The Johari window is a technique created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 in the United States, used to help people better understand their mental instability. It is used primarily in self-help

Self-help

Self-help, or self-improvement, is a self-guided improvement—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis. There are many different self-help movements and each has its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders...

 groups and corporate settings as a heuristic

Heuristic

Heuristic refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution, where an exhaustive search is impractical...

 exercise.

When performing the exercise, subjects are given a list of 56 adjectives and pick five or six that they feel describe their own personality.