Reading I NEED HELP ON MY HOMEWORK

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 1 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Print Publication Date: Feb 2012 Subject: Psychology, Social Psychology Online Publication Date: Sep 2012 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399820.013.0017

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives  and

The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation (1 ed.) Edited by Richard M. Ryan

Abstract and Keywords

People desire to maximize the positivity, and minimize the negativity, of their self-views. The tendency to exalt one's virtues and soften one's weaknesses, relative to objective cri­ teria, manifests itself in many domains of human striving. We focus illustratively on three strivings: the self-serving bias (crediting the self for successes but blaming others or situ­ ations for failures), the better-than-average effect (considering the self superior to the av­ erage peer), and selective self-memory (disproportionately poor recall for negative self- relevant information). Nonmotivational factors (e.g., expectations, egocentrism, focalism, individuated-entity versus aggregate comparisons) are not necessary for the emergence of these strivings. Instead, the strivings are (at least partially) driven by the self-enhance­ ment and self-protection motives, as research on self-threat and self-affirmation has es­ tablished. The two motives serve vital functions: They confer benefits to psychological health and psychological interests (e.g., goal pursuit).

Keywords: self-enhancement, self-protection, self-serving bias, better-than-average effect, self-memory, psycholog­ ical health

Introduction Individuals routinely appraise their qualities, performance, behavior, and feedback they receive from others. They also choose activities in which to engage, allocate credit or blame for dyadic and group task outcomes, recollect events from their lives, use self- knowledge to understand other people, and judge the value of their relationships or the groups to which they belong. We suggest, in the current chapter, that these and similar domains of human functioning can be motivated, and we proceed to discuss the role of two pivotal motives: self-enhancement and self-protection.

Self-enhancement and self-protection are instances of self-evaluation motives (Sedikides & Strube, 1995), which themselves are a class of the hedonic or pleasure/pain drive (Al­ icke & Sedikides, 2011a). Self-evaluation motives guide processing and appraisal of self- relevant information, broadly defined (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997). Self-

Constantine Sedikides Mark D. Alicke

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 2 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

enhancement in particular refers to the desire and preference for maximizing the positivi­ ty of self-views, whereas self-protection refers to the desire and preference for minimiz­ ing the negativity of self-views. Self-enhancement and self-protection are reflected in indi­ viduals’ tendency to exaggerate their strengths and to underrate their weaknesses more so than objective standards would warrant. The two motives are also reflected in individu­ als’ tendency to construe or remember events in a manner that places their self-attributes in the most favorable light that is credible to themselves and to others (Sedikides & Gregg, 2003). Finally, the motives energize and guide attributions, task involvement, and behavior. In the long run, self-enhancement and self-protection foster psychological health (Sedikides, Gregg, & Hart, 2007) and assist in the advancement (p. 304) and pro­ tection of psychological interests (e.g., goals; Alicke & Sedikides, 2009).

We begin our excursion into self-enhancement and self-protection with a brief historical overview. We then provide key examples of motive instantiation, what we call self-en­ hancement and self-protection strivings (Alicke & Sedikides, 2011b; Sedikides & Gregg, 2008). These striving are the self-serving bias, the better-than-average effect, and selec­ tive self-memory. In discussing each of these strivings, we consider the perennial “cogni­ tion-motivation” debate. We acknowledge, of course, that cognition and motivation are closely intertwined (Kruglanski, 1989; Kunda, 1990; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987). Yet we aim to provide evidence that the strivings are motivated and, in particular, that they cannot be exclusively accounted for by the vagaries of information processing (Sedikides, 2012). Next, we discuss the functional benefits of the two motives: promotion of psycho­ logical health and psychological interest. We conclude with a consideration of issues wor­ thy of further empirical attention.

A Historical Overview The seeds for modern theorizing on self-enhancement and self-protection motivation were sown in classical times. The Cyrenaics (founder: Aristippus; Tatarkiewicz, 1976) and Epi­ cureans (founder: Epicurus; De Witt, 1973) thought that hedonism drives human action. They observed that people want to feel good, or avoid feeling bad, about themselves, and they further proposed that humans want and pursue pleasurable experiences, while de­ testing and eschewing unpleasant ones. Notably, Demosthenes, the orator of antiquity, re­ marked insightfully on self-deception: “Nothing is so easy as to deceive oneself; for what we wish, we readily believe.”

The role of hedonism as the master motive receded while rationalism was in ascendance. This philosophical school, building on Plato's ideas (Bloom, 1991), depicted an objective reality that all individuals with correct understanding (“orthodoxy”) could readily discern (Kenny, 1986; Loeb, 1981). Continental rationalists (Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza), for ex­ ample, opined that selfish, irresponsible, or malicious behavior was due to flawed knowl­ edge. Erudition would cure personal and social ills such as immorality or the prioritiza­ tion of personal over societal goals.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 3 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

The pendulum swung back with Renaissance philosophers (Macfarlane, 1978) and the British empiricists. Mandeville (1705) argued that humans overvalue themselves and ex­ pect others to do the same. Hobbes (1651/1991) believed that behavior was driven by the unbridled pursuit of pleasure rather than by a failure to grasp a priori truths. “Men [are] vehemently in love with their own opinions” (p. 48), he proclaimed. The position that hu­ mans have an excessively positive view of themselves and of the objects (e.g., persons, possessions) associated with them was reflected in the utilitarianism of Bentham (1789/1982) and John Stuart Mill (1863/2004), the forewarning of Nietzsche (1886/1972) for the power of pride to rewrite memory (Maxim 68, p. 72), and the contemplations of La Rochefoucauld (1678/1827), Schopenhauer (1844/1996), and Freud (1905/1961a) on the curious human capacity for self-deception.

William James (1890) was the first psychologist to systematize various philosophical ac­ counts and propose a unifying principle. He observed that thinking about one's self gives rise to the emotions of “self-complacency and self-dissatisfaction” (p. 305). He also re­ marked on “social self-seeking,” people's persistent concern with the achievement of tan­ gible successes and public acclaim. “Each of us,” James stated, “is animated by a direct feeling of regard for his [self]” (p. 308). He proceeded to define the self (empirical “me”) as a repository of ego-relevant matters. James’ key animating principle, self-enhance­ ment, found fertile ground in Gordon Allport's (1937) theorizing. He advocated that hu­ mans have a need for self-positivity, and he also regarded self-protection as “nature's el­ dest law.” Heider (1958) similarly argued that subjective needs, desires, and preferences partially serve to maintain an individual's positive outlook. Rogers (1961) proposed the construct of positive self-regard, a form of self-appreciation achieved by satisfying one's own, rather than others’, standards and expectations. In the meantime, Sigmund Freud (1915/1961b, 1923/1961c, 1926/1961d) and Anna Freud (1936/1946) were pioneering the analysis of defense mechanisms. The scientific study of self-enhancement and self-protec­ tion was born.

Instantiations of Self-Enhancement and Self- Protection How have scientists approached self-enhancement and self-protection? They have done so through experimental and correlational investigations of over 60 instantiations (or imple­ mentations) of the motives. These marks of self-enhancement and self-protection have re­ cently been summarized through factor-analytic techniques, with both Western (Hepper, Gramzow, & Sedikides, 2010) and East-Asian (Hepper, Sedikides, & Cai, in press) sam­ ples, into four factors: positivity embracement, defensiveness, favorable construals, and self-affirming reflections.

(p. 305) Positivity embracement reflects the acquisition of positive feedback (e.g., self- serving attributions for success), whereas defensiveness reflects the protection of self from threat (e.g., self-serving attributions for failure). A striving that exemplifies both fac­ tors is the self-serving bias, the tendency to credit the self for successes but to blame oth­

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 4 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

ers (e.g., dyadic partners, ingroup, situations) for failures. Favorable construals reflects flattering portrayals of the self in the social world. An exemplary striving here is the bet­ ter-than-average effect, the tendency to regard the self as superior to others in many do­ mains of functioning. Finally, self-affirming reflections refers to securing favorable, or by­ passing unfavorable, self-views and outcomes. A key mechanism through which this process is attained is selective self-memory, or disadvantageous recall for negative as op­ posed to positive feedback.

Next we review literature on the self-serving bias, the better-than-average effect, and se­ lective self-memory. Although we fully endorse the close interweaving of cognition and motivation (Kruglanski, 1989; Kunda, 1990; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987), we venture to make the case for motivation. That is, we attempt to document that this class of purpo­ sive goal strivings cannot be accounted for purely and exclusively by nonmotivational an­ tecedents. Instead, each striving is, at least in part, an outcome of the self-enhancement and self-protection motives in action.

The Self-Serving Bias

“If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, none will be at fault,” Murphy's law advocates. Weiner's (1972) attributional analysis of achievement motivation documented this pattern. Actors attribute their successful outcomes to internal factors (e.g., ability, effort, discipline) and their unsuccessful outcomes to external factors (e.g., bad luck, task difficulty, harsh course instructor). More generally, assuming the lion's share of responsibility for desirable events and denying responsibility or displacing it to external causes for undesirable events has come to be known as the self-serving bias (SSB; Miller & Ross, 1975).

The SSB is a robust and pervasive phenomenon. It is evident among university students (Zuckerman, 1979), athletes (De Michele, Gansneder, & Solomon, 1998), and drivers (Ste­ wart, 2005). It occurs in the arena of interpersonal influence (Arkin, Cooper, & Kolditz, 1980), naturalistic sports (Mullen & Riordan, 1988), and organizations (Corr & Gray, 1996). It is manifested by children, adolescents, and adults (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004). And it is found both in Western and non-Western cultures (Brown & Kobayashi, 2002; Mezulis et al., 2004).

Next, we will consider reasons why the self-serving bias is motivated or why it cannot be accounted for solely by nonmotivational factors. Specifically, we will discuss the role of self-threat, self-affirmation, expectancies, and impression management. We will offer rep­ resentative examples in each case.

Self-Threat From a self-protection perspective, when people feel threatened, they become defensive (Roese & Olson, 2007). Given an outlet, such as the opportunity to deflect attributions re­ garding task outcomes, they will grab it to footprint their defensiveness. Assuming that the self-protection motive underlies the SSB, the more threatened people feel, the

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 5 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

stronger the magnitude of the SSB will be. A meta-analysis by Campbell and Sedikides (1999) tested whether the SSB waxes and wanes as function of self-threat, operational­ ized as negative feedback. This meta-analysis examined several moderators of the SSB, such as role, self-focused attention, and interpersonal orientation.

In particular, each moderator was classified as high or low in self-threat potential. For ex­ ample, the moderator role was classified in terms of actor or observer. Actors presumably experience more self-threat than observers, given that actors’ self-views are directly chal­ lenged by negative feedback. The moderator self-focused attention was classified as self- focused or other-focused attention. Self-focused attention presumably involves more threat, given that participants in this experiential state are more likely to become aware of the discrepancy between their actual and ideal/ought self. Hence, their focus on perfor­ mance standards would intensify the psychological impact of negative feedback. Finally, the moderator interpersonal orientation was classified as competitive or cooperative. Some participants competed (actually or ostensibly) with another person, whereas others cooperated (actually or ostensibly) with another person, on a task. Failed competitive par­ ticipants would presumably experience the highest level of self-threat because they would have the most at stake on the task outcome.

The meta-analysis proceeded to test the effectiveness of the SSB moderators. The propo­ sition that self-threat magnifies the SSB was supported. For example, actors, self-focused, and competing participants displayed the SSB, but their respective counterparts (ob­ servers, other-focused, and cooperative (p. 306) participants) did not do so. In all, this meta-analysis illustrated that, the more threatened individuals feel, the more likely they are to resort to the SSB.

