Self-perception is the process of observing and interpreting ones own behaviors, thoughts, and feelings, and using those observations and interpretations to form a view of oneself. It is a theory of attitude formation developed by psychologist Daryl Bem, which asserts that people develop their attitudes by observing their own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused it. Self-perception theory was initially proposed as an alternative to explain the experimental findings of the cognitive dissonance theory, and there were debates as to whether people experience attitude changes as an effort to reduce dissonance or as a result of self-perception processes. However, further research building on Bems work has concluded that self-perception theory and cognitive dissonance do indeed have different applications, with the two phenomena being complements rather than substitutes.

Self-perception is significant in interpreting ones own attitudes, such as the assessment of ones own personality traits and whether someone would cheat to achieve a goal. Self-perception is also how we see ourselves, and we dont see ourselves exactly as we truly are. How we see ourselves is a constantly evolving aspect of who we are, and it is subject to the whims of how we feel on a given day, what is going on around us, and the last thing somebody said to us. Self-perceptions of ones physical appearance entail mental images of how one looks, but these perceptions are by no means accurate representations.