Agreeable fancy or disagreeable truth? Reconciling self-enhancement and self-verification

Three studies asked why people sometimes seek positive feedback (self-enhance) and sometimes seek subjectively accurate feedback (self-verify). Consistent with self-enhancement theory, people with low self-esteem as well as those with high self-esteem indicated that they preferred feedback pertaining to their positive rather than negative self-views. Consistent with self-verification theory, the very people who sought favorable feedback pertaining to their positive self-conceptions sought unfavorable feedback pertaining to their negative self-views, regardless of their level of global self-esteem. Apparently, although all people prefer to seek feedback regarding their positive self-views, when they seek feedback regarding their negative self-views, they seek unfavorable feedback. Whether people self-enhance or self-verify thus seems to be determined by the positivity of the relevant self-conceptions rather than their level of self-esteem or the type of person they are.     

Managing terror when self-worth and worldviews collide: Evidence that mortality salience increases reluctance to self-enhance beyond authorities

Terror management theory posits that one’s self-esteem and worldview operate jointly to manage mortality concerns. Accordingly, past research shows that mortality salience (MS) increases self-enhancement and worldview defense. The current research is the first to examine MS effects when self-enhancement threatens to undermine aspects of the worldview, in this case the credibility and status of worldview-representative authorities. MS led to reluctance to self-enhance following positive personality test feedback when the test was judged negatively by institutional authorities (Study 1a), as well as unwillingness to contradict self-esteem threatening feedback sanctioned by authorities (Study 1b). Mortality salient participants also rated themselves higher on valued dimensions unless it meant viewing themselves more positively than their parents (Study 2) and admired political icons (Study 3). Taken together, these results show that MS increases self-enhancement unless doing so challenges important representatives of the worldview. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Downward Social Comparison in the Minimal Intergroup Situation: A Test of a Self-Enhancement Interpretation1

We tested some implications of Wills' (1981) downward comparison interpretation of ingroup bias in the minimal intergroup paradigm. Based on a self-enhancement interpretation of ingroup bias, we predicted that subjects who expected to succeed on a task for dispositional reasons and subsequently failed would be most threatened by the feedback and hence, would engage in downward social comparison strategies. The results did not support the self-enhancement interpretation, but a number of interesting findings emerged. First, downward social comparison involving favorable comparisons of the ingroup relative to the outgroup was pervasive and not mediated by self-esteem. Second, ingroup bias was greatest when individuals' outcomes were consistent with their expectations; ingroup bias was mitigated when subjects received feedback that was inconsistent with their expectations. Third, although low self-esteem subjects rated members of the outgroup more negatively than did high self-esteem subjects, high self-esteem subjects engaged in more downward social comparison by enhancing the self relative to both members of the outgroup and their own ingroup. Finally, self-enhancement strategies were affected by performance expectations, attributions, and chronic self-esteem: People who expected to perform well because of stable, dispositional reasons and who were high in self-esteem showed the greatest tendency to engage in self-enhancing comparisons with others. This was true regardless of whether subjects ultimately succeeded or failed on the important task and regardless of whether the comparison others were members of the outgroup or the ingroup.     

Intuitions about situational correction in self and others

People's attributional phenomenology is likely to be characterized by effortful situational correction. Drawing on this phenomenology and on people's desire to view themselves more favorably than others, the authors hypothesized that people expect others to engage in less situational correction than themselves and to make more extreme dispositional attributions for constrained actors' behavior. In 2 studies, people expected their peers to make more extreme dispositional inferences than they did themselves for a situationally constrained actor's behavior. People's expectation that they engage in more situational correction than their peers was diminished among Japanese participants, who have less desire to view themselves as superior to their peers (Study 3), and among participants who were led to view dispositional attributions more favorably than situational attributions (Study 4).     