This conclusion is bolstered in research by Kernis, Cornell, Sun, Berry, and Harlow (1993) and by Crocker, Voelkl, Testa, and Major (1991). Undergraduate students are quick to find flaws in a test when they fail it but quick to stress its validity when they pass it (Wyer & Frey, 1983). This pattern is especially pronounced among individuals with unstable self- esteem, suggesting that these individuals use the SSB when threatened to shore up a fragile sense of personal worth (Kernis et al., 1993). Black American students experience a drop in self-esteem when the negative feedback is administered by a White evaluator believed to be unaware of their race; however, their self-esteem is unaffected when the evaluator is believed to be aware of their race. In the latter case, participants attribute their failure to racial prejudice, thus denying the validity of the test (Crocker et al., 1991). Here, the SSB is not only a mode to respond to self-threat but also a means to alleviate the consequences of threat (i.e., drop in self-esteem).

Self-Affirmation As discussed earlier, self-threat intensifies the SSB. It follows that the SSB will be attenu­ ated or cancelled when the self-threat is assuaged. One way of reducing self-threat is via self-affirmation (Sherman & Hartson, 2011). Here, individuals affirm a domain (e.g., val­ ues) irrelevant to self-threat. For example, they explain in writing, before or after they re­ ceive negative feedback, why some values are important to them. This self-affirmation

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 6 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

procedure reduces defensiveness (and even buffers neuroendoctrine and psychological responses to stress; Creswell et al., 2005) by making individuals feel more secure in their self-worth. Self-affirmation, then, would reduce, if not eliminate, the SSB.

Sherman and Kim (2005) tested these ideas in field experiments with volleyball and bas­ ketball athletes. The experiments were conducted at the conclusion of a game, with posi­ tive feedback operationalized as a win and negative feedback as a loss. Immediately after the game, athletes were escorted into a conference room and undertook a self-affirmation manipulation. They rated and ranked five values (aesthetics, religion, social, political, the­ oretical) in terms of personal importance. Then, participants in the control condition re­ ceived a 10-item scale corresponding to their least important value, whereas participants in the self-affirmation condition received a 10-item scale corresponding to their most im­ portant value. Each item consisted of two statements, one describing a facet of the rele­ vant value, the other being neutral (i.e., filler). Participants proceeded to rate their agree­ ment with each statement. Participants in the control condition displayed the SSB. How­ ever, participants in the self-affirmation condition refrained from it. In all, self-affirmation eclipsed the proclivity to respond defensively to self-threat, a pattern tracked by the van­ ishing of the SSB.

Nonmotivational Explanations We will now turn to the nonmotivational explanations of expectancies and impression management.

Expectancies It has been argued that differential expectancies for success and failure account for the SSB (Miller & Ross, 1975). Based on prior experience (Kelley & Michela, 1980; Tetlock & Levin, 1982), individuals expect success more frequently than failure. As such, they make internal attributions for expected outcomes and external attributions for unexpected out­ comes (i.e., SSB).

There is evidence that expectations can influence the SSB. For example, individuals with chronic expectations of superior task performance (e.g., high self-esteemers, normals) manifest strongly the SBB relative to individuals with chronic expectations of inferior task performance (low self-esteemers, depressed; Blaine & Crocker, 1993; Tennen & Herzberger, 1987). Similarly, participants who regard a task as important (and hence like­ ly have chronic expectations of superior performance) demonstrate the SSB to a greater degree than participants who regard a task as unimportant (Miller, 1976).

Nevertheless, expectations are not a necessary component of the SSB (Weary, 1979; Weary Bradley, 1978; Zuckerman, 1979). Of the various moderators in the Campbell and Sedikides (1999) meta-analysis discussed earlier, expectations did not play a substantial role. Actors and observers approach the experimental situation with the same expecta­ tions, yet only actors display the SSB. Furthermore, it is not clear why a momentary state of self-focused versus other-focused attention, or a state of competitive versus coopera­ tive interpersonal orientation, would influence task expectancies. Yet the SSB was mani­

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 7 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

fested by some of these participants (i.e., actors, state-self-focused persons, competitive persons) but not others. Finally, the SSB is observed even when controlling for task im­ portance (Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, & Elliot, 1998).

(p. 307) Impression Management Participants may display the SBB in a strategic maneuver to present themselves favorably to others (Miller, 1978; Weary, 1979). Impression management, of course, aims at the en­ hancement or protection of one's public image (Forsyth & Schlenker, 1985), although such aims are not always felicitous (Miller & Schlenker, 1985; Sedikides, Gregg, et al., 2007). Nevertheless, strategic enhancement/protection of one's public image does not ne­ cessitate the concurrent enhancement/protection of one's private self. Impression man­ agement may be superficial and short lived (i.e., driven by the moment or situation) rather than authentic. It may merely reflect putting on a persona or playing a role rather than expressing a cherished self-belief.

Impression management concerns can influence the SSB (Arkin, Appelmen, & Burger, 1980; House, 1980). Such concerns, however, are not necessary for its occurrence. Sedikides et al. (1998) tested undergraduate students at a large university. The partici­ pants worked together, as members of a dyad, on an interdependent-outcomes task. They were unacquainted and thus unlikely to anticipate future interactions. In addition, care was taken to ensure that participants expected not to meet each other after the experi­ ment and not to discuss this experiment even if they happened to encounter each other on campus. Finally, all procedures were private, anonymous, and confidential, with each participant being unaware of the other's contribution to the interdependent-outcomes task. These procedures were intended to minimize impression management concerns. The experimental task ostensibly assessed creativity. Following bogus success or failure feedback at the dyadic level, participants did manifest the SSB.

Greenberg, Pyszczynski, and Solomon (1982) put the impression management explana­ tion of the SSB directly to test. Participants took an alleged intelligence test (“Culture Fair Test of g”). Half of them learned that the experimenter was interested in their perfor­ mance on the test and therefore would collect their named answer sheets and record their scores (public performance condition: presence of impression management con­ cerns). The other half of participants learned that the experimenter was disinterested in their performance and had no way of knowing how well they had done on the test (private performance condition: absence of impression management concerns). Participants dis­ played the SSB in both conditions. Remarkably, the SSB was stronger in the private than public performance condition. In all, impression management concerns cannot fully ac­ count for the SSB.

Summary Although nonmotivational factors play a role in the SSB, they cannot account singly for it. Expectations or strategic self-management is not necessary for the emergence of the

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 8 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

SSB. In contrast, research on self-threat and self-affirmation makes a compelling case that the SSB is a valid signature of the self-enhancement and self-protection motives.

The Better-Than-Average Effect

Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon is a fictional location, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” This characteriza­ tion describes succinctly the human tendency for overestimation of one's merits and un­ derestimation of one's liabilities, in comparison to other persons. Research has confirmed this tendency. Most people judge themselves as better than their average peer (Alicke & Govorun, 2005; Brown, 1998; Dunning, Heath, & Suls, 2004), and they truly believe they are so (Williams & Gilovich, 2008). The phenomenon of rating oneself above the average peer standing on positive characteristics, or rating oneself below the average peer stand­ ing on negative characteristics, has been labeled the better-than-average effect (BTAE).

The BTAE is robust and pervasive. It is found among undergraduate students rating their leadership skills, athletic prowess, ability to get along with others (Brown, 1986; College Board Exams, 1976), intentions (Kruger & Gilovich, 2004), resistance to socially undesir­ able media messages (Davison, 1983), complexity of personality (Sande, Goethals, & Radloff, 1988), possessions (Nesselroade, Beggan, & Allison, 1999), and, indeed, their very humanness (Haslam, Bain, Douge, Lee, & Bastian, 2005); drivers rating their driving skills, while in a hospital due to a car accident they had caused (Preston & Harris, 1965); college instructors rating their teaching ability (Cross, 1977); social psychologists rating the quality of their research (Van Lange, Taris, & Vonk, 1997); students assessing their dating popularity (Preuss & Alicke, 2009) or couples assessing the quality of their mar­ riage (Rusbult, Van Lange, Wildschut, Yovetich, & Verette, 2000); and adults assessing their happiness (Freedman, 1978). In addition, individuals suffering from rheumatoid arthritis rate their symptoms as less severe than those of the average patient (DeVellis et al., 1990), and elderly persons judge that they are less at risk for age-related problems than their peers (p. 308) (Schulz & Fritz, 1987). The BTAE has also been found among preschoolers (Weiner, 1964), elementary school children (Albery & Messer, 2005), high school students (Kurman, 2002), and representative community samples (Andrews & Whitey, 1976; Heady & Wearing, 1988). Ironically, people believe that they are less prone to the BTAE than the average person (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002).

Next we will discuss five reasons why the BTAE is motivated. These pertain to attribute valence and controllability, attribute importance (in cross-cultural context), attribute veri­ fiability, self-threat, and self-affirmation. We will also consider nonmotivational accounts of the effect.

Attribute Valence and Controllability Self-enhancement and self-protection strivings are tactical (Sedikides & Strube, 1997; see also Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010). People do not self-enhance or self-protect across the board; instead, they are selective on the attributes that they will tout or undervalue. For example, they may be more likely to self-enhance on positive attributes over which they

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 9 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

have high control (e.g., resourceful) than positive attributes of which they have low con­ trol (e.g., mature). Conversely, they may be more likely to self-protect on negative attrib­ utes over which they have high control (e.g., unappreciative) than negative attributes over which they have low control (e.g., humorless).

The results of a study by Alicke (1985) demonstrated that the BTAE effect indeed varies as a function of attribute valence and controllability. Undergraduates rated themselves more favorably on positive traits, and less favorably on negative traits, compared to their average peer. Thus, the BTAE increased as the valence of the self-attribute increased. In addition, participants rated themselves more favorably on positive controllable traits, and more unfavorably on negative controllable traits, compared to their average peer. Finally, they rated themselves more favorably on positive controllable than positive uncontrol­ lable traits, and rated themselves less favorably on negative uncontrollable than negative controllable traits, compared to their average peer. This latter finding in essence illus­ trates that people self-aggrandize the most when they feel responsible for their positive traits, and self-aggrandize the least when they believe that fate is responsible for their negative traits.

Attribute Importance: On the Panculturality of The Btae Self-enhancement and self-protection strivings are also tactical in another way. People are more likely to assert their self-superiority on their important (e.g., trustworthy) than their unimportant (e.g., punctual) attributes (Sedikides & Strube, 1997). This principle is illus­ trated in recent work by Brown (2011, Studies 1–4), where participants indeed showed a stronger tendency to evaluate themselves more positively on important than unimportant traits (Study 1). This principle is also illustrated when placing the BTA effect in cultural context.

Important self-attributes are those that imply successful role fulfillment or enactment of culturally sanctioned roles. They imply that one is a valued member of a given culture, given that one excels on culturally (and personally) important characteristics, no matter if one falls behind on culturally (and personally) unimportant characteristics. Members of all cultures, then, will appraise themselves positively on important (but not necessarily on unimportant) attributes.

For Western culture important attributes are those conveying agency (e.g., personal ef­ fectiveness, competence), whereas for Eastern culture important attributes are those con­ veying communion (e.g., personal integration, other-orientation). Hence, Westerners will display the BTAE on agentic attributes, whereas Easterners will display the BTAE on com­ munal attributes. Westerners, for example, will rate themselves as better than their aver­ age peer on originality or independence but not on loyalty or respectfulness, but Eastern­ ers will rate themselves as better than their average peer on loyalty or respectfulness but not on originality or independence. This hypothesis has been confirmed both by primary studies (Brown & Kobayashi, 2002; Gaertner, Sedikides, & Chang, 2008; Sedikides, Gaert­ ner, & Toguchi, 2003) and meta-analytic investigations (Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea,

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 10 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

2005, 2007; for more general discussions, see Brown, 2003, 2010). The findings attest to the panculturality of the BTAE.

