteresting or behave towards it like a conspecific.

People develop this ability around the first to the second year of life, while babies do not yet have any self-knowledge.

So far, self-knowledge has been considered a quality that, besides humans, only the great apes chimpanzees and orangutans have. It is now known that dolphins and magpies can also have this ability.