Self-Consciousness and Strategic Self-Presentation

ABSTRACT People who are publicly self-conscious have been characterized as being especially concerned about their social identities and oriented toward gaining approval and avoiding disapproval. In two experiments, it was found that “pure publics” (i.e., those high in public and low in private self-consciousness) were the most concerned about matching their deeds and words. These subjects presented themselves to a partner consistently with their publicly known, prior performance on a supposedly valid test of social sensitivity. However, they presented themselves in a uniformly positive manner if the test could be dismissed as invalid and/or if their performance was unknown. In contrast, subjects low in public or high in private self-consciousness did not display these strategic patterns and presented themselves positively in all cases. Pure publics are thus the most likely to engage in patterns of self-presentation that have been shown to maximize approval and minimize disapproval in social interactions.     

On the ethics of psychological research

Three philosophical positions on the nature of ethics were examined and contrasted within the context of psychological research: (a) teleology, which involves the balancing of the costs and benefits associated with an action as a means of developing general ethical rules; (b) deontology, which involves the rational adherence to rigid, universal rules that hold irrespective of the situation or consequences; and (c) skepticism, which involves denying the ability to apply universal rules and asserting the individuality of moral codes. Two experiments investigated the degree to which judgments of the ethicality of psychological research are affected by the consequences of the research and judge's ethical ideology. Subjects judged experiments that investigated obedience to an authority as generally less moral and more threatening to the participants' dignity and welfare when the proportion of total obedience was high rather than low. The proportion of participants (10 vs 40%) who were described as “psychologically upset” by the research did not affect moral judgments. These results were obtained across two different obedience situations (Milgram's study and a Watergate study) and different subject populations (high school and college students, males and females). As suggested by philosophers, a judge's ethical ideology determined how the perceived benefits and costs of the research were correlated with moral judgments. Teleologists weighed scientific benefits heavily, deontologists weighed participants' costs heavily, and skeptics weighed both heavily.     

A Feminist Analysis of Seventeen Magazine: Content Analysis from 1945 to 1995

This study is an extension of the contentanalysis conducted by K. Peirce [(1990) AFeminist Theoretical Perspective on the Socialization ofTeenage Girls Through Seventeen Magazine, SexRoles, Vol. 23, pp. 491-500]. Her study examined thecontent of Seventeen magazine for the years 1961, 1972,and 1985, and the impact of the feminist movement fromthe 1960s through the 1980s. The present study explored the content of Seventeen magazine in the years1945, 1955, 1965, 1975, 1985, and 1995 to determine ifthe articles that are presented have changed in responseto the feminist movement from the 1940s to the present day. These results would supportthe contention that there is a relationship between thecontent of Seventeen magazine, in terms of traditionalvs. feminist messages, and the women's movement. However, these changes are slight and still donot reflect the various roles of teenage girls.Implications for further research arediscussed.     

How to eliminate self-reference: a précis

We provide a systematic recipe for eliminating self-reference from a simple language in which semantic paradoxes (whether purely logical or empirical) can be expressed. We start from a non-quantificational language L which contains a truth predicate and sentence names, and we associate to each sentence F of L an infinite series of translations h ₀(F), h ₁(F), ..., stated in a quantificational language L ^*. Under certain conditions, we show that none of the translations is self-referential, but that any one of them perfectly mirrors the semantic behavior of the original. The result, which can be seen as a generalization of recent work by Yablo (1993, Analysis, 53, 251–252; 2004, Self-reference, CSLI) and Cook (2004, Journal of Symbolic Logic, 69(3), 767–774), shows that under certain conditions self-reference is not essential to any of the semantic phenomena that can be obtained in a simple language.     

Self-presentation: managing the impression of consistency when reality interferes with self-enhancement.

The manner in which an individual's self-perceptions affect related self-presentations was investigated. One hundred and twenty subjects believed that they would participate in a group task where their individual performance would either be known to the group or be completely anonymous. On the basis of bogus feedback from prior tests, subjects expected to perform either extremely well or very poorly on the group task; control groups received no such feedback. Before the task began, group members exchanged personal information that allowed them to vary their self-presentations. Factor analysis revealed two self-presentational factors: competence and interpersonal relations. A Performance Expectations X Anonymity interaction was obtained on self-presentational claims to personal competence. Under public performance conditions (where future public events could invalidate an unrealistically positive self-presentation), self-presentations were consistent with subjects' expectations of actual performance. However, under anonymous conditions, self-presentations were quite favorable and unaffected by expectations of actual performance. The results support an incentive model and fail to support a consistency model. Subjects seemed to desire as self-enhancing and approval gaining a public image as possible but conceded to the demands of public reality when necessary.     

Carryover effects of feeling socially transparent or impenetrable on strategic self-presentation

The authors proposed that social orientations, such as feeling transparent or impenetrable, that are created in one context can carry over and interact with elements in a different context to influence strategic self-presentation. Participants in 2 experiments wrote narratives that made them feel transparent or impenetrable. Later, they believed they would discuss problems from a social intelligence test with other group members and believed they could do well or poorly on the problems on the basis of practice test feedback. Self-presentations of social intelligence revealed the hypothesized interactions. When transparent, participants adjusted their self-presentations to how well or poorly they expected to perform, but when impenetrable, they presented themselves positively regardless of performance expectations. These results mimic effects obtained when performance is actually made publicly accessible or inaccessible, broaden the conceptualization of strategic self-presentation, and call into question long-held assumptions surrounding public versus private manipulations.     

Motives and social evaluation: Actor-observer differences in the delineation of motives for a beneficial act

Adequate social evaluation of an intentional act depends on a specification of the actor's motives, that is, the consequences he or she anticipated when performing the purposeful behavior. Prior work in experimental social psychology has often underestimated the important social functions served by motive statements, including how they influence and regulate social conduct, permit adequate social analysis of purposeful behavior, and project desired identities. Two experiments examined actor-observer differences in the delineation of motives for the positive act of helping another person. In both studies, it was found that actors attributed their behavior largely to positive motives (e.g., to help the other) and minimized nonpositive ones (e.g., to make a favorable impression), while observers' attributions showed little or no differentiation as a function of the valence of the motives. Actors' self-enhancing attributions were somewhat more pronounced when the consequences were large, and occurred under private as well as public assessment conditions. Also, a reversal of the “typical” actor-observer effect was found in that actors attributed more personal than situational responsibility, while observers did the opposite. This pattern occurred under private assessment conditions and was even more pronounced when the actors' interpretations would be public. The results suggest the presence of motivational biases in the interpretation of social events, and are difficult to explain through recourse to the standard “logical” information processing alternatives.