Attribute Verifiability There is another way in which self-enhancement and self-protection are tactically ex­ pressed. It involves attribute verifiability. Some attributes (e.g., those belonging to the moral or social domain) are more difficult to verify objectively than others (e.g., those be­ longing to the intellectual or physical domain; Reeder & Brewer, 1979; Rothbart & Park, 1986). Therefore, moral attributes leave more latitude for self-enhancement strivings than intellectual ones. The BTAE, then, will be stronger in the case of moral than intellec­ tual attributes.

(p. 309) This pattern has been empirically supported. Participants firmly believe that they have enacted more moral behaviors than their average peer. However, they believe rather tentatively that they have enacted more intellectual behaviors than their peers (Allison, Messick, & Goethals, 1980; Van Lange & Sedikides, 1998). In addition, participants rate themselves as better than average on traits that are either preclassified as ambiguous or are manipulated to be ambiguous (Critcher, Helzer, & Dunning, 2011). These findings il­ lustrate that self-enhancement and self-protection strivings, albeit “dying to come out,” are susceptible to reality constraints (Gramzow, 2011; Sedikides & Gregg, 2008).

Self-Threat A self-protection perspective would predict that, when individuals feel threatened, they will become defensive (Roese & Olson, 2007). We have discussed evidence that self-threat intensifies the SSB. Does self-threat also intensify the BTAE?

Research by Brown (2011, Study 4) showed that it does. All participants took the Re­ motes Associates Test (RAT; Mednick, 1962), ostensibly a test of the cognitive ability of in­ tegrative orientation (defined as creativity). The RAT consists of a series of three words; in each case, participants are asked to generate a fourth word that relates in some way to the other three. All RAT problems were difficult, and participants received either bogus negative feedback or no feedback. Subsequently, participants completed a BTAE task: They rated both themselves and most other people on important and unimportant traits. Participants who received negative feedback manifested a stronger BTAE effect (com­ pared to those who did not receive feedback). In particular, they rated themselves as su­ perior to others on important than unimportant traits, but they rated others as superior on unimportant than important traits. These results underscore the motivational rele­ vance of the BTAE (see also: Brown, Collins, & Schmidt, 1988; Brown & Gallagher, 1992; Dunning, Leuenberger, & Sherman, 1995).

Self-Affirmation Does self-affirmation reduce the BTAE? An experiment by Guenther (2011) addressed this question. Participants were assigned to either a self-affirmation or a control condition. The manipulation was a hybrid of two established procedures introduced by Blanton, Pel­ ham, DeHart, and Carvallo (2001) and by Wiesenfeld, Brockner, Petzall, Wolf, and Bailey

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 11 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

(2001). Specifically, self-affirmation participants described an accomplishment or achieve­ ment that made them feel good about themselves. Control participants, on the other hand, described the student union building on campus. Subsequently, all participants rat­ ed their standing, relative to that of their average academic peer, on a variety of traits (e.g., cooperative, truthful, athletic, attractive, imaginative, tolerant).

The results were revealing. The BTAE emerged, as expected, among participants in the control condition, but it was attenuated among participants in the self-affirmation condi­ tion. Self-affirmation reduced defensiveness or the need to assert one's superiority over others. These findings attest to the motivational underpinnings of the BTAE.

Nonmotivational Explanations The three most prominent nonmotivational explanations for the BTAE effect are egocen­ trism, focalism, and individuated-entity versus aggregate comparisons. We consider them next along with a fourth possibility, that the BTAE reflects simple contrast of oneself from the average peer.

Egocentrism According to egocentrism, when participants compare their attributes to those of the av­ erage peer, they think selectively about their own strengths or about their peer's weak­ nesses (Champers, Windschitl, & Suls, 2003; Moore, 2007; Moore & Kim, 2003; Wein­ stein, 1980). However, selective recruitment of one's assets or of peers’ liabilities may themselves be expressions of self-enhancement and self-protection (Brunot & Sanitioso, 2004; Sanitioso & Niedenthal, 2006). In addition, egocentrism cannot explain why the BTAE is obtained not only with direct measures (where participants compare the self to the average peer on a single scale) but also with indirect measures (where participants rate the self and average peer on separate and scales that are counterbalanced) (Alicke & Govorun, 2005). Moreover, egocentrism has trouble accounting for why the BTAE is stronger on unverifiable than verifiable traits (Allison et al., 1989; Critcher et al., 2011) and for why self-affirmation reduces the BTAE (Guenther, 2011). Finally and importantly, the BTAE is observed even when behavioral evidence for attributes is equated for self and others. This pattern was demonstrated by Alicke, Vredenburg, Hiatt, and Govorun (2001). Participants first estimated the percentage of times they enacted various trait-relevant behaviors (e.g., percentage of times they were uncooperative or cooperative, when the opportunity arose). A month (p. 310) and a half later, participants received the very same estimates but were led to believe that the estimates were provided by their average peer. Still, participants rated themselves more favorably than “their average peer” on almost all traits. Participants claimed that they were superior to themselves.

Focalism According to focalism, people put greater weight on whatever entity is currently the fo­ cus of their attention. By asking participants to compare their attributes to those of their average peer, research on the BTAE places the self in the focal position and the average peer in the referent position. Self-representations consist of a higher number of unique attributes than other-representations (Karylowski, 1990; Karylowski & Skarzynska, 1992).

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 12 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Hence, focusing on the self highlights those unique attributes and leads to perceiving the self as less similar than the average peer (Moore & Kim, 2003; Otten & van der Pligt, 1996; Pahl & Eiser, 2006, 2007; Windschitl, Kruger, & Sims, 2003). However, focalism cannot provide an adequate account of why the BTAE varies as a function of attribute va­ lence, controllability, importance, and verifiability. In addition, focalism cannot explain why the BTAE is obtained with indirect measures (Alicke & Govorun, 2005), when behav­ ioral base rates for relevant traits are the same for self and other (Alicke et al., 2001), and even when the referent is highly concretized (Alicke, Klotz, Breitenbecher, Yurak, & Vre­ denburg, 1995). Finally, focalism cannot explain why participants manifest a stronger BTAE on important than unimportant traits, even when the self constitutes the referent and “most other people” constitute the target (Brown, 2011, Study 3).

Individuated-Entity Versus Aggregate Comparisons This nonmotivational account refers to a single entity (e.g., a person, an object) being compared with an aggregate (e.g., the average peer, the average object). Klar and his col­ leagues (Giladi & Klar, 2002; Klar, 2002; Klar & Giladi, 1997) showed that any member of a liked group (e.g., a randomly selected student at one's university, police officer, soap fragrance) is rated more positively than the group average (e.g., average student at one's university, average police officer, average fragrance), and that any member of a disliked group is rated more negatively than the group average. These findings raise the possibili­ ty that the BTAE is due to the self being an individuated entity and the average peer be­ ing an aggregate. However, the BTAE is still present when the individuated entity is the self; that is, the effect emerges even when the self is compared to any other individuated entity (Alicke et al., 1995). In addition, this nonmotivational alternative cannot explain why the effect ebbs and flows as a function of the motivational significance of the judg­ ment (e.g., attribute valence, controllability, verifiability, importance). Moreover, the al­ ternative cannot easily explain why self-affirmation weakens the effect and, importantly, why the effect emerges even under cognitive load (Alicke et al., 1995, Study 7)—a pattern indicative of automatic self-enhancement (Paulhus, 1993). Finally, the alternative cannot explain why participants manifest a stronger BTAE on important than unimportant traits, even when they compare themselves with a single person (Brown, 2011, Study 2).

Assimilation and Contrast Although some researchers have conjectured that self versus average peer judgments are made by anchoring on the self and contrasting the average peer from that point (e.g., Kruger, 1999), until recently, no studies had been designed specifically to examine this facet of the BTAE. To address this question, Guenther and Alicke (2010) constructed an experimental design that was equipped to test whether self versus average peer judg­ ments represent assimilation or contrast, and in what direction assimilation or contrast might occur. In the first study, participants first made either self or average peer ratings in a pretesting session. Later in the semester, their original ratings were returned and they were now asked to rate the other target (i.e., those who rated the self in the first phase now rated the average peer in relation to their self-ratings, and those who rated the average peer in the first phase now rated the self in relation to their average peer rat­

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 13 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

ings). Comparisons with the ratings provided by a group that simply made simultaneous ratings of self and the average peer showed that self-ratings were unaltered as a result of whether self and average peer were rated simultaneously, self was rated in relation to the average peer, or the average peer was rated in relation to the self. This shows clearly that the self anchors these judgments. The findings also demonstrated that ratings of the aver­ age peer were higher when made in relation to self-ratings than when self and average peer were rated simultaneously. Contrary to the common assumption that judgments of an average peer are contrasted from the self, average peer ratings were assimilated to­ ward the self.

(p. 311) The fact that people move evaluations of the average peer closer to the self seems to contradict self-enhancement assumptions. However, most modern self-enhancement perspectives (Alicke & Sedikides, 2009; Sedikides & Gregg, 2003, 2008) acknowledge that such tendencies occur in concert with many nonmotivational forces, including rela­ tively automatic anchoring and adjustment processes. Guenther and Alicke (2010) next designed a study to assess whether self-enhancement motives could be discerned in light of these assimilative comparative judgments.

In this study (Guenther & Alicke, 2010, Study 2), participants made self-judgments on various trait dimensions during pretesting. The returned later in the semester and were provided with the self-ratings they had completed during pretesting. This time, they were asked to evaluate the average college student with reference to these self-ratings. Most important, half of the participants were led to think that the ratings they now received were those provided by a randomly selected student instead of by themselves. The critical comparison was between ratings of the average peer made with reference to scale points that participants believed were their own ratings, and those made with reference to iden­ tical points that were believed to belong to another student. Participants assimilated their ratings of average toward the scale points provided to a lesser degree when those scale points were described as self-ratings compared to when the identical points were attrib­ uted to another individual. Thus, although anchoring comparative judgments on the self induces average-peer assimilation because of the fact that self-ratings constitute high scale points, participants’ desire to maintain favorable self-concepts restricts this assim­ ilative process and thereby maximizes the distance between the self and the average peer.

Summary As with the SSB, nonmotivational explanations for the BTAE are rather unsatisfactory. Egocentrism, focalism, individuated-entity versus aggregate comparisons, and assimila­ tion/contrast cannot account for the fluctuation of the BTAE as a function of assessment technique (i.e., indirect measures, equation of behavioral evidence for self and other, cog­ nitive load), motivational relevance (attribute valence, controllability, importance, verifia­ bility), and referent individuation. On the other hand, research on self-threat, self-affirma­ tion, and the motivational relevance of the BTAE makes a compelling case that this effect is a legitimate signature of self-enhancement and self-protection motivation.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 14 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Selective Self-Memory

“It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient,” quipped Josh Billings. The empirical evidence has treated Billings kindly. People indeed remember poorly their weaknesses compared to their strengths, a memorial pattern that does not occur for other people's weaknesses and strengths (Sedikides & Green, 2009; Skowronski, 2011). We refer to this phenomenon as selective self-memory. Next we dis­ cuss it by reviewing research both from the autobiographical and experimental litera­ tures.