Looking on the bright side: downward counterfactual thinking in response to negative life events

Past research has found that downward counterfactual thoughts are rarely generated in response to negative life events. However, the authors suggest that under conditions in which self-enhancement motives are prominent, downward counterfactuals will be more frequent than upward counterfactuals. When motives were explicitly manipulated (Study 1), people generated more downward counterfactuals in the self-enhancement than in the self-improvement and control conditions. In Study 2, among those chronically more motivated to self-enhance (i.e., European Canadians), a manipulation of event severity led to the generation of more downward than upward counterfactuals. This finding was mediated by the desire for self-enhancement. In Study 3, cultural background and the opportunity for self-affirmation were related to the generation of downward counterfactuals in expected ways. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Expect the unexpected: failure to anticipate similarities leads to an intergroup forecasting error

People often expect interactions with outgroup members to go poorly, but little research examines the accuracy of these expectations, reasons why expectations might be negatively biased, and ways to bring expectations in line with experiences. The authors found that intergroup interactions were more positive than people expected them to be (Pilot Study, Study 1). One reason for this intergroup forecasting error is that people focus on their dissimilarities with outgroup members (Study 1). When the authors focused White participants' attention on the ways they were similar to a Black participant, their intergroup expectations changed to match their positive experiences (Studies 2 & 3). Regardless of focus, Whites expected to have pleasant intragroup interactions, and they were accurate (Study 4).     

Received and Perceived Social Support Following Natural Disaster1

Because they were participating in a concurrent panel study, 222 older adults had been asked how much help they would expect to receive in a hypothetical emergency before experiencing two separate floods. For the subsample suffering losses or injuries during the floods, Study 1 examined the accuracy of their expectations, as well as possible changes in them, as a result of help actually received. Generally, victims received much less help than they had expected to receive prior to the floods. Preflood expectation of support predicted help from kin, whereas loss and education predicted help from nonkin sources. However, subsequent expectations did not change as a result of the level of help received. Using the total sample, Study 2 examined the broader issue of whether the disaster itself affected subsequent perceptions of support. Flood exposure, as measured at both individual and community levels, was associated with declines in perceptions of support and social participation.     

Pancultural self-enhancement

The culture movement challenged the universality of the self-enhancement motive by proposing that the motive is pervasive in individualistic cultures (the West) but absent in collectivistic cultures (the East). The present research posited that Westerners and Easterners use different tactics to achieve the same goal: positive self-regard. Study 1 tested participants from differing cultural backgrounds (the United States vs. Japan), and Study 2 tested participants of differing self-construals (independent vs. interdependent). Americans and independents self-enhanced on individualistic attributes, whereas Japanese and interdependents self-enhanced on collectivistic attributes. Independents regarded individualistic attributes, whereas interdependents regarded collectivistic attributes, as personally important. Attribute importance mediated self-enhancement. Regardless of cultural background or self-construal, people self-enhance on personally important dimensions. Self-enhancement is a universal human motive.     

Decomposing a Sense of Superiority: The Differential Social Impact of Self-Regard and Regard for Others

The tendency to self-enhance has been related to a host of beneficial psychological outcomes (Taylor & Brown, 1988), although some negative social consequences have also been identified (Colvin et al., 1995, Paulhus, 1998). One operationalization of self-enhancement is derived by subtracting the rater's evaluations of others from his or her self-ratings to yield a measure of the rater's sense of superiority/inferiority, i.e., rater-derived self-enhancement. The present research assessed the psychological and social correlates of a person's sense of superiority in groups whose members worked on tasks together for 3 months. A sense of superiority was scored as a composite but also separated into its two components, self-regard and regard for others, to determine if these components of a sense of superiority have separate relationships to psychological and social processes. A sense of superiority evidenced the same self-rated psychological benefits as had been found in Western research, though it showed both positive and negative social outcomes, as assessed on an eight-factor measure of the target's personality rated by his or her other group members. Positive psychological characteristics and a stereotypically masculine reputation were associated with higher levels of self-regard; lower levels of self-rated Agreeableness, a stereotypically nonfeminine reputation, and lower liking were associated with lower levels of regard for others. Given their different functions, it is proposed that self-regard and regard for others be separated in future research and attention directed toward characterizing the behavioral profiles of those high and low in these two measures of basic personality orientation.     

In search of East Asian self-enhancement

A meta-analysis of published cross-cultural studies of self-enhancement reveals pervasive and pronounced differences between East Asians and Westerners. Across 91 comparisons, the average cross-cultural effect was d = .84. The effect emerged in all 30 methods, except for comparisons of implicit self-esteem. Within cultures, Westerners showed a clear self-serving bias (d = .87), whereas East Asians did not (d = -.01), with Asian Americans falling in between (d = .52). East Asians did self-enhance in the methods that involved comparing themselves to average but were self-critical in other methods. It was hypothesized that this inconsistency could be explained in that these methods are compromised by the "everyone is better than their group's average effect" (EBTA). Supporting this rationale, studies that were implicated by the EBTA reported significantly larger self-enhancement effect for all cultures compared to other studies. Overall, the evidence converges to show that East Asians do not self-enhance.     

