What makes some of us crave self-insight more than others?

My colleagues and I have been looking into what we call the ‘self-insight motive’ and we’ve found it might be more accurate to see it as akin to a personality trait that varies in strength between individuals – some people have more of it than others, just as some people are more extraverted or agreeable than others. We also delved into whether the self-insight motive actually pays off – whether people with a greater self-insight motive really know themselves better – and uncovered some surprising results.