Selective self-memory is robust and pervasive. It has been observed in the domain of feedback (Crary, 1966; Sedikides & Green, 2000), social act frequencies (Gosling, John, Craik, & Robins, 1998), possessions and places (Zauberman, Ratner, & Kim, 2009), rela­ tionship-relevant behaviors (Van Lange, Rusbult, Semin-Goossens, Goerts, & Stalpers, 1999), personality traits (Messick, Bloom, Boldizar, & Samuelson, 1985; Mischel, Ebbe­ sen, & Zeiss, 1976), life events (Ross & Wilson, 2002; Skowronski, Betz, Thompson, & Shannon, 1991), and emotionally charged (i.e., pride-inducing and shame-inducing) events (D'Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2008). It has also been observed not only in Western but also in non-Western or East-Asian cultures (Kwon, Scheibe, Samanez-Larkin, Tsai, & Carstensen, 2009; Schrauf & Hoffman, 2007). Selective self-memory emerges ear­ ly in life. Children, for example, ascribe more serious transgressions to their siblings than to themselves in their recollections of sibling conflict (Wilson, Smith, Ross, & Ross, 2004). Finally, selective self-memory is found both among younger and older adults (Field, 1981, 1997; Wagenaar & Groeneweg, 1990; Yarrow, Campbell, & Burton, 1970).

Selective self-memory may be due to an encoding bias. People avoid attending to unfavor­ able feedback (Baumeister & Cairns, 1992; Sedikides & Green, 2000, Experiment 3), thus impeding its registration. However, selective self-memory may also be due to a retrieval bias. Evidence for this processing mechanism is found in memory for behaviors that ex­ emplify desirable traits (Sanitioso, Kunda, & Fong, 1990), satisfying interpersonal rela­ tionships (Murray & Holmes, 1993), and health-boosting habits (Ross, McFarland, & Fletcher, 1981). Finally, selective self-memory may be due to retention. The negative af­ fect associated with autobiographical memories fades faster across time than the positive

(p. 312) affect associated with such memories (Landau & Gunter, 2009; Ritchie, Skowrons­ ki, Hartnett, Wells, & Walker, 2009; Walker, Skowronski, & Thompson, 2003).

We will examine next why selective self-memory is motivated. In particular, we will zero in on the role of self-threat and self-affirmation in selective self-memory. We will also consid­ er the nonmotivational accounts of differential expectancies and inconsistency between information valence and self-view valence.

Self-Threat

Sedikides and colleagues (Sedikides & Green, 2009; Sedikides, Green, & Pinter, 2004) tested experimentally the role of self-threat in selective self-memory. In the standard par­ adigm, participants first receive behavioral feedback. Some are then asked to imagine, or

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 15 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

are led to believe, that they are likely to perform the behaviors contained in the feedback. Other participants are asked to imagine, or are led to believe, that another person (Chris) is likely to perform the very same behaviors. These behaviors are either negative or posi­ tive, and they exemplify either central (e.g., unkind vs. kind, untrustworthy vs. trustwor­ thy) or peripheral (e.g., complaining vs. uncomplaining, unpredictable vs. predictable) traits. Next, participants engage in a surprise recall task. The typical finding is that par­ ticipants recall poorly behaviors that are negative, exemplify central traits, and refer to the self (e.g., unkind or untrustworthy behaviors) compared to all other categories of be­ havior (e.g., those that are positive, exemplify central traits, and refer to the self; those that are negative exemplify central traits but refer to Chris). For example, participants re­ call poorly the behaviors “you would borrow other people's belongings without their knowledge” (untrustworthy) and “you would refuse to lend classnotes to a friend who was ill” (unkind). However, participants recall relatively well the behaviors “Chris would bor­ row other people's belongings without their knowledge” and “Chris would refuse to lend classnotes to a friend who was ill” (unkind). Additionally, they recall relatively well the be­ haviors “you would keep secrets when asked to” (trustworthy) and “you would offer to care for a neighbor's child when the babysitter couldn't come” (kind). This recall discrep­ ancy has been labeled mnemic neglect and has been attributed to the self-threat potential of the feedback.

Research has consistently supported the idea that self-threat underlies mnemic neglect. In general, the more threatening the feedback is perceived, the more defensive partici­ pants become (i.e., more likely to exhibit mnemic neglect). For example, the effect is ob­ tained when the behaviors are high on diagnosticity (e.g., “you would be unfaithful when in an intimate relationship”), but it is cancelled when the behaviors are low on diagnostic­ ity (e.g., “would forget for a week to return a borrowed book to a friend”) (Green & Sedikides, 2004). This is because high-diagnosticity behaviors can really reveal whether one is untrustworthy or unkind, and are thus threatening. In addition, the effect is ob­ tained when participants are led to believe that their traits are unmodifiable, but it is can­ celled when they are led to believe their traits are modifiable (Green, Pinter, & Sedikides, 2005). This is because learning that one was born untrustworthy or unkind and will be so for life makes untrustworthiness or unkindness feedback threatening. Relatedly, the ef­ fect is obtained when participants are deprived of the opportunity to improve on feed­ back-relevant dimensions (e.g., to become less untrustworthy or less unkind) and are thus threatened, but it is cancelled when participants are offered the opportunity to improve (Green, Sedikides, Pinter, & Van Tongeren, 2009). In all, this research shows that selec­ tive self-memory is motivated.

Self-Affirmation

Does self-affirmation reduce or negate selective self-memory? Green, Sedikides, and Gregg (2008, Experiment 2) addressed this question. All participants took a test ostensi­ bly assessing their cognitive ability (i.e., creativity). In the self-threat condition, partici­ pants learned that they had performed poorly on the test. In the self-affirmation condi­ tion, however, participants learned that they had performed well on the test. Subsequent­

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 16 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

ly, all participants proceeded to an “impression” task, which was actually the standard mnemic neglect paradigm (i.e., behavioral feedback).

The results were, once again, telling. Self-threatened participants evinced mnemic ne­ glect, whereas self-affirmed participants did not. Self-affirmation relaxed defensiveness, as tracked by the abolishment of mnemic neglect. These results are consistent with the idea that mnemic neglect is a motivated phenomenon.

Nonmotivational Explanations

We next turn to two nonmotivational explanations of selective self-memory: differential expectancies and inconsistency between information valence and self-view valence.

(p. 313) Differential Expectancies In a review of the literature, Walker et al. (2003) concluded that the base rate of negative versus positive life events is unequal. That is, negative events are half as frequent as posi­ tive events (25% vs. 50%). Differential base rates may also be involved in mnemic ne­ glect. People may process shallowly and recall negative feedback poorly because they do not expect to receive it; based on prior experience, such feedback is implausible.

Can differential expectancies account for selective self-memory? We (Sedikides et al., 2004; Sedikides & Green, 2009) addressed this issue in the context of the mnemic neglect paradigm. As described earlier, this research was concerned with the on-line processing of a concrete and experimentally provided array of feedback as opposed to the recon­ struction of pleasant or unpleasant life events, thus exerting tight control over the to-be- remembered material. The ratio of negative to positive information was equal. In addi­ tion, the relevance of self versus other memories was taken into consideration: The same information was self-referent in one condition and other-referent in another condition. More important, the research addressed the issue of whether mnemic neglect is due to expectancies (Sedikides & Green, 2004, Experiment 1).

All participants received hypothetical behavioral feedback. However, the referent of the feedback varied. A quarter of the participants received feedback about themselves, and another quarter about Chris. The third quarter of participants received feedback about a person described in glowing terms, such as extraordinarily trustworthy and kind (glowing Chris condition). The fourth quarter of participants received feedback about a close friend. Pretest had established that participants held the most positive expectancies for glowing Chris, considering him or her as most likely to enact positive behaviors and least likely to enact negative behaviors. Expectancies for close friend and self were virtually identical, and they were both more positive than expectancies for (mere) Chris. If ex­ pectancies constituted a sufficient explanation for mnemic neglect, then the effect would be more strongly evident in the glowing Chris than the self condition, and it would be equally strong in the close friend and self conditions. This was not the case. Participants evidenced the most neglect in the self condition, followed by the friend condition, and then by the glowing Chris and Chris conditions (which did not differ significantly).

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 17 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

These findings were conceptually replicated by Newman, Nibert, and Winer (2009). In a separate session after the usual exposure to and recall of behavioral feedback, partici­ pants provided expectancies for each behavior for either the self or Chris. That is, they estimated the extent to which they could imagine either themselves or Chris performing the behavior. Expectancies and recall were uncorrelated for most but a subset of partici­ pants. This subset was defensive pessimists, who as hypothesized, did not show the typi­ cal mnemic neglect pattern. In conclusion, differential expectancies, albeit relevant to re­ call of autobiographical information (Walker et al., 2003), cannot account solely for mne­ mic neglect and more generally selective self-memory.

Inconsistency Between Information Valence and Self-View Valence Another alternative, though, is worth considering, specifically, inconsistency between the valence of one's self-views and the valence of feedback (Abelson et al., 1968). Mnemic ne­ glect, in particular, may reflect processing of information whose valence is inconsistent with the valence of self-conceptions. Most participants have a positive self-concept (Ogilvie, 1987; Schwartz, 1986). Hence, they recall negative feedback poorly because it is inconsistent with their self-views. This alternative explanation leads to an interesting pre­ diction. Inconsistency will also drive mnemic neglect among participants with a negative self-concept. These participants will recall positive feedback poorly, because it is inconsis­ tent with their self-views.

An experiment (Sedikides & Green, 2004, Experiment 2) tested whether feedback incon­ sistency (behaviors that are inconsistent with the self-view) or feedback negativity (be­ haviors that are negative regardless of whether they are consistent or inconsistent with the self-view) drives mnemic neglect. A pretest identified two groups of participants: those with positive self-views (i.e., trustworthy, kind) and those with negative self-views (i.e., untrustworthy, unkind). These participants were then brought in the laboratory and exposed to the usual mnemic neglect paradigm. The inconsistency alternative would pre­ dict that participants with positive self-views would recall poorly untrustworthy and un­ kind behaviors, whereas participants with negative self-views would recall poorly trust­ worthy and kind behaviors. The results ran contrary to this alternative. All participants, regardless of the valence of their self-conception, manifested mnemic neglect. That is, even individuals who regarded themselves as untrustworthy or unkind recalled poorly un­ trustworthy or unkind behaviors. This is additional (p. 314) evidence that feedback nega­ tivity (i.e., self-threat) underlies mnemic neglect. In conclusion, inconsistency between the valence of one's self-views and the valence of feedback, albeit relevant to autobio­ graphical recall (Gramzow & Willard, 2006), cannot account singly for mnemic neglect and more generally selective self-memory.

Summary As with the SSB and the BTAE, nonmotivational explanations for selective self-memory are not particularly persuasive. Differential expectancies and inconsistency between in­ formation valence and self-view valence cannot provide a satisfactory account for poor re­ call of negative, central, self-referent feedback. Instead, the threat potential of such feed­

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 18 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

back, including research on self-affirmation, can. The extant evidence points to mnemic neglect as a valid signature of the self-protection motive.

But is self-threatening feedback always recalled poorly? Research on trauma would seem to indicate that it is not: Traumatic events are well remembered (Berntsen, 2001; McNal­ ly, 2003). Such events, though, are extreme, and event extremity is associated with supe­ rior recall (Thompson, Skowronski, Larsen, & Betz, 1996). And yet event valence predicts recall independently of event extremity (Thompson et al., 1996, Chapter 4). Finally, in the mnemic neglect paradigm, behavioral feedback was moderate rather than extreme (Sedikides & Green, 2000, pilot studies). Selective self-memory, then, is applicable to the domain of mild, as opposed to extreme, feedback or events.