Downward comparison in everyday life: reconciling self-enhancement models with the mood-cognition priming model

Two models concerning downward comparison are motivational; they predict that when people are unhappy, they make downward comparisons to self-enhance (e.g., Wills, 1981). In contrast, the affect-cognition priming model (Wheeler & Miyake, 1992) predicts that unhappy people make upward comparisons because negative affect makes mood-congruent comparisons more accessible. The authors propose that both motivational and accessibility factors influence social comparisons. A study of undergraduates' self-recorded everyday comparisons supported this view. In addition, results (a) pointed to motivational influences other than self-enhancement and an accessibility influence other than mood-congruent priming, (b) suggested that motivated and unintended comparisons may differ somewhat in their susceptibility to motivational and accessibility influences, and (c) identified challenges to both self-enhancement and priming models.     

Conceptualizing and assessing self-enhancement bias: a componential approach

Four studies implemented a componential approach to assessing self-enhancement and contrasted this approach with 2 earlier ones: social comparison (comparing self-ratings with ratings of others) and self-insight (comparing self-ratings with ratings by others). In Study 1, the authors varied the traits being rated to identify conditions that lead to more or less similarity between approaches. In Study 2, the authors examined the effects of acquaintance on the conditions identified in Study 1. In Study 3, the authors showed that using rankings renders the self-insight approach equivalent to the component-based approach but also has limitations in assessing self-enhancement. In Study 4, the authors compared the social-comparison and the component-based approaches in terms of their psychological implications; the relation between self-enhancement and adjustment depended on the self-enhancement approach used, and the positive-adjustment correlates of the social-comparison approach disappeared when the confounding influence of the target effect was controlled.     

Ideology and Gender: Observers’ System Justification and Targets’ Gender as Interactive Predictors of Citizenship Expectations

We integrate system justification and social role theory to explain how observers’ system justification and target employees’ gender interact to predict observers’ expectations of targets’ sportsmanship citizenship behaviors. In contrast with social role theory predictions, observers did not expect greater levels of sportsmanship from women compared to men. Yet observers expected more sportsmanship from women (a) when observers were ideologically motivated by gender-specific beliefs (gender-specific system justification; Study 1) and (b) when system justification was cued experimentally (Study 2). A heretofore-unexamined aspect, observers’ ideology, modifies their expectations of sportsmanship citizenship across target genders. This has implications for system justification, social role, and organizational citizenship theoretical perspectives.     

排除“每个人都优于平均水平”机制影响的自我提升研究

采用优于平均效应、自我服务归因偏向和内隐测验三种方法测量中国大学生的自我提升,并在前两种方法中考虑了EBTA机制的影响,以探讨中国人的自我提升动机及其表现形式。结果发现：EBTA机制影响显著;排除EBTA机制的影响后,大学生依然存在优于平均效应和自我服务归因偏向;大学生存在内隐自我提升值;内隐自我提升值与外显自我提升值之间存在显著正相关。     

Self-enhancement by social comparison: a prospective analysis

A longitudinal investigation showed that self-enhancement by social comparison (assessing whether people perceive themselves more positively than they perceive others) was prospectively related to an increase in self-reported adjustment, controlling for the effects of narcissism. Better adjustment, including higher self-esteem, was not prospectively related to an increase in self-enhancement. The investigation also included a diary period, allowing the assessment of intrasubject covariation between daily reports of self-esteem and daily reports of perceived challenge and daily events (positive or negative). High (compared to low) self-enhancers were less likely to report lower self-esteem under higher challenge and less likely to report higher self-esteem under positive events.     

Remembering Friends as Not So Friendly in Competitive and Bargaining Social Interactions

From children's schoolyard play to executives' boardroom negotiations, competitive and bargaining interactions are common to everyday life. Sometimes, the interacting parties are socially close and sometimes not. In this research, we examine how friendship influences memory for actions in such interactions. Dyads consisting of either friends or strangers played a competitive card game (Study 1) or the ultimatum game (Studies 2 and 4) and then recalled the interaction. We find that participants remembered friends' play as more competitive (Study 1) and less generous (Studies 2 and 4) than strangers' play, even when friends' actual play was more generous than that of strangers (Studies 2 and 4). Friendship did not affect recall for one's own play. In a workplace setting, Study 3 reveals people expect more of work colleagues who are friends than of work colleagues who are acquaintances. Study 4 tests our complete model and shows that people expect more of friends than of strangers and that this difference in expectations explains the less favorable memory for friend's actions. Our findings are consistent with a negative disconfirmation account whereby people expect their friends to be less competitive and more generous, and when these expectations are violated, people remember friends' actions more negatively than they actually were. Much research shows positive effects of friendship norms on actual behavior. We demonstrate a negative effect on people's memory of friends' behavior in competitive and bargaining social interactions. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ingroup bias,self-enhancement and group identification