What Are Self-Enhancement and Self-Protec­ tion Good For? Self-enhancement and self-protection strivings have functional advantages for the individ­ ual. Next we will consider two critical domains of functionality: psychological health and psychological interests.

Psychological Health

The SSB is linked to a variety of psychological health benefits. For example, the SSB is re­ lated to positive mood (McFarland & Ross, 1982) and high subjective well-being (Rizley, 1978), improved problem solving (Isen & Means, 1983), reduced depression (Abramson & Alloy, 1981), better immune functioning (Taylor et al., 2000), and lower mortality and mor­ bidity longitudinally (Peterson & Seligman, 1987). On the other hand, a weak or absent SSB is related to depression (Sweeney, Anderson, & Bailey, 1986), deteriorating physical health (Peterson, Seligman, & Vaillant, 1998), and poorer athletic, academic, and work performance (Peterson & Barrett, 1987; Seligman, Nolen-Hoeksema, Thornton, & Thorn­ ton, 1990). The positive association between the SSB and psychological health has been found not only in Western culture but also in East-Asian culture (China; Anderson, 1999).

The BTAE is also strongly linked to psychological health. For example, the BTAE is posi­ tively related to indices of thriving (e.g., subjective well-being, purpose in life, positive re­ lations, self-acceptance), positively related to resources (optimism, extraversion, self-es­ teem, family support), and negatively related to indices of distress (e.g., loneliness, de­ pression, anxiety) (Brown, 1991, 1998; Marshall & Brown, 2007; Taylor, Lerner, Sherman, Sage, & McDowell, 2003a). Similar patterns have been obtained in several East-Asian cul­ tures such as China (Brown & Cai, 2009; Cai, Wu, & Brown, 2009; O'Mara, Gaertner, Sedikides, Zhou, & Liu, 2010), Japan (Kobayashi & Brown, 2003), Korea (Chang, Sanna, & Yang, 2003), Taiwan (Gaertner et al., 2008), and Singapore (Kurman & Sriram, 1997). In addition, longitudinal studies, in Western and non-Western culture, indicate that the BTAE promotes subsequent psychological health under adverse conditions (Bonanno, Field, Ko­ vacevic, & Kaltman, 2002; Bonanno, Rennicke, & Dekel, 2005; Gupta & Bonanno, 2010;

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 19 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Zuckerman & O'Loughlin, 2006). Moreover, the BTAE serves a stress-buffering function: As a response to stress, the BTAE is related to lower cardiovascular response, more rapid cardiovascular recovery, and lower baseline cortisol level (Taylor, Lerner, Sherman, Sage, & McDowell, b).

Finally, selective self-memory in autobiographical recall is also associated with psycholog­ ical health. For example, selective self-memory is related to lack of dysphoria (Walker, Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Thompson, 2003), reduced depression (Williams et al., 2007), a future orientation (Brunson, Wheeler, & Walker, 2010), social connectedness or better interpersonal relations (Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, & Routledge, 2006), felt conti­ nuity between one's past and one's present (Sedikides, Wildschut, Gaertner, Routledge, & Arndt, 2008), perceptions of life as meaningful (Routledge et al., 2011), and reduced exis­ tential anxiety (Juhl, Routledge, Arndt, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2010). Relatedly, selective self-memory is linked to fewer symptoms of psychopathology and better psychological health over time (Bonanno, Keltner, Holen, & Horowitz, 1995; Bonanno, Znoj, Siddique, & Horowitz, 1999; Newton & Contrada, 1992). In conclusion, self-enhancement (p. 315) and self-protection strivings are associated with, or promote, psychological health.

Psychological Interests

Psychological interests include love/security, social status, and popularity, as well as skills and abilities (e.g., musicality, athleticism, intelligence). Interests are hierarchically orga­ nized from the general (e.g., being a good student, being a good friend) to the specific (e.g., performing well on a task, providing support to a friend in need) ones. Furthermore, interests can entail private matters (e.g., meeting one's personal standards) or public matters (e.g., meeting organizational standards) and can extend to close relations or im­ portant groups. Finally, interests can be negative or positive. Negative interests include matters that individuals wish to circumvent or shun (e.g., relationship breakup, achieve­ ment failure), whereas positive interest include matters that individuals wish to possess or attain (e.g., two-story house, managerial position) (Alicke & Sedikides, 2009).

A vital function of self-enhancement and self-protection is the pursuit of psychological in­ terests (Alicke & Sedikides, 2009). This pursuit is carried out through either primary or secondary means. (These constructs correspond to notions of primary and secondary con­ trol; Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982.) Primary means refer to changing an objective state of affairs by assuming instrumental action. In that capacity, self-enhancement en­ tails effective action that promotes oneself and one's prospects. Secondary means refers to psychological mechanisms that regulate events by altering how one perceives or inter­ prets them. In that capacity, self-protection entails effective intervention that obviates failing below one's standards. Self-enhancement and self-protection, then, contribute ef­ fectively to the successful pursuit of psychological interests of the effective avoidance of harm to those interests.

The three self-enhancement and self-protection strivings serve psychological interests. Let us first consider the SSB. Seligman et al. (1990) examined the role of the SSB in pre­

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 20 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

dicting athletic performance. They found that varsity swimmers prone to the SSB (as­ sessed at the start of the season) performed better at sporting competitions than swim­ mers not prone to the SSB. Additionally, Peterson and Barrett (1987) reported that under­ graduate students prone to the SSB (assessed at the beginning of their first year at uni­ versity) received higher grades during their freshman year compared to students not prone to the SSB. This pattern held after controlling for initial ability (measured by the Scholastic Aptitude Test) and initial depression. Students prone to SSB were more likely to have specific academic goals and to make use of academic advising.

The BTAE is similarly implicated in the facilitation of psychological interests. Taylor et al. ( a) showed that the BTAE is positively related to active coping, positive reframing, plan­ ning, achievement, mastery, and personal growth. In addition, Wright (2000) demonstrat­ ed that undergraduate students who are more likely to manifest the BTAE (assessed in the beginning of the semester) achieved higher grades during the semester compared to students less likely to manifest the BTAE. Moreover, students who exaggerate reporting of their grade point average perform better than those who do not (Gramzow, 2011). In general, the BTAE is associated with working harder and longer on tasks (Taylor & Brown, 1988) and with performing better on tasks (Armor & Taylor, 2003).

Finally, selective self-memory in autobiographical recall is also involved in the promotion of psychological interests. Such memory has approach rather than avoidance conse­ quences (Stephan et al., 2011; Walker & Skowronski, 2009) and, as such, it can motivate individuals to engage and persist in goal pursuit (Sedikides & Hepper, 2009; Walker & Skowronski, 2009). Indeed, forms of selective self-memory have been found to be associ­ ated with resilience (Coifman, Bonanno, Ray, & Gross, 2007), improved coping following traumatic life events (Janoff-Bulman, 1992), and, in general, the implementation of active coping strategies in times of stress (Langens & Moerth, 2003) and in attempting to mas­ ter life challenges (Walker & Skowronski, 2009).

Summary A psychological health and psychological interests analysis addresses squarely the issue of why people self-enhance and self-protect. They do not do so for a whim, or just to feel good, or for short-lived impression management purposes. Rather, they do so, and they do so persistently, because self-enhancement and self-protection strivings confer both mo­ mentary and long-term benefits (i.e., ways in which psychological health and psychologi­ cal interests are advanced) and deter both momentary and long-term harms (i.e., ways in which psychological health interests are regressed or thwarted).

Conclusions In his An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943), Bertrand Russell was duly impressed by the influence (p. 316) of motives on human judgment. “Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. [ … ] I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this state­ ment, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it [ … ],” he exclaimed in

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 21 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

wonder (p. 73). We have focused in this chapter on two self-evaluation motives that might have confounded Russell, self-enhancement and self-protection.

We defined self-enhancement as the desire and preference for maximizing the positivity of one's self-views, and we defined self-protection as the desire and preference for mini­ mizing the negativity of one's self-view. We argued that the tendency to exalt one's virtues and make light of one's weaknesses, relative to impartial criteria, manifests itself in a va­ riety of strivings. Due to space limitations, we restricted our discussion to three key striv­ ings: the SSB (crediting the self for successes but blaming others for failures), the BTAE (considering the self superior to others), and selective self-memory (disadvantageous re­ call for negative feedback).

Although we acknowledged that cognition and motivation are closely intertwined, we pro­ ceeded to make a case for the motivational underpinnings of these strivings. We aimed to provide evidence that self-enhancement and self-protection strivings cannot be exclusive­ ly accounted for by nonmotivational (i.e., information processing) factors. The nonmotiva­ tional explanations of expectations and impression management were not deemed neces­ sary for the occurrence of the SSB. Likewise, egocentrism, focalism, and individuated-en­ tity versus aggregate comparisons were not deemed necessary for the occurrence of the BTAE. And similarly, differential expectancies and inconsistency between self-view va­ lence and feedback were not deemed necessary for the occurrence of selective self-mem­ ory. In contrast, evidence from research on self-threat and self-affirmation testifies to the motivational underpinnings of the strivings. The SSB, BTAE, and selective self-memory are driven, in part, by the self-enhancement and self-protection motives.

We drew to a conclusion by asking why individuals self-enhance and self-protect. A partial answer lies in the functionality of self-enhancement and self-protection strivings: They ac­ crue benefits pertaining to psychological health and psychological interests. Self-en­ hancement and self-protection strivings are associated with, or confer, a host of psycho­ logical health advantages, and they advance a host of psychological interests. Mild self- enhancement and self-protection continue to be markers of psychological health.

Future Directions There are several issues in need of further empirical attention. We will briefly touch upon four of them. First, what is the interplay between the two motives? Although self-en­ hancement and self-protection are occasionally treated as polar ends of a single dimen­ sion, the empirical evidence suggests that a lot will be gained if they are treated sepa­ rately (Elliot & Mapes, 2005). Yet the relation between the two motives is complex. They can operate independently, one motive may facilitate the other, or one motive may impede the other. Second, and relatedly, what is the interplay between implicit and explicit self- enhancement and self-protection? In particular, what is the relation between implicit and explicit self-enhancement and self-protection strategies (Arndt & Goldenberg, 2011) or between implicit and explicit self-esteem (Gregg & Sedikides, 2010)? Third, what is the interplay between the self-enhancement and self-protection motives on the one hand and

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 22 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

other self-evaluation motives on the other? These other motives are self-assessment (i.e., pursuit of accurate self-knowledge; Gregg, Sedikides, & Gebauer, 2011), self-improve­ ment (i.e., pursuit of one's betterment; Sedikides & Hepper, 2009), and self-verification (i.e., pursuit of self-confirmation; Swann, Rentfrow, & Guinn, 2003). Finally, what are the boundary conditions—both situational demands and individual differences—that constrain self-enhancement or self-protection (Gramzow, 2011)? And what are the intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences of such constraints upon motive emergence or manifesta­ tion? These and other issues are worth exploring. As La Rouchefoucauld (1678/1827) prophetically noted, “Whatever discoveries have been made in the land of self-love, many territories remain to be discovered.”

References

Abelson, R, Aronson, E., McGuire, W., Newcomb, T., Rosenberg, M., & Tannenbaum, P. (Eds.). (1968). The cognitive consistency theories: A source book. Chicago, IL: Rand Mc­ Nally.

Abramson, L. Y., & Alloy, L. B. (1981). Depression, nondepression, and cognitive illusions: Reply to Schwartz. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 110, 436–447.

Albery, I. P., & Messer, D. (2005). Comparative optimism about health and nonhealth events in 8- and 9-year old children. Health Psychology, 24, 316–320.

Alicke, M. (1985). Global self-evaluation as determined by the desirability and controlla­ bility of trait adjectives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1621–1630.

Alicke, M., & Govorun, O. (2005). The better-than-average effect. In M. D. Alicke, D. A. Dunning, & J. I. Krueger (Eds.), The self in social judgment (pp. 85–106). New York: Psy­ chology Press.

(p. 317) Alicke, M. D., Klotz, M. L., Breitenbecher, D. L., Yurak, T. J., & Vredenburg, D. S. (1995). Personal contact, individuation, and the better-than-average effect. Journal of Per­ sonality and Social Psychology, 68, 804–825.

Alicke, M., & Sedikides, C. (2009). Self-enhancement and self-protection: What they are and what they do. European Review of Social Psychology, 20, 1–48.

Alicke, M. D., & Sedikides, C. (2011a). Self-enhancement and self-protection: Historical overview and conceptual framework. In M. D. Alicke & C. Sedikides (Eds.), The handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection (pp. 1–19). New York: Guilford Press.

Alicke, M. D., & Sedikides, C. (2011b). (Eds.). The handbook of self-enhancement and self- protection. New York: Guilford Press.

Alicke, M. D., Vredenburg, D. S., Hiatt, M., & Govorun, O. (2001). The “better than myself effect.” Motivation and Emotion, 25, 7–22.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 23 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Allison, S. T., Messick, D. M., & Goethals, G. R. (1989). On being better but not smarter than others: The Muhammad Ali effect. Social Cognition, 7, 275–296.

Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt.

Anderson, C. A. (1999). Attributional style, depression, and loneliness: A cross-cultural comparison of American and Chinese students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 482–499.

Andrews, F. M., & Whitey, S. B. (1976). Social indicators of well-being. New York: Plenum Press.

Arkin, R. M., Appelmen, A. J., & Burger, J. M. (1980). Social anxiety, self-presentation, and the self-serving bias in causal attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 23–25.

Arkin, R. M., Cooper, H. M., & Kolditz, T. A. (1980). A statistical review of the literature concerning the self-serving attribution bias in interpersonal influence situations. Journal of Personality, 48, 435–448.

Armor, D. A., & Taylor, S. E. (2003). The effects of mindset on behavior: Self-regulation in deliberative and implemental frames of mind. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 86–95.

Arndt, A., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2011). When self-enhancement drives health decisions: In­ sights from a terror management health model. In M. D. Alicke & C. Sedikides (Eds.), The handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection (pp. 380–398). New York: Guilford Press.

Baumeister, R. F., & Cairns, K. J. (1992). Repression and self-presentation: When audi­ ences interfere with self-deceptive strategies. Journal of Personality and Social Psycholo­ gy, 62, 851–862

Bentham, J. (1982). An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation (J. H. Burns & H. L. A. Harts, Eds.). London, England: Methuem. (Original work published 1789).

Berntsen, D. (2001). Involuntary memories of emotional events: Do memories of traumas and extremely happy events differ? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 15, 135–158.

Blaine, B., & Crocker, J. (1993). Self-esteem and self-serving bias in reactions to positive and negative events: An integrative review. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Self-esteem: The puzzle of low self-regard (pp. 55–85). New York: Plenum.

Blanton, H., Pelham, B. W., DeHart, T., & Carvallo, M. (2001). Overconfidence as disso­ nance reduction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 373–385

Bloom, A. (Trans.). (1991). The republic of Plato (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 24 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Bonanno, G. A., Field, N. P., Kovacevic, A., & Kaltman, S. (2002). Self-enhancement as a buffer against extreme adversity: Civil War in Bosnia and traumatic loss in the United States. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 184–196.

Bonanno, G. A., Keltner, D., Holen, A., & Horowitz, M. J. (1995). When avoiding unpleas­ ant emotions might not be such a bad thing: Verbal-autonomic response dissociation and midlife conjugal bereavement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 975–989.

Bonanno, G. A., Rennicke, C., & Dekel, S. (2005). Self-enhancement among high-exposure survivors of the September 11th terrorist attacks: Resilience or social maladjustment?

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 984–998.

Bonanno, G. A., Znoj, H., Siddique, H. I., & Horowitz, M. J. (1999). Verbal autonomic dis­ sociation and adaptation to midlife conjugal loss: A follow-up at 25 months. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 23, 605–624.

Brown, J. D. (1986). Evaluations of self and others: Self-enhancement biases in social judgments. Social Cognition, 4, 353–376.

Brown, J. D. (1991). Accuracy and bias in self-knowledge. In C. R. Snyder & D. F. Forsyth (Eds.), Handbook of social and clinical psychology: The health perspective (pp. 158–178). New York: Pergamon Press.

Brown, J. D. (1998). The self. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Brown, J. D. (2011). The self-enhancement motive in collectivistic cultures: The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 603–

605.

Brown, J. D. (2010). Across the (not so) great divide: Cultural similarities in self-evalua­ tive processes. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 318–330.

Brown, J. D. (2011). Understanding the better than average effect: Motives matter. Un­ published manuscript, University of Washington.

Brown, J. D., & Cai, H. (2009). Self-esteem and trait importance moderate cultural differ­ ences in self-evaluations. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41, 116–122.

Brown, J. D., Collins, R. L., & Schmidt, G. W. (1988). Self-esteem and direct versus indi­ rect forms of self-enhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 445–

453.

Brown, J. D., & Gallagher, F. M. (1992). Coming to terms with failure: Private self-en­ hancement and public self-effacement. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28, 3–

22.

Brown, J. D., & Kobayashi, C. (2002). Self-enhancement in Japan and America. Asian Jour­ nal of Social Psychology, 5, 145–168.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 25 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Brunot, S., & Sanitioso, R. B. (2004). Motivational influences on the quality of memories: Recall of general autobiographical memories related to desired attributes. European Jour­ nal of Social Psychology, 34, 627–635.

Brunson, C. A., Wheeler, D., & Walker, W. R. (2011). Testing two alternative explanations for a fading affect bias in autobiographical memory. Manuscript under review.

Cai, H., Wu, Q., & Brown, J. D. (2009). Is self-esteem a universal need? Evidence from the People's Republic of China. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 12, 104–120.

Campbell, K. W., & Sedikides, C. (1999). Self-threat magnifies the self-serving bias: A meta-analytic integration. Review of General Psychology, 3, 23–43.

Champers, J. R., Windschitl, P. D., & Suls, J. (2003). Egocentrism, event frequency, and comparative optimism: When what (p. 318) happens frequently is “more likely to happen to me.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1343–1356.

Chang, E. C., Sanna, L. J., & Yang, K. (2003). Optimism, pessimism, affectivity, and psy­ chological adjustment in US and Korea: A test of mediation model. Personality and Indi­ vidual Differences, 34, 1195–1208.

Coifman, K. G., Bonanno, G. A., Ray, R. D., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Does repressive coping promote resilience? Affective-autonomic response discrepancy during bereavement. Jour­ nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 745–758.

College Board. (1976–1977). Student descriptive questionnaire. Princeton, NJ: Education­ al Testing Service.

Corr, P., & Gray, J. (1996). Attributional style as a personality factor in insurance sales performance in the UK. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 69, 83–

87.

Crary, W. G. (1966). Reactions to incongruent self-experiences. Journal of Consulting Psy­ chology, 30, 246–252.

Creswell, J. D., Welch, W. T., Taylor, S. E., Sherman, D. K., Gruenewald, T. L., & Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16, 846–851.

Critcher, C. R., Helzer, E. G., & Dunning, D. (2011). Self-enhancement via redefinition: Defining social concepts to ensure positive views of self. In M. D. Alicke & C. Sedikides (Eds.), The handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection (pp. 69–91). New York: Guil­ ford Press.

Crocker, J., Voelkl, K., Testa, M., & Major, B. (1991). Social stigma: The affective conse­ quences of attributional ambiguity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 218–

228.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 26 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Cross, P. (1977). Not can but will college teachers be improved? New Directions for High­ er Education, 17, 1–15.

Davison, W. P. (1983). The third-person effect in communication. Public Opinion Quarterly, 47, 1–15.

D'Argembeau, A., & Van der Linden, M. (2008). Remembering pride and shame: Self-en­ hancement and the phenomenology of autobiographical memory. Memory, 16, 538–547.

De Michele, P. E., Gansneder, B., & Solomon, G. B. (1998). Success and failure attribu­ tions of wrestlers: Further evidence of the self-serving bias. Journal of Sport Behavior, 21, 242–255.

DeVellis, R. F., Holt, K., Renner, B. R., Blalock, S. J., Blanchard, L. W., Cook, H. L., … Har­ ring, K. (1990). The relationship of social comparison to rheumatoid arthritis symptoms and affect. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 11, 1–18.

De Witt, N. W. (1973). Epicurus and his philosophy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Dunning, D., Heath, C., & Suls, J. M. (2004). Flawed self-assessment: Implications for health, education, and the workplace. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5, 69–

106.

Dunning, D., Leuenberger, A., & Sherman, D. A. (1995). A new look at motivated infer­ ence: Are self-serving theories of success a product of motivational forces? Journal of Per­ sonality and Social Psychology, 69, 58–68.

Elliot, A. J., & Mapes, R. R. (2005). Approach-avoidance motivation and self-concept eval­ uation. In A. Tesser, J. V. Wood, & D. A. Stapel (Eds.), On building, defending and regulat­ ing the self: A psychological perspective (pp. 171–196). New York: Psychology Press.

Field, D. (1981). Retrospective reports by healthy intelligent elderly people of personal events of their adult lives. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 4, 77–97.

Field, D. (1997). “Looking back, what period of your life brought you the most satisfac­ tion?” International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 45, 169–194.

Forsyth, D. R., & Schlenker, B. R. (1985). Attributing the causes of group performance: Effects of performance quality, task importance, and future testing. Journal of Personality, 45, 220–236.

Freedman, J. (1978). Happy people: What happiness is, who has it, and why. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Freud, A. (1946). The ego and the mechanisms of defense. New York: International Uni­ versities Press. (Originally work published in 1936).

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 27 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Freud, S. (1961a). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 3–66). London, England: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1905).

Freud, S. (1961b). Instincts and their vicissitudes. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The stan­ dard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 111–142). London, England: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1915).

Freud, S. (1961c). The ego and the id. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 12–66). London, England: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1923).

Freud, S. (1961d). Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 20, pp. 77–178). London, England: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1926).

Gaertner, L., Sedikides, C., & Chang, K. (2008). On pancultural self-enhancement: Well- adjusted Taiwanese self-enhance on personally-valued traits. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 39, 463–477.

Giladi, E. E., & Klar, Y. (2002). When standards are wide of the mark: Nonselective superi­ ority and bias in comparative judgments of objects and concepts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131, 538–551.

Gosling, S. D., John, O. P., Craik, K. H., & Robins, R. W. (1998). Do people know how they behave? Self-reported act frequencies compared with on-line codings by observers. Jour­ nal Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1337–1349.

Gramzow, R. H. (2011). Academic exaggeration: Pushing self-enhancement boundaries. In M. D. Alicke & C. Sedikides (Eds.), The handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection

(pp. 455–471). New York: Guilford Press.

Gramzow, R. H., & Willard, G. (2006). Exaggerating current and past performance: Moti­ vated self-enhancement versus reconstructive memory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1114–1125.