These two studies integrate self-enhancement and ingroup bias and analyse the phenomena from the social identity theory and self-categorization theory. In Study 1, the subjects (N=181) evaluated supporters of two presidential candidates on a rating scale. In Study 2, the subjects (N=302) evaluated either Finnish women's and men's positive characteristics (success condition) or negative characteristics (failure condition) which might play a role in achieving equality between the sexes in Finland. Self-evaluations were conducted on the same scale as those of ingroup and outgroup evaluations. The results showed that ingroup was evaluated more positively than outgroup (hypothesis 1) and that self was evaluated more positively than ingroup (in Study 2, however, this main effect was qualified by gender). As expected, group identification did not dilute self-enhancement (hypothesis 2) in either of the studies but strengthened self-enhancement in Study 1. Hypothesis 3 stated that self-enhancement is inversely related to ingroup favouritism but the hypothesis was only partially confirmed in that the correlation was predictably negative in Study 1 but near zero in both conditions of Study 2. Finally, contrary to hypothesis 4, it turned out that high identified group members evaluated self and ingroup more independently than lows which contradicts the idea of depersonalization. Together the results would be plausible if we rejected the unidimensional conception of interpersonal–intergroup behaviour and assumed instead that interpersonal and intergroup behaviour constitute two bipolar continua. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Choosing to Enter or Avoid Diagnostic Social Situations

ABSTRACT— Three studies suggest that people control the nature of their relationships, in part, by choosing to enter (or avoid) situations providing feedback about other people's social interest. In Study 1 , chronically avoidant individuals (but not others) preferred social options that would provide no information about other people's evaluations of them over social options that would, but did not prefer nondiagnostic situations more generally. In Study 2 , chronically avoidant students (but not others) in a methods class preferred to have their teacher assign them to working groups (a nondiagnostic situation) over forming their own groups (a diagnostic situation). In Study 3 , individuals experimentally primed to feel avoidant were less likely than those primed to feel secure to choose to receive feedback about how another person felt about them. Overall, the research suggests that choices of socially diagnostic versus socially nondiagnostic situations play an important role in guiding people's social relationships.     

中国大学生的自我建构、利己归因偏好与自我增强

本研究验证了我国大学生的自我建构的个体间差异对利己归因偏好与自我增强的影响。我国大学生被试首先完成一个虚拟的能力测验,然后对其自我建构等进行测量,最后被试得到成绩反馈并进行归因与课题评价。结果表明被试表现出显著的利己归因偏好,独立型比依存型自我建构者表现出更显著的自我增强,同时独立性对自我增强起着极重要作用。本研究结果支持自我增强的文化普遍论的观点。     

Reciprocity: Choice shift in a social trap

In the present study it was investigated if choice behaviour in a social trap situation was affected by feedback about the choice of others. On top of the social trap reward structure investigated by Schroeder, Jensen, Reed, Sullivan and Schwab (1983) a bonus was added. In the individual bonus condition subjects were promised an unspecified bonus if they would obtain more points than any other group member of one's group. In the group bonus condition subjects would obtain a bonus if the own group acquired more points than the other group. As expected, in the group bonus condition one took fewer points than in the individual bonus condition. As suggested by the reciprocity explanation of choice behaviour (Liebrand, Wilke, Vogel and Wolters 1986; Liebrand, Jansen and Rijken 1986) it appeared that first choice corresponded strongly with one's expectations about the choices of others. Before the second choice and also before the third choice one received purported feedback about the choices of other members of one's group. In the conserving condition one learned that all others made a conserving choice, whereas in the consuming condition one learned that all others made a consuming choice. According to the reciprocity explanation it was found that when choice behaviour was in agreement with own previous expectations and previous choice, no choice change did occur. Shifts took place in conditions in which own previous expectations about the choices of others and own choice were disconfirmed by information about choices of others.