Green, J. D., Pinter, B., & Sedikides, C. (2005). Mnemic neglect and self-threat: Trait mod­ ifiability moderates self-protection. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 225–235.

Green, J. D., & Sedikides, C. (2004). Retrieval selectivity in the processing of self-referent information: Testing the boundaries of self-protection. Self and Identity, 3, 69–80.

Green, J. D., Sedikides, C., & Gregg, A. P. (2008). Forgotten but not gone: The recall and recognition of self-threatening memories. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 547–561.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 28 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Green, J. D., Sedikides, C., Pinter, B., & Van Tongeren, D. R. (2009). Two sides to self-pro­ tection: Self-improvement (p. 319) strivings and feedback from close relationships elimi­ nate mnemic neglect. Self and Identity, 8, 233–250.

Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1982). The self-serving attributional bias: Beyond self-presentation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18, 56–67.

Gregg, A. P., & Sedikides, C. (2010). Narcissistic fragility: Rethinking its links to explicit and implicit self-esteem. Self and Identity, 9, 142–161.

Gregg, A. P., Sedikides, C., & Gebauer, J. E. (2011). Dynamics of identity: Between self-en­ hancement and self-assessment. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research (Vol. 1, pp. 305–327). New York: Springer.

Guenther, C. (2011). Self-affirmation and the better-than-average effect. Manuscript sub­ mitted for publication, Creighton University.

Guenther, C. L., & Alicke, M. D. (2010). Deconstructing the better-than-average effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 755–770.

Gupta, S., & Bonanno, G. A. (2010). Trait self-enhancement as a buffer against potentially traumatic events: A prospective study. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 2, 83–92.

Haslam, N., Bain, P., Douge, L., Lee, M., & Bastian, B. (2005). More human than you: At­ tributing humanness to self and others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 937–950.

Heady, B., & Wearing, A. (1988). The sense of relative superiority—central to well-being. Social Indicators Research, 20, 497–516.

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.

Hepper, E. G., Gramzow, R., & Sedikides, C. (2010). Individual differences in self-enhance­ ment and self-protection strategies: An integrative analysis. Journal of Personality, 78, 781–814.

Hepper, E. G., Sedikides, C., & Cai, H. (in press). Self-enhancement and self-protection strategies in China: Cultural expressions of a fundamental human motive. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Hobbes, T. (1991). Leviathan. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1651).

House, W. C. (1980). Effects of knowledge that attributions will be observed by others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14, 528–545.

Isen, A. M., & Means, B. (1983). The influence of positive affect on decision-making strategies. Social Cognition, 2, 18–31.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 29 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology (Vols. 1–2). New York: Holt.

Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York: Free Press.

Juhl, J., Routledge, C., Arndt, J., Sedikides, C., & Wildschut, T. (2010). Fighting the future with the past: On the death-anxiety buffering function of nostalgia. Journal of Research in Personality, 44, 309–314.

Karylowski, J. (1990). Social reference points and accessibility of trait-related information in self-other comparisons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 975–983.

Karylowski, J., & Skarzynska, K. (1992). Asymmetric self-other similarity judgments de­ pend on priming self-knowledge. Social Cognition, 10, 235–254.

Kelley, H. H., & Michela, J. L. (1980). Attribution theory and research. Annual Review of Psychology, 31, 457–501.

Kenny, A. (1986). Rationalism, empiricism and idealism. Oxford, England: Oxford Univer­ sity Press.

Kernis, H. H., Cornell, D. P., Sun, C-R., Berry, A., & Harlow, T. (1993). There's more to self- esteem than whether it's high or low: The importance of stability of self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1190–1204.

Klar, Y. (2002). Way beyond compare: Nonselective superiority and inferiority biases in judging randomly assigned group members relative to their peers. Journal of Experimen­ tal Social Psychology, 38, 331–351.

Klar, Y., & Giladi, E. E. (1997). No one in my group can be below the group's average: A robust positivity bias in favor of anonymous peers. Journal of Personality and Social Psy­ chology, 73, 885–901.

Kobayashi, C., & Brown, J. D. (2003). Self-esteem and self-enhancement in Japan and America. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 567–580.

Kruger, J. (1999). Lake Wobegon be gone! The “below-average effect” and the egocentric nature of comparative ability judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 221–232.

Kruger, J., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Actions, intentions, and self-assessment: The road to self- enhancement is paved with good intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 328–339.

Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Lay epistemics and human knowledge: Cognitive and motiva­ tional biases. New York: Plenum Press.

Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480–498.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 30 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Kurman, J. (2002). Measured cross-cultural differences in self-enhancement and the sensi­ tivity of the self-enhancement measure to the modesty response. Cross-Cultural Research, 36, 73–95.

Kurman, J., & Sriram, N. (1997). Self-enhancement, generality of self-evaluation, and af­ fectivity in Israel and Singapore. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 28, 421–441.

Kwon, Y., Scheibe, S., Samanez-Larkin, G. R., Tsai, J. L. & Carstensen, L. L. (2009). Repli­ cating the positivity effect in picture memory in Koreans: Evidence for cross-cultural gen­ eralizability. Psychology and Aging, 24, 748–754.

La Rochefoucauld, F. (1827). Reflections: Or sentences and moral maxims (J. W. W. Bund & J. H. Friswell, Trans.). London, England: Simpson, Low, Son, & Marston. (Original work published 1678).

Landau, J. D, & Gunter, B. C. (2009). “Don't worry; you really will get over it”: Method­ ological investigations of the fading affect bias. American Journal of Psychology, 122, 209–217.

Langens, T. A., & Moerth, S. (2003). Repressive coping and the use of passive and active coping strategies. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 461–473.

Loeb, L. (1981). From Descartes to Hume: Continental metaphysics and the development of modern philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Macfarlane, A. (1978). The origins of English individualism: The family, property, and so­ cial transition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mandeville, B. (1705). The fable of the bees: or private vices, public benefits (Vol. 1). Ox­ ford, England: Clarendon Press.

Marshall, M. A., & Brown, J. D. (2007). On the psychological benefits of self-enhancement. In E. Chang (Ed.), Self-enhancement and self-criticism: Theory, research, and clinical im­ plications (pp. 19–35). New York: American Psychological Association.

(p. 320) McFarland, C., & Ross, M. (1982). Impact of causal attributions on affective reac­ tions to success and failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 937–946.

McNally, R. J. (2003). Remembering trauma. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard Uni­ versity Press.

Mednick, S.A. (1962). The associative basis of the creative process. Psychological Review, 69, 220–232.

Messick, D. M., Bloom, S., Boldizar, J. P., & Samuelson, C. D. (1985). Why are we fairer than others? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 480–500.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 31 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is there a universal positive bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cul­ tural differences in the self-serving attributional bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 711–

747.

Mill, J. S. (2004). Utilitarianism. Adelaide, Australia: ebooks@Adelaide. Retrieved July 2011, from, http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645u/ (Original work published 1863).

Miller, D. T. (1976). Ego involvement and attributions for success and failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 901–906.

Miller, D. T. (1978). What constitutes a self-serving attributional bias? A reply to Bradley. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1221–1223.

Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving bias in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82, 213–225.

Miller, R. S., & Schlenker, B. R. (1985). Egotism in group members: Public and private at­ tributions of responsibility for group performance. Social Psychology Quarterly, 48, 85–

89.

Mischel, W., Ebbesen, E. B., & Zeiss, A. R. (1976). Determinants of selective memory about the self. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 44, 92–103.

Moore, D. A. (2007). Not so above average after all: When people believe they are worse than average and its implications for theories of bias in social comparison. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102, 42–58.

Moore, D. A., & Kim, T. G. (2003). Myopic social prediction and the solo comparison ef­ fect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1121–1135.

Murray, S. L., & Holmes, J. G. (1993). Seeing virtues in faults: Negativity and the transfor­ mation of interpersonal narratives in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 707–722.

Mullen, B., & Riordan, C. A. (1988). Self-serving attributions for performance in naturalis­ tic settings: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18, 3–22.

Nesselroade, K. P., Beggan, J. K., & Allison, S. T. (1999). Possession enhancement in an in­ terpersonal context: An extension of the mere ownership effect. Psychology and Market­ ing, 16, 21–34.

Newman, L. S., Nibert, J. A., & Winer, E. S. (2009). Mnemic neglect is not an artifact of expectancy: The moderating role of defensive pessimism. European Journal of Social Psy­ chology, 39, 477–486.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 32 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Newton, T. L., & Contrada, R. L. (1992). Repressive coping and verbal-autonomic dissoci­ ation: The influence of social context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 159–167.

Nietzsche, F. (1972). Beyond good and evil (R. J. Hollongdale, Trans.). London, England: Penguin Books. (Original work published 1886).

Ogilvie, D. M. (1987). The undesired self: A neglected variable in personality research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 379–385.

O'Mara, E. M., Gaertner, L., Sedikides, C., Zhou, X., & Liu, Y. (2010). An experimental test of the panculturality of self-enhancement: Self-enhancement promotes psychological well- being both in the West and the East. Manuscript submitted for pulbication, University of Dayton.

Otten, W., & van der Pligt, J. (1996). Context effects in the measurement of comparative optimism in probability judgments. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 15, 80–101.

Pahl, S., & Eiser, J. R. (2006). The focus effect and self-positivity in ratings of self-other similarity and difference. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 107–116.

Pahl, S., & Eiser, J. R. (2007). How malleable is comparative self-positivity? The effects of manipulating judgemental focus and accessibility. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 617–627.

Paulhus, D. L. (1993). Bypassing the will: The automatization of affirmations. In D. M. Wegner & J. M. Pennebaker (Eds.), Handbook of mental control (pp. 573–587). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Peterson, C., & Barrett, L. C. (1987). Explanatory style and academic performance among university freshmen. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 603–607.

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. (1987). Explanatory style and illness. Journal of Personali­ ty, 55, 237–265.

Peterson, C., Seligman, M. E., & Vaillant, G. E. (1998). Pessimistic explanatory style is a risk factor for physical illness: A thirty-five-year longitudinal study. Journal of Personality, 55, 23–27.

Preston, C. E., & Harris, S. (1965). Psychology of drivers in traffic accidents. Journal of Applied Psychology, 49, 284–288.

Preuss, G. S., & Alicke, M. D. (2009). Everybody loves me: Self-evaluations and metaper­ ceptions of dating popularity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 937–950.

Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3, 369–381.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 33 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (1987). Toward an integration of cognitive and motiva­ tional perspectives on social inference: A biased hypothesis-testing model. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 20, 297–340.

Reeder, G. D., & Brewer, M. B. (1979). A schematic model of dispositional attribution in interpersonal perception. Psychological Review, 86, 61–79.

Ritchie, T., Skowronski, J. J., Hartnett, J. Wells, B., & Walker, W. R. (2009). The fading af­ fect bias in the context of emotion activation level, mood, and personal theories of emo­ tion change. Memory, 17, 428–444.

Rizley, R. (1978). Depression and distortion in the attribution of causality. Journal of Ab­ normal Psychology, 87, 32–48.

Roese, N. J., & Olson, J. M. (2007). Better, stronger, faster: Self-serving judgment, affect regulation, and the optimal vigilance hypothesis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2, 124–141.

Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Ross, M., & Wilson, A. E. (2002). It feels like yesterday: Self-esteem, valence of personal past experiences, and judgments of subjective distance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 792–803.

(p. 321) Ross, M., McFarland, C., & Fletcher, G. J. (1981). The effect of attitude on the re­ call of personal histories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 627–634.

Rothbart, M., & Park, B. (1986). On the confirmability and disconfirmability of trait con­ cepts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 131–142.

Rothbaum, F., Weisz, J. R., & Snyder, S. S. (1982). Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psycholo­ gy, 42, 5–37.

Routledge, C., Arndt, J., Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Hart, C. M., Juhl, J., & Vingerhoets, A., & Schlotz, W. (2011). The past makes the present meaningful: Nostalgia as an existen­ tial resource. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 638–652.

Rusbult, C. E., Van Lange, P. A. M., Wildschut, T., Yovetich, N. A., & Verette, J. (2000). Per­ ceived superiority in close relationships: Why it exists and persists. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 521–545.

Russell, B. (1943). An outline of intellectual rubbish. Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius.

Sande, G., Goethals, G., & Radloff, C. (1988). Perceiving one's own traits and others': The multifaceted self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 13–20.

Sanitioso, R., Kunda, Z., & Fong, G. T. (1990). Motivated recruitment of autobiographical memories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 229–241.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 34 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Sanitioso, B. R., & Niedenthal, P. M. (2006). Motivated self-perception and perceived ease in recall of autobiographical memories. Self and Identity, 5, 73–84.

Schopenhauer, A. (1996). The world as will and representation (Vol. 2; E. F. J. Payne, Trans.) New York: Dover Publications. (Original work published 1844).

Schrauf, R. W., & Hoffman, L. (2007). The effects of revisionism on remembered emotion: The valence of older, voluntary immigrants' pre-migration autobiographical memories. Ap­ plied Cognitive Psychology, 21, 895–913.

Schulz, R., & Fritz, S. (1987). Origins of stereotypes of the elderly: An experimental study of the self-other discrepancy. Experimental Aging Research, 13, 189–195.

Schwartz, R. M. (1986). The internal dialogue: On the asymmetry between positive and negative coping thoughts. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 10, 591–605.

Sedikides, C. (1993). Assessment, enhancement, and verification determinants of the self- evaluation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 317–338.

Sedikides, C. (2012). Self-protection. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (2nd ed.) (pp. 327–353). New York: Guilford Press.

Sedikides, C., Campbell, W. K., Reeder, G., & Elliot, A. J. (1998). The self-serving bias in relational context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 378–386.

Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Toguchi, Y. (2003). Pancultural self-enhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 60–70.

Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Vevea, J. L. (2005). Pancultural self-enhancement reloaded: A meta-analytic reply to Heine (2005). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 539–551.

Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Vevea, J. L. (2007). Inclusion of theory-relevant moderators yield the same conclusions as Sedikides, Gaertner, and Vevea (2005): A meta-analytic re­ ply to Heine, Kitayama, and Hamamura (2007). Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 59–67.

Sedikides, C., & Gebauer, J. E. (2010). Religiosity as self-enhancement: A meta-analysis of the relation between socially desirable responding and religiosity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 17–36.

Sedikides, C., & Green, J. D. (2000). On the self-protective nature of inconsistency/nega­ tivity management: Using the person memory paradigm to examine self-referent memory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 906–922.

Sedikides, C., & Green, J. D. (2004). What I don't recall can't hurt me: Information nega­ tivity versus information inconsistency as determinants of memorial self-defense. Social Cognition, 22, 4–29.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 35 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Sedikides, C., & Green, J. D. (2009). Memory as a self-protective mechanism. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3, 1055–1068.

Sedikides, C., Green, J. D., & Pinter, B. (2004). Self-protective memory. In D. R. Beike, J. M. Lampinen, & D. A. Behrend (Eds.), The self and memory (pp. 161–179). Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.

Sedikides, C., & Gregg, A. P. (2003). Portraits of the self. In M. A. Hogg & J. Cooper (Eds.), Sage handbook of social psychology (pp. 110–138). London, England: Sage Publications.

Sedikides, C., & Gregg, A. P. (2008). Self-enhancement: Food for thought. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 102–116.

Sedikides, C., Gregg, A. P., & Hart, C. M. (2007). The importance of being modest. In C. Sedikides & S. Spencer (Eds.), The self: Frontiers in social psychology (pp. 163–184). New York: Psychology Press.

Sedikides, C., & Hepper, E. G. D. (2009). Self-improvement. Social and Personality Psy­ chology Compass, 3, 899–917.

Sedikides, C., & Strube, M. (1995). The multiply motivated self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1330–1335.

Sedikides, C., & Strube, M. J. (1997). Self-evaluation: To thine own self be good, to thine own self be sure, to thine own self be true, and to thine own self be better. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 29, 209–269. New York: Academic Press.

Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., Gaertner, L., Routledge, C., & Arndt, J. (2008). Nostalgia as enabler of self-continuity. In F. Sani (Ed.), Self-continuity: Individual and collective per­ spectives (pp. 227–239). New York: Psychology Press.

Seligman, M. E., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Thornton, N., & Thornton, K. M. (1990). Explanato­ ry style as a mechanism of disappointing athletic performance. Psychological Science, 1, 143–146.

Sherman, D. K., & Hartson, K. A. (2011). Reconciling self-protection with self-criticism: Self-affirmation theory. In M. D. Alicke & C. Sedikides (Eds.), The handbook of self-en­ hancement and self-protection (pp. 128–151). New York: Guilford Press.

Sherman, D. K., & Kim, H. S. (2005). Is there an “I” in “Team”? The role of the self in group-serving judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 108–120.

Skowronski, J. J. (2011). The positivity bias and the fading affect bias in autobiographical memory: A self-motives perspective. In M. D. Alicke & C. Sedikides (Eds.), The handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection (pp. 211–231). New York: Guilford Press.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 36 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Skowronski, J. J., Betz, A. L., Thompson, C. P., & Shannon, L. (1991). Social memory in everyday life: Recall of self-events and other-events. Journal of Personality and Social Psy­ chology, 60, 831–843.

(p. 322) Stephan, E., Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., & Routledge, C., Zhou, X., Kuang, L., & Vingerhoets, J. J. M. (2011). Nostalgia regulates avoidance and approach motivation. Un­ published manuscript, University of Southampton.

Stewart, A. E. (2005). Attributions of responsibility for motor vehicle crashes. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 37, 681–688.

Swann, W. B., Jr., Rentfrow, P. J., & Guinn, J. (2003). Self-verification: The search for co­ herence. In M. Leary & J. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp. 367–383). New York: Guilford.

Sweeney, P. D., Anderson, K., & Bailey, S. (1986). Attributional style in depression: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 974–991.

Tatarkiewicz, W. (1976). Analysis of happiness. Warsaw, Poland: Polish Scientific Publish­ ers.

Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological per­ spective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193–210.

Taylor, S. E., Klein, L. C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. (2000). Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or- flight. Psychological Review, 107, 411–429.

Taylor, S. E., Lerner, J. S., Sherman, D. K., Sage, R. M., & McDowell, N. K. (2003a). Por­ trait of the self-enhancer: Well-adjusted and well-liked or maladjusted and friendless?

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 165–176.

Taylor, S. E., Lerner, J. S., Sherman, D. K., Sage, R. M., & McDowell, N. K. (2003b). Are self-enhancing cognitions associated with healthy or unhealthy biological profiles? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 605–615.

Tennen, H., & Herzberger, S. (1987). Depression, self-esteem, and the absence of self-pro­ tective attributional biases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 72–80.

Tetlock, P. E., & Levin, A. (1982). Attribution bias: On the inconclusiveness of the cogni­ tion-motivation debate. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18, 68–88.

Thompson, C. P., Skowronski, J. J., Larsen, S. F., & Betz, A. (1996). Autobiographical mem­ ory: Remembering what and remembering when. New York: Erlbaum.

Van Lange, P. A. M., Rusbult, C. E., Semin-Goossens, A., Goerts, C. A, & Stalpers, M. (1999). Being better than others but otherwise perfectly normal: Perceptions of unique­ ness and similarity in close relationships. Personal Relationships, 6, 269–289.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 37 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Van Lange, P. A. M., & Sedikides, C. (1998). Being more honest but not necessarily more intelligent than others: Generality and explanations for the Muhammad Ali effect. Euro­ pean Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 675–680.

Van Lange, P. A. M., Taris, T. W., & Vonk, R. (1997). The social psychology of social psy­ chologists: Self-enhancing beliefs about own research. European Journal of Social Psy­ chology, 27, 675–685.

Wagenaar, W. A., & Groeneweg, J. (1990). The memory of concentration camp survivors. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4, 77–87.

Walker, W. R., & Skowronski, J. J. (2009). The Fading Affect Bias …. But what the hell is it for? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23, 1122–1136.

Walker, W. R., Skowronski, J. J., Gibbons, J. A., Vogl, R. J., & Thompson, C. P. (2003). On the emotions accompanying autobiographical memory: Dysphoria disrupts the fading affect bias. Cognition and Emotion, 17, 703–724.

Walker, W. R., Skowronski, J. J., & Thompson, C. P. (2003). Life is pleasant—and memory helps to keep it that way. Review of General Psychology, 7, 203–210.

Weary, G. (1979). Self-serving biases in attribution process: A re-examination of the fact or fiction question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 56–71.

Weary Bradley, G. (1978). Self-serving attributional biases: Perceptual or response distor­ tions? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1418–1420.

Weiner, B. (1972). Theories of motivation: From mechanism to cognition. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.

Weiner, P. S. (1964). Personality correlates of self-appraisal in four-year-old children. Ge­ netic Psychologic Monographs, 70, 329–365.

Weinstein, N. D. (1980). Optimistic biases about personal risks. Science, 246, 1232–1233.

Wiesenfeld, B., Brockner, J., Petzall, B., Wolf, R., & Bailey, J. (2001). Stress and coping among layoff survivors: A self-affirmation analysis. Anxiety, Stress and Coping, 1, 15–34.

Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. D. (2006). Nostalgia: Content, trig­ gers, functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 975–993.

Williams, E. F., & Gilovich, T. (2008). Do people really believe they are above average?

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1121–1128.

Williams, J. M. G., Barnhofer, T., Crane, C., Hermans, D., Raes, F., Watkins, E., & Dalgeish, T. (2007). Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder. Psychological Bul­ letin, 133, 122–148.

Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives

Page 38 of 38

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: University of Michigan; date: 16 March 2022

Wilson, A. E., Smith, M. D., Ross, H. S., & Ross, M. (2004). Young children's personal ac­ counts of their sibling disputes. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 50, 39–60.

Windschitl, P. D., Kruger, J., & Sims, E. N. (2003). The influence of egocentrism and focal­ ism on people's optimism and competition: When what affects us equally affects me more. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 389–408.

Wright, S. S. (2000). Looking at the self in a rose-colored mirror: Unrealistically positive self-views and academic performance. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 451–

462.

Wyer, R. S., & Frey, D. (1983). The effects of feedback about self and others on the recall and judgments of feedback-relevant information. Journal of Experimental Social Psycholo­ gy, 19, 540–559.

Yarrow, M. R., Campbell, J. D., & Burton, R. V. (1970). Recollections of childhood: A study of the retrospective method. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Develop­ ment, 35, 1–83.

Zauberman, G., Ratner, R. K., & Kim, K. (2009). Memories as assets: Strategic memory protection in choice over time. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 715–728.

Zuckerman, M. (1979). Attribution of success and failure revisited, or: The motivational bias is alive and well in attributional theory. Journal of Personality, 47, 245–287.

Zuckerman, M., & O'Loughlin, R. E. (2006). Self-enhancement by social comparison: A prospective analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 751–760.

Constantine Sedikides

Constantine Sedikides Department of Psychology University of Southampton Southampton, England, UK

Mark D. Alicke

Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA