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3 The Social Self

Core Questions

1. What is the “self”?

2. How do we know the self is social?

3. Why do we present different selves in different situations?

4. Is the truth always the self’s friend?

5. What is self-esteem and how can we measure it?

Who are you if you have lost your memory? Consider the following movies about memory

loss:

Memento (Todd & Todd, 2000): A man finds mysterious tattoos on himself after

sustaining brain damage that prevents him from accessing any new memories.

50 First Dates (Giarraputpo, Golin, Juvonen, & Producers, Segal, 2004): A woman

has difficulty falling in love because she can’t remember the romantic events from the

previous day.

The Bourne Ultimatum (F. Marshall, Crowley, Sangberg, & Greengrass, 2007): A

CIA agent tries to figure out who he is after suffering long-term amnesia and

brainwashing.

Total Recall (Moritz, Jaffe, & Wiseman, 2012): A man in the future discovers his

memory has been altered and starts an adventure to discover his true self and history.

Finding Dory (Collins & Stanton, 2016): A friendly but forgetful blue tang fish

struggles to be reunited with her long-lost parents.

The characters in these memory-loss movies had to imagine their probable selves into

existence. Hollywood scriptwriters are not the only ones using memory loss to imagine the

self into existence. The rest of us also have imperfect memories, so we construct our sense

of who we are by piecing together fragments of memory, interpreting uncertain evidence,

and hoping for the best.

The self is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. William Swann and Michael

Buhrmester (2012) call the self a “functional fiction” because it’s a story with a purpose.

And even though it’s a made-up, pieced-together tale that has an audience of only one

person, this solitary self is also a social self. That’s because the plot of our self-story always

involves family, friends, neighborhood, culture, and much more. To understand how each

of us live, think, and behave in a social world, we have to first understand how we define

and perceive ourselves.

Learning Objectives

3.1 Explain how social psychology has defined self-awareness and the self-concept.

3.2 Analyze how our self-perceptions are influenced by others.

3.3 Explain how we adjust our public self-presentation to influence others.

3.4 Articulate why we sometimes benefit from positive illusions and moderate self-deceptions.

3.5 Apply both explicit and implicit methods to the many facets of self-esteem, including its dark side.

What Is the “Self”?

— LO 3.1: Explain how social psychology has defined self-awareness and the self-

concept.

Perhaps the proverbial slap on a newborn baby’s backside (or the more likely suction device

up the baby’s nose) first jars us into self-awareness. Before that moment, we were part of

someone else’s body. With a snip of the umbilical cord and a sudden breath of air, we

became a separate, living creature. But did we know it at that moment? The scientific

challenge is to develop a reliable way of discovering how and when we develop self-

awareness (also called self-recognition), the understanding that we are a separate entity

from other people and objects in our world. The experience of becoming self-aware

(Sedikides & Skowronski, 1997) is not easy to document with the reliability and validity

that science requires.

Infants mirror the expressions of adults while becoming aware of themselves as independent

beings.

The Scientific Study of Self-Awareness

How we think about ourselves changes over the entire arc of our lives. The creator of

psychology’s first textbook, William James (1890), wrote that the self “is the sum total of

all that a person can call his [today we would add “or her”] own,” including

not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house . . . his

reputation and works . . . his yacht and his bank-account. All these things give him

the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and

die away, he feels cast down. (p. 292)

How has science approached the abstract and changing construct of self-awareness?

Charles Darwin noted early signs of mental development in his infant son, William. His

“eyes were fixed on a candle as early as the 9th day . . . on the 49th day his attention was

attracted by a bright-coloured tassel” (Biographical Sketch of an Infant, p. 286).

Cambridge University Library, 1842

Early Research on Self-Awareness: Darwin and Imitation.

He was really just a proud papa. Charles Darwin couldn’t help but notice interesting things

about the development of his beautiful new baby. The scientific study of self-awareness

began with Darwin’s naturalistic observations of William, the first of the 10 children of

Charles and Emma Darwin. Darwin (1877) carefully observed and reported that his infant

son began imitating what he saw and heard:

When our infant was only four months old I thought that he tried to imitate sounds;

but I may have deceived myself, for I was not thoroughly convinced that he did so

until he was ten months old. (p. 286)

Since these first observations from Darwin, scientists have been studying imitation as an

early sign of self-awareness (Anderson, 1984; Damon & Hart, 1988). A 1977 study

documented 2- to 3-week-old infants imitating a mouth opening, a finger moving, or a

tongue appearing between the lips (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). By 1989, the same research

team had documented imitation among infants who were less than 72 hours old (including

a 42-minute-old infant!). Four-month-old infants reliably display a more distinct sense of

self by smiling more and looking longer at pictures of others compared to looking at

pictures of themselves (Rochat & Striano, 2002).

Testing Self-Awareness: The Mirror Self-Recognition Test.

Imitation is interesting to see in infants, but does it really mean that they have self-

awareness? To more directly test this, scientists—including Darwin—wanted to come up

with a way to test whether people (and animals) seem to realize they are independent,

unique entities. Do all animals have a sense of self, or is this perception unique to humans?

Darwin (1872) tried to answer that question with an experiment. He reported that

many years ago, in the Zoological Gardens, I placed a looking-glass on the floor

between two young [orangutans] ....... They approached close and protruded their lips

towards the image, as if to kiss it, in exactly the same manner as they had previously

done towards each other. (p. 142)

Those orangutans acted as if the creature in the mirror were another animal, not

themselves, suggesting that they did not possess self-awareness.

Almost 100 years later, in 1968, Gordon Gallup followed Darwin’s lead by attempting to

find out whether some animals respond to their mirror image “as if their image represented

another animal” (Gallup, 1968, p. 782). So he created a more controlled version of

Darwin’s original experiment by first anesthetizing some chimpanzees, macaques, and

rhesus monkeys. While they were unconscious, Gallup marked each animal with a

nonodorous, nonirritating red dye just above the eyebrow. The animals could not smell,

feel, or see the red dye without the help of a mirror.

What would it mean if an animal looked into the mirror, saw the unmistakable red dye,

but did not touch the red dye? The animal probably perceived that the creature in the

mirror was just some other animal that happened to have a red splotch on its forehead. But

what if an animal looked into the mirror and touched the unusual red dye on its own face

—not on the mirror? In that case, the animal was telling us, “That’s me in the mirror: I am

—and I know that I am the one with the red mark.” The mirror self-recognition test (also

called the mark test) creates an opportunity for animals to demonstrate self-awareness. In

Gallup’s first study, the four chimpanzees (but not the other primates) did indeed touch

the red mark on their foreheads. Voila! Gallup had scientifically demonstrated self-

awareness among chimpanzees.

More recently, mirror self-recognition studies have also documented self-awareness among

Asian elephants (Plotnik, de Waal, & Reiss, 2006), killer whales (Delfour & Marten,

2001), and dolphins (Marino, 2002). Self-awareness among animals is no surprise to dog

owners. Misbehaving dogs will slink about and put their tails between their legs in ways

that suggest awareness of a guilty self.

Do non-human animals have a sense of self? A YouTube.com search for “animal self-

recognition” results in videos on elephants, lions, chimpanzees and others toying with their

image in a mirror.

Self-awareness: The understanding that we are a separate entity from other people and objects in our world;

a state of being conscious of our own existence.

Self-recognition: See self-awareness.

Mirror self-recognition test: A scientific paradigm where a mark is placed on an animal’s forehead and it is

placed in front of a mirror. The animal is assumed to have self-recognition if it touches the mark on its

forehead.

Defining and Measuring the Self-Concept

The self-concept is the personal summary of who we believe we are; it is how we answer

the question, “Who am I?” It includes our assessment of our positive and negative qualities,

our relationships to others, our beliefs and opinions, and more. We acquire a self-concept

in several ways, including the following:

We compare our self to others (social comparison theory).

Culture creates expectations about how the self should behave (social identity

theory).

We create mental structures that direct the self’s attention (self-schema theory).

Let’s consider each of these theories in more detail.

Dogs seem to be aware when they have misbehaved. They appear to demonstrate

something like shame—but only when they are caught.

Social Comparison Theory.

Social comparison theory proposes that we use social comparisons to construct our self-

concept, especially when we have no other objective standard available to us (Festinger,

1954). How do you know if you are shy, competitive, rich, anxious, or anything else? These

subjective ideas only become meaningful in comparison to others.

For example, if you are walking alone on the beach, you may not even be thinking about

your physical appearance. But when someone much more attractive walks by, the

unflattering social comparison can deliver a small shock to your previously contented self-

concept (Bachman & O’Malley, 1986; Marsh, Köller, & Baumert, 2001). At a basic level,

there are two types of social comparisons we can make.

Upward Social Comparisons. When we make an upward social comparison, we

compare ourselves to someone who is better than us. This type of comparison can be

useful when we want to improve on a particular skill. Most people who like to watch

cooking shows with celebrity chefs enjoy getting tips on how to make their own food

taste or look better. The same is true for people who get ideas about home decorating

from Martha Stewart or by reading magazines with ideas, or when athletes learn from

coaches. However, constantly comparing ourselves to people who have excelled can

lead to frustration or even depression—why can’t my cupcakes look as good as the

ones on Pinterest?

Downward Social Comparisons. That’s where the second type of social comparison

comes into play: downward social comparison. This occurs when we compare

ourselves to someone who is worse than we are. This might not help us improve, but

it sure feels better. My cupcakes might not win any cupcake reality show contests,

sure, but it’s better than the cupcake my daughter tried to make, for example. My

tennis skills aren’t on a professional level, maybe, but I’m better than the guy in the

next court who can’t hit a single ball over the net.

How we process those social comparisons also makes a difference (Suls & Wheeler, 2000).

The W.I.D.E. guide to social comparisons identifies four factors relevant to our subjective

processing of what we see around us (see Figure 3.1):

Who. We evaluate our abilities automatically (Gilbert, Giesler, & Morris, 1995) by

comparing ourselves to similar others (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). Tennis players who

are about my ability level or a little better give me the most useful social comparison

feedback.

Interpretation. How we interpret social comparisons influences our self-concept.

Moving into a group home with sick elderly neighbors could be processed in two

very different ways (Michinov, 2007): (1) “Thank goodness that I’m not that ill,” or

(2) “Very soon, I also could be just as needy” (Brandstätter, 2000).

Direction. The direction of our social comparison influences our self-concept.

Comparing myself to better tennis players is an upward social comparison (that

makes me feel worse) and comparing to worse players is a downward social

comparison (that makes me feel better). Downward social comparisons tend to

enhance our self-concept (Burleson, Leach, & Harrington, 2005; Gibbons et al.,

2002; Guimond et al., 2007; Major, Sciacchitano, & Crocker, 1993).

Esteem. Protecting our self-esteem influences our self-concept. The losing tennis

player may say to her opponent, “You played extremely well today,” implying that

her opponent had to play his or her best to beat her (Alicke, LoSchiavo, Zerbst, &

Zhang, 1997). We’ll talk more about self-esteem—and how we use psychological

tricks to protect it—a little later in this chapter.

Figure 3.1 The W.I.D.E. guide suggests that social comparisons are made up of four

factors.

Source: Adapted from Suls & Wheeler (2000).

Social Identity Theory.

Henri Tajfel was in a bad situation when he was captured by German soldiers during

World War II. He was a Polish-born Jew who had volunteered to join the French army.

When the Germans asked who he was, he faced a terrible dilemma; should he admit he was

Jewish? He did—but he also falsely presented himself as a French citizen, which probably

saved his life. After surviving the war with other French prisoners, Tajfel became a social

psychologist who proposed that the self is composed of two general categories:

Ask the Experts: Joanne Smith on Social Identity

©SAGE Publications

1. personal characteristics (serious, funny, grumpy, tall, or rich), and

2. social role characteristics (son, mother, musician, Catholic, or accountant).

In other words, there are at least these two sides to the self, and they each have many

working parts. You are not just “funny”; you are many other things: short-tempered,

generous, and so forth. You are not just a student; you are also a daughter or son who has a

Self-concept: The personal summary of who we believe we are, including our assessment of our positive and

negative qualities, our relationships to others, and our beliefs and opinions.

Social comparison theory: The use of social comparisons to construct the self-concept when no other

objective standard is available.

Upward social comparison: When individuals compare themselves to someone who is better than they are,

often to improve on a particular skill.

Downward social comparison: When individuals compare themselves to someone who is worse than they

are, often to help them feel better about themselves.

certain ethnic heritage, religious upbringing, and sexual orientation. Your complicated self

is organized around what Tajfel called social identity theory, which proposes that our self-

concept is composed of a personal identity and a social identity (see Rivenburgh, 2000;

Sherif, 1966b; Tajfel, 1981, 1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). What are some examples of

social identities?

The Regional Self.

One social identity is based on where you are from. The well-known social psychologist

Roy Baumeister (1986) pointed out that in Medieval times, a person’s region was

sometimes part of his or her name; “Leonardo da Vinci” means “Leonardo, from Vinci.”

Regional identity is also apparent in many of the World War II cemeteries in France for

soldiers from different countries who died during the Normandy invasion. The cemetery

designers organized the soldiers in death—as in life—in regional groups organized first by

country and then by region within that country.

The social self is influenced by cultural expectations and traditions that show up in

surprising ways in controlled experiments.

Regional affiliations influence how others perceive us and how we, in turn, perceive

ourselves. For example, one research team found that within the United States, people from

Massachusetts are often perceived as intelligent but snobbish, Iowans as hard-working but

hicks, Georgians as hospitable but racist, and New Yorkers as ambitious but rude (Berry,

Jones, & Kuczaj, 2000). Do you feel proud when someone from your country, especially

from your region of the country, wins at the Olympics? You probably didn’t train, sacrifice,

donate money, or even care very much who won until you turned on the television.

Nevertheless, our national and regional identity influence our self-concept.

The Cultural Self.

Social identity theory: Psychological theory that proposes that our self-concept is composed of two parts: a

personal identity that is based on personal characteristics and a social identity that is based on social role

characteristics.

The tricky thing about our cultural self is that we are mostly unaware of it until we happen

to bump into another culture. Cultural collisions create humorous situations that have

produced some great comedic films such as My Cousin Vinny (Launer, Schiff, & Lynn,

1992), Bend It Like Beckham (Chadha & Nayar, 2002), My Big Fat Greek Wedding

(Goetzman, Hanks, Wilson, & Jones, 2002, 2016), and even Elf (Berg, Komarnicki,

Robertson, & Favreau, 2003). If you have ever traveled to another country, your

assumptions, way of life, clothing, and more may have suddenly become salient to you in

new ways because you may suddenly realize that your view of the world is changed due to

your cultural self.

Independent and Interdependent Self-Construals.

By placing Western and Asian cultures on a cultural continuum, Figure 3.2 adds an

additional layer to Tajfel’s social identity theory. This continuum is anchored by a personal,

independent self-construal (many “Western” cultures) at one end and a social,

interdependent self-construal (many Asian cultures) at the other end.

This means that the ideal self in one culture is very different from the ideal self in another

culture. The rugged individualist so valued in the United States will likely be perceived as

rude and insensitive in Japan. The conciliatory team player so valued in Japan may be

perceived as wimpy and nonassertive in the United States. Table 3.1 helps us understand

how cultural norms influence how we think about the self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

Figure 3.2 Identity can be shaped by culture.

Self-Schema Theory.

A third way to think about how the self-concept is formed is through self-schemas,

memory structures that summarize and organize our beliefs about self-relevant information

(Markus, 1977). A schema in general is a cognitive and memory structure for organizing

the world, so self-schemas transform the raw material from cultural social comparisons into

the building blocks of our self-concept (Hewitt & Genest, 1990), creating what Cervone

(2004) calls “the architecture of personality.”

Independent self-construal: When an individual’s ideal self is largely based on internal, personal qualities.

Interdependent self-construal: When an individual’s ideal self is largely based on social qualities, especially

relationships with others.

Source: Data from Markus & Kitayama (1991).

For example, let’s say that you wake up late on Wednesday morning. Is your lateness

because you are lazy or because you work so hard that you’re exhausted? You then speed in

traffic heading to your job. Is your speeding because you are a dangerous, careless driver or

because you are responsibly trying to get to work as quickly as possible? When you get to

work, the first thing you do is get some coffee from the breakroom. Are you addicted and

trying to procrastinate, or are you simply trying to get focused so you can be efficient?

Instead of chatting with coworkers, you head straight to your desk. Are you rude or simply

motivated to accomplish that day’s tasks?

Your self-concept creates a coherent self by activating particular self-schemas that help you

interpret your own behavior. In this example, your efforts to get to work could lead you to

think of yourself in two very different ways: (1) you are lazy, dangerous, addicted, and rude,

or (2) you are hard-working, responsible, highly motivated, and determined to succeed.

How you interpret the flow of everyday events in your life depends on which self-schemas

have been activated, as the schemas create cognitive frameworks for you to interpret the

events of your life.

Self-schema: A way to think about how the self-concept is formed whereby memory structures that

summarize and organize our beliefs about self-relevant information create a cognitive framework within

which individuals interpret the events of their lives.

Schema: A cognitive and memory structure for organizing the world.

The Main Ideas

Self-awareness is the understanding that we are a separate entity from other people and objects in

our world. One way that scientists have attempted to measure self-awareness is called the mirror

self-recognition test.

Our self-concept is the personal summary of who we believe we are.

comparisons, including upward (comparing the self to someone who’s better) and downward

(comparing the self to someone who’s worse).

Social identity theory describes the self as a mixture of personal and social identities, and self-

memory.

Identify three activities you enjoy doing, such as sports, hobbies, and studying various subjects. Then,

make one upward social comparison and one downward social comparison for each activity. As you

identified one person who was better than you and one person who wasn’t as advanced, what emotions

resulted from each type of comparison?

List three ways that you typically perceive the world that you think might have been influenced by your

regional, national, or specific social cultures. One way to do this might be to think about how your

perceptions might be different from the perceptions of people from different cultures.

yourself about how you are now, but would this delusion eventually shape you into a better person?

How Do We Know the Self Is Social?

— LO 3.2: Analyze how our self-perceptions are influenced by others.

Magnificent? Yes, humans are in many ways. But we are also petty, deceitful, prone to

violence, moody, and many other unattractive things. Like winning the lottery, the gift of

self-awareness changes our lives in both good and bad ways. We can’t un-win the lottery

once we have won it, and we can’t undo having self-awareness and a self-concept once they

have evolved. But how do we know that the self is social? You can think of the social self as

the storytelling ringmaster in the three-ring circus of our complicated lives. It directs the

spotlight of our attention and narrates a story that brings coherence to our otherwise

chaotic interactions with others.

Here are three strands of evidence indicating that the self is social: (1) our self-perceptions

rely on the behaviors we display to others, (2) self-discrepancy theory describes how

different components of the self are influenced by others, and (3) our sense of self often

includes other people. Let’s talk about each strand.

Self-Perception Theory: Behaviors Tell Us Who We Are

A friend of mine [Wind’s] met my parents a few years ago and was chatting politely with

them. My friend casually mentioned to my parents, “Wind really loves waffles!” I was

surprised—I don’t think I had ever talked to my friend about waffles, and I didn’t really

consider myself a big waffle fan. When I asked my friend about her statement, though, she

said, “Every time we go to brunch, you always order waffles.” I thought about it for a

second, realized she was right, and realized that yes, I guess I do love waffles! This

experience demonstrates self-perception theory.

Our “self” sometimes seems like a circus ring master. It usually directs our attention to the

most positive self-performances.

Bill McCay / WireImage / Getty Images

Self-perception theory proposes that we get help answering the question, “Who am I?” by

making inferences about ourselves based on observing our own behaviors (Bem, 1967; Bem

& McConnell, 1970). To understand this theory, first think about how you form

perceptions of other people. You watch their behaviors and infer—or guess, really—about

their motivations, attitudes, values, and core traits based on the behaviors they display to

you. You never really know what’s going on behind the metaphorical curtain of these

outward behaviors.

Self-perception theory proposes that we form our self-concept in very similar ways. Perhaps

we don’t really have special, privileged access to our inner thoughts and choices all the time

—and we thus try to infer our own motivations, attitudes, values, and core traits based on

observing our own behaviors. If you regularly volunteer at a local dog shelter, then you must

be someone who cares about animals. If you love to travel and eat exotic foods, then you

must be open to new experiences. We define our self, in part, by how we observe ourselves

as we interact with others.

In this way, self-perception theory is the idea that our self-concept forms by observing our

own behaviors in a social world. If other people seem to think we’re funny, we will likely

incorporate “good sense of humor” into our self-concept. If other people look to us to make

decisions about where to eat every Friday night, we might come to believe we’re decisive

leaders. And if you always order waffles when you go to brunch with friends, you probably

love waffles. Again, because the self-concept is abstract and subjective, one of the most

straightforward ways to decide who we are is by simply observing what we do.

Self-perception theory: The theory that individuals form their self-concept by observing their own behavior

and trying to infer their own motivations, attitudes, values, and core traits.

Self-Discrepancy Theory: Are We Trying to Juggle Three

Selves?

So far, we’ve been talking about the self as if we all have a fully formed and single self-

concept. Psychologist Tory Higgins (1987, 2002) suggested that in reality, we all have three

simultaneous selves. We juggle these selves all at once, and they frequently change shape

while in the air. As you learn about each one, consider how each contributes to your own

self-concept.

The Actual Self.

Our first self is our “actual self,” which is simply who we think we are, right now. It

includes both our good and bad qualities, as well as the qualities we think other people see

in us. The actual self is who we are currently, as if someone took a snapshot of our evolving

lives. A meaningful actual self can acknowledge our strengths and admit our weaknesses.

The Ideal Self.

Higgins hypothesizes that we also have an “ideal self,” which is the person we would like to

become in the future. It includes enhancing or adding positive qualities that we don’t think

are maximized in the actual self, and it means eliminating or at least reducing negative

qualities we have right now. Our ideal self is our dreams and goals, the person we strive to

become. Importantly, our ideal self is truly based on what we want, even if that means

secret desires we’ve never been able to admit to anyone else. If you could, for example, have

any job in the world, or look a certain way, or live a particular lifestyle, what would it be?

The Ought Self.

In contrast with the ideal self, our “ought” self is what we think other people expect of us.

The ought self is based on our perception of what our social world hopes for us, perhaps

what our parents want us to do or be, what our friends believe would be good for us, or

even what our culture tells us is proper and correct. The ought self may influence how we

dress, for example, because we know what is expected of us. Interestingly, our ought self

might change based on whom our reference is. For example, what you think your parents

expect of you might be very different from what you think a first date expects of you.

When Selves Don’t Align: Self-Discrepancy.

Higgins suggests that not only do we have to juggle these three simultaneous selves, but we

also have to deal with times when the selves don’t match up. He refers to the mismatch

between our three selves as self-discrepancy. How do you feel when your actual self doesn’t

match your ideal self? Are these emotions different from those you experience when your

actual self doesn’t match your ought self?

Our discrepancies have predictable consequences that Higgins explored in research. He

found that when the actual self and ideal self don’t match—in other words, when we don’t

live up to our own ideals or we fail to achieve our dreams—we will experience “dejection-

related emotions” such as disappointment, shame, embarrassment, and possibly even

depression (Higgins, 1987).

On the other hand, sometimes our actual self doesn’t match our ought self. When this

happens, we’ll feel that we haven’t lived up to others’ expectations—and that kind of failure

produces “agitation-related emotions” such as guilt, fear, self-contempt, and anxiety. Of

course, the ideal situation would be that all three selves (actual, ideal, and ought) are exactly

in alignment, with perfect overlap. As you can see in Figure 3.3, this would be like a Venn

diagram of three circles. Each time the selves get closer together, the circles overlap more

until only a single, perfect circle remains because they are all the same self. How likely do

you think this is to achieve? Can you see discrepancies between your actual, ideal, and

ought selves?

For more on self-discrepancy theory, see the Social Psychology in Popular Culture feature

on “Self-Discrepancy Theory and Wonder Woman.”

Self-discrepancy: When a mismatch exists between an individual’s actual, ideal, and ought selves.

Self-Expansion Theory: Inclusion of Others in the Self

While self-discrepancy theory suggested that we might have more than one self-concept,

other social psychologists have suggested that our self-concept might even include other

people. Certainly, social identity theory noted that our sense of self includes our group

memberships and our relationships with other people. But could our abstract sense of self

also actually include specific other individuals in our social world?

Self-expansion theory is the idea that all of us have a basic motivation to grow, improve,

and enhance our self-concept; we all want to reach our greatest potential (Aron & Aron,

1996; Aron, Aron, & Norman, 2001). While other theories have noted that we can do that

through things like identifying our flaws or working toward our ideal self, self-expansion

theory specifically suggests that one common way we attempt to “expand” our self-concept

is through close social relationships. If we psychologically bond with others and feel that

these individuals now become part of who we are, then their strengths, resources,

knowledge, and skills can help us grow and have new opportunities.

Figure 3.3 Three selves might exist for each of us, according to self-discrepancy theory.

Psychologically including others in our self-concept is measured by the Inclusion of the

Other in the Self (IOS) Scale, which presents people with a series of seven Venn diagrams

with increasing overlap between “self” and “other” (see Figure 3.4; Aron, Aron, & Smollan,

1992). Participants simply circle the pair of circles that they feel accurately indicates how

much their self-concept now includes the other person. The IOS Scale is most commonly

used in research on romantic partners, such as spouses (e.g., Agnew, Loving, Le, &

Goodfriend, 2004; Agnew, Van Lange, Rusbult, & Langston, 1998), but it has also been

used to measure how much people see themselves as cognitively including their social

groups on a larger scale (e.g., Mashek, Cannaday, & Tangney, 2007; Mattingly &

Lewandowski, 2013, 2014).

Figure 3.4 Inclusion of the Other in the Self (IOS) Scale

Source: Aron, Aron & Smollan (1992).

Social Psychology in Popular Culture: Self-Discrepancy Theory and Wonder Woman

Sabena Jane Blackbird / Alamy Stock Photo

Most superheroes have secret identities—but does this complicate how they think about their own self-

concept? The most popular female superhero of all time is Wonder Woman, whose secret identity is Diana

Prince. But really, both of these identities are costumes; she’s really Princess Diana from Paradise Island.

When the Wonder Woman movie came out in 2017, it broke the record for opening-weekend ticket sales

(over $100 million) for a movie with a female director (Lang, 2017). But the original D.C. comics (which

started in 1942 for this character) provides an interesting view into the character’s original

conceptualization.

Applying Tory Higgins’s (1987, 2002) self-discrepancy theory, Princess Diana would be her “actual self”—

her true identity and the person she is when she’s not taking on one of her other identities. Most people

would probably say that Wonder Woman is Diana’s “ideal self,” the self that embodies all of her goals, or

the best version of the person she could be. Most regular humans strive for an ideal self in the future, but

superheroes usually get to reach their ideals a bit sooner than us mere mortals. Interestingly, though, even

Diana has to deal with people judging her, which makes her “ought self” come alive. In the early Wonder

Woman comics, both men and women make comments about how her star-spangled outfit is inappropriate

and skimpy. When Diana is pretending to be Diana Prince, a modest and gentle military secretary, her love

interest Steve Trevor constantly tells her that she’s not as attractive, strong, and amazing as Wonder

Woman. Diana thus is judged both when she’s embodying her Wonder Woman identity (she’s too brazen

and nonconformist) and when she’s embodying her Diana Prince identity (she’s too subdued and

conformist). It’s apparently hard to be a modern woman, even when you have super powers, an invisible

plane, and a magic lasso.

Goodfriend and Formichella-Elsden.

Self-expansion theory: The idea that all humans have a basic motivation to grow, improve, and enhance

our self-concept, specifically through close social relationships.

Inclusion of the Other in the Self (IOS) scale: a scale used to measure psychological inclusion of others in

the self-concept where people circle one of many pairs of circles with increasing overlap between “self” and

“other” to indicate how much their self-concept includes a specified other person.

The Main Ideas

Self-perception theory proposes that we form our self-concept by observing our own behaviors, then

making assumptions about our internal values, attitudes, and so on based on those behaviors.

self (who we are right now), (2) the ideal self (who we’d like to become), and (3) the ought self

(who others expect us to be). When our actual self doesn’t match our ideal self, we experience

dejection-related emotions. When our actual self doesn’t match our ought self, we experience

agitation-related emotions.

Self-expansion theory is the idea that we all want to grow and improve, and one way to do that it to

cognitively include other people into our self-concept. One way to measure this cognitive self-

expansion is through the Inclusion of the Other in the Self Scale, which shows a series of seven

progressively overlapping circles; participants choose the one that best represents how they include

someone else in their self-concept.

Think of at least two times when you realized something about your self-concept by observing your

behaviors. Why did you not have this self-insight before you noticed your own behaviors?

Make a list of traits that make up your actual self, then one for your ideal self, and finally one for your

ought self. Mark the traits that match across lists, and mark the traits that don’t match. How do you feel

about the traits that don’t match? Are the emotions you experience in alignment with what self-

discrepancy theory hypothesized you would feel?

Do you think it’s healthy for two relationship partners to circle the most-overlapping set of circles, or

does this somehow indicate codependency? What do you think would be the “best” pair of circles for

couple members to choose, and why?

Why Do We Present Different Selves in Different Situations?

— LO 3.3: Explain how we adjust our public self-presentation to influence others.

In the quaint, olden days before mobile phones, a sociology researcher observed that it was

not unusual for a college woman living in a dormitory to impress her dorm mates with her

popularity by arranging for “herself to be called several times in order to give all the other

girls ample opportunity to hear her paged” (Waller, 1937, p. 730). That kind of shallow

affirmation probably still happens today when, for example, we may subtly broadcast the

number of our social media “friends” to signal our popularity.

Both cases represent behavior that Erving Goffman (1959) describes as a performance—

even when we are not fully self-aware that we are performing. People perform in slightly

different ways for family, friends, peers, supervisors, professors, and store clerks. This

tendency is called self-presentation theory or impression management, ways that we

adjust the self to gain social influence by managing the impressions that we make on others.

This is not a startling insight, but the routine use of impression management needs to be

acknowledged. We do not behave the same way at a funeral as we would at a rock concert

or a job interview. Put simply, in different settings, we present different parts of our self-

concept. As Kurt Lewin learned while serving as a foot soldier in World War I, our

behavior often depends on how we perceive the immediate situation (see Goffman, 1959).

Can a smiling face mask your real feelings when pulled over by police?

We Use Impression Management to Get What We Want

We employ impression management tactics as social power. We might act disappointed to

get more attention, pretend to be surprised at a high price hoping for a discount, or even

buy a conspicuously fancy sports car to signal sexual availability (Sundie et al., 2011). There

are specific tactics associated with impression management.

Ingratiation: Other-Enhancements and Opinion Conformity.

Cynthia Stevens and Amy Kristof (1995) were interested in how job applicants try to

influence interviewers by presenting certain aspects of the self. One common tactic was

ingratiation. This short-term impression management tactic is designed to increase liking

and attraction by complimenting the other person and seeming to admire him or her. One

form of ingratiation is other-enhancement, praising the interviewer. A variation with the

same goal is opinion conformity, endorsing the interviewer’s perceived attitudes or values.

You can probably think of some of the cruder terms used to describe people who try to

ingratiate themselves with people in power by praising everything they do and agreeing

with everything they say. No matter what term you use, ingratiation is explicit attempts to

present a version of the self that you think the other person will like in an attempt to

benefit yourself somehow—such as getting a job offer.

Self-Promotion: Self-Enhancements and Entitlements.

Self-promotion is another short-term impression management tactic that uses positive

statements about the self to convey competence. One form of self-promotion is self-

enhancements; that’s when you imply that your actual accomplishments are more

significant than they first appear to be. Another common form of self-promotion is

entitlements; that’s when you take credit for positive events even if you had nothing to do

with them. These may be effective short-term tactics, but they can backfire. For example,

taking credit for someone else’s work may turn a friend into a long-term enemy and

damage your reputation with important people.

Conspicuous Consumption.

Depending on the type of job, gaining an advantage during a job interview is a short-term

tactic. But there are impression management strategies with long-term goals. A young

politician with ambitions may carefully calculate the right kind of marriage partner to

influence future voters. Others will attempt to influence the impression they make on

others by spending money on flashy or high-status items, such as expensive homes, cars,

clothes, and jewelry. Publicly displaying the use of expensive products in an attempt to

impress others is called conspicuous consumption.

In the 19th century, the Norwegian American economist Thorstein Veblen (1899/1918)

recognized that some conspicuous consumption is as unsubtle as a male peacock showing

off its extravagant feathers to females (see Darwin, 1871; Møller & Petrie, 2002). Peacocks

flash colorful tails to signal their reproductive value to peahens the same way that some

men drive fancy cars to attract females. Most women, by the way, easily decode

conspicuous consumption by men as a desire for uncommitted sexual partnerships (Sundie

et al., 2011).

Self-presentation theory: The tendency to adjust the self and perform in slightly different ways for varying

others to gain social influence.

Impression management: See self-presentation theory.

Other-enhancement: A short-term impression management tactic where people compliment another

person and seem to admire them to increase liking and attraction and gain social influence.

Opinion conformity: A short-term impression management tactic where people endorse the opinion of

others to increase liking and attraction and gain social influence.

Self-enhancements: A short-term impression management technique where people imply that their actual

accomplishments are more significant than they first appear to be.

Entitlement: A short-term impression management tactic where a person takes credit for positive events he

or she was not a part of.

Conspicuous consumption: Publicly displaying the use of expensive products in an attempt to impress

others.

Brain Damage Can Limit Self-Presentation Ability

This next part is sad. Some people with advanced cases of Alzheimer’s disease can’t pass the

mirror self-recognition test. They look into the mirror and have no idea who is looking

back at them (see Biringer, Anderson, & Strubel, 1988; Bologna & Camp, 1997; Phillips,

Howard, & David, 1996). Alzheimer’s disease is not the only tragic but useful clue telling

us how the self and the brain are connected. Consider one of the most famous case studies

in the history of brain research and what it can teach us about our ability to purposefully

change how we present ourselves to others.

Phineas Gage: A Landmark Case Study.

Phineas Gage’s story began on September 13, 1848, when he was working as the foreman

of a crew working for the railroad (see Macmillan, 2000). The crew traveled along the path

where the railroad was to be built and blew up anything in the way. Apparently, Gage was a

very good foreman. Many of the railroad construction workers near Cavendish, Vermont,

were Irish immigrants who had carried their ancient regional feuds into America. These

were difficult-to-manage men, and an unpopular foreman was subject to “violent attacks . .

. some of which ended fatally” (Macmillan, 2000, p. 22). Nevertheless, Dr. John Harlow

(Gage’s doctor) described the preaccident Gage as a man “who possessed a well-balanced

mind,” “a shrewd business man,” and a man “of temperate habits and possessed of

considerable energy of character.” He was good at managing people.

On the day of his famous accident, Gage was using his 43-inch, 13-pound iron rod to tamp

what he thought was sand on top of blasting powder. The blasting powder had been

poured into a hole drilled deep into some rock. The rod was flat at one end but pointed at

the end sticking out of the hole. The purpose of the sand was to direct the force of the

explosion into the rock rather than back out the hole. The fuse had been set—but this time

the sand was missing. Perhaps someone called to Gage to warn him that the sand was not

yet in the hole. As Gage turned his head over the hole, the iron rod somehow slipped from

his fingers, sparked against the rock, and ignited the blasting powder.

Social Psychology in Action: Phineas Gage

©SAGE Publications

Phineas Gage’s personality changed after his brain accident—but not entirely. He drove a

four-horse stage coach in Chile for perhaps seven years. He later told entertaining tall tales

about his travels to his nieces and nephews.

The long iron rod shot upward, entered beneath and through Gage’s left cheek, passed

behind most of his left eye, continued through the front left portion of his brain, and exited

out the top of his head. It landed about 23 meters (or 75 feet) away, greasy with Gage’s

brain matter—and it was still greasy the next day even after some railroad workers rinsed it

in a nearby stream. Gage was knocked over, of course, but then surprised everyone by

getting up, walking to an oxcart to be taken to a doctor, and writing a note in his foreman’s

log book—despite a very large hole in his head! Dr. Harlow cleaned the wound, shoved

pieces of Gage’s skull back into place, and started recording what would become one of the

most famous case studies in brain science.

Say Goodbye to Self-Presentation.

Was Phineas Gage harmed? Well, he could still recognize his mother and uncle. He

understood what had happened to him. And, only a few days after his accident, Gage made

plans to return to work. But his physical health cycled between recovery, infection, and

delirium for several weeks. As his condition slowly stabilized, Dr. Harlow noticed some odd

features about his patient.

Gage’s memory was “as perfect as ever” but now the once shrewd businessman “would not

take $1000 for a few pebbles.” That was odd. Had Gage lost his ability to understand

money? About a month after the accident, Harlow wrote that Gage had become

“exceedingly capricious and childish . . . will not yield to restraint when it conflicts with his

desires.” His self-governing mental habits had disappeared. The once effective foreman had

been replaced by someone with crude speech and childish impulses. The change in his

personality was so great that Gage’s friends described the postaccident man as “no longer

Gage.” Apparently, the damage to Gage’s left frontal lobes was linked to a profound change

in his self—but not all of his self.

It is easy to imagine Gage’s acquaintances saying, “Why doesn’t Phineas just stop saying

such profane things? Doesn’t he know what he’s doing?” The answer seems to be no; Gage

seemed to have minimal self-insight, the ability to self-observe and evaluate our own

behavior. Certainly, self-insight is essential if we want to be aware of how we’re presenting

ourselves in public situations and especially if we want to use impression management to

get other people to like us.

In addition to his seeming lack of self-insight, the new Gage was probably less able to

notice and adjust his behavior across different social situations. Curiously, patients with

similar brain damage (usually due to brain surgery) tell a similar story. When Beer, John,

Scabini, and Knight (2006) allowed patients with similar brain damage to see themselves

on a video recording, they discovered that they were disclosing personal and inappropriate

information. What we call the “self” appears to be connected to particular regions and

neural pathways within the brain—and our tendency to display different aspects of our self

can be affected by brain damage.

Self-insight: Individuals’ ability to self-observe and evaluate their own behavior.

Self-Monitoring: Social Chameleons

After his brain damage, Phineas Gage seemed to lose his ability to self-monitor, or change

how he acted in different social situations in an attempt to fit in. Self-monitoring suggests

an awareness that we have a complicated self that needs monitoring. Some people excel at

being “social chameleons” that can blend into almost any environment. Others just don’t

seem to care. There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches.

Low Self-Monitors.

Some people act the same way no matter where they are or who is around them—they are

always shy, for example, or always sarcastic. People who appear to have little change in their

personality or self-presentation across time and situations are considered low in self-

monitoring. They pay little attention to how they “come across” to other people and act

consistently no matter where they are.

High Self-Monitors.

However, other people are high in self-monitoring, and their behavior is the opposite: They

change how they act all the time, depending on the situation. In a cooperative

environment, they cooperate; in a competitive environment, they compete. High self-

monitors are people who look around and assess their environment, then adapt their self-

presentation to get whatever they want out of that particular situation.

Adaptability Versus Authenticity: Which Way Is Best?

There are advantages and disadvantages to being high in self-monitoring. Certain careers

such as sales, politics, and acting require people who can change how they act and appear

on cue. It also seems reasonable that people who can easily and comfortably fit in with

anyone will be more popular and may advance more quickly in their workplaces. However,

sometimes people who are high in self-monitoring can seem inauthentic to others. If they

are always changing how they act, others will wonder, who is the “real” person?

Chameleons can change color to disguise themselves and fit into their environment. Are

people capable of similar changes, based on their social environment?

Self-monitor: Individuals’ ability to notice and adjust their own behavior in an attempt to fit in.

The Symphonic Self: The Poetry of Science

Let’s take a two-paragraph pause to reflect on Phineas Gage from an artistic perspective.

Gage’s life illustrates how the self constantly tries to create coherence out of the scattered

experiences of our lives. Fernando Pessoa (2002) wrote in The Book of Disquiet that “my

soul is like a hidden orchestra; I do not know which instruments grind and play away inside

of me, strings and harps, timbales and drums. I can only recognize myself as a symphony”

(p. 310). The self simultaneously draws on brain regions and neural pathways the same way

that a symphony conductor simultaneously draws on multiple sections of an orchestra to

produce an overall effect. Gage’s self after his accident was like an orchestra missing a few

instruments.

One brain scientist, however, believes that what our brain does every day is far more

impressive than the most beautiful symphony orchestra. Damasio (2010) continued the

metaphor, writing that “the marvel . . . is that the score and conductor become reality only

as life unfolds” (p. 24). The self is a symphony orchestra that plays magnificent music only

once, without a score, and without any rehearsal—and then flows smoothly into its next

performance. What a magnificent, creative self!

The Main Ideas

Self-presentation (also called impression management) refers to the ways we adjust our self in public

to gain social acceptance or influence. Specific ways we alter self-presentation include ingratiation,

self-promotion, and conspicuous consumption.

Phineas Gage’s famous accident revealed a connection between the self and the brain. After Gage

suffered brain damage, his personality changed, but his ability to change his self-presentation also

went away.

Self-monitoring refers how much we choose to alter our public presentations of self in different

social situations, in an attempt to fit in. People who are high self-monitors change across situations,

while low self-monitors act consistently regardless of the situation.

with the name of your school? Why do people display parts of their identity in this way?

Under what circumstances are you more likely to use ingratiation, self-promotion, or conspicuous

consumption? Are there situations where attempting to use these self-presentation tactics would backfire?

How do the goals and tactics of impression management change across different phases of a romantic

relationship?

Do we have a core self (what some call a soul) if we constantly adjust our self to gain social power,

impress people, or validate our opinions?

Is the Truth Always the Self’s Friend?

— LO 3.4: Articulate why we sometimes benefit from positive illusions and moderate

self-deceptions.

The self-story is a compelling story, at least to ourselves, because it is our version of events

(Silvia & Gendolla, 2001). But what if we are telling ourselves a very nice story that is not

true? Do people really lie to themselves like that? Steven Pinker compares our storytelling

selves to political spin-doctors who are always looking for ways to make their candidates

look good (Pinker, 2002). Like some real politicians, we create self-stories that smell a little

bit too good to be true. Why not? If I am the screenwriter, producer, director, and final-cut

editor of my self-story, I can make the story come out any way that I want. Does that make

our self-story fiction or nonfiction?

Optimal Margin Theory: Positive Illusions Can Be Beneficial

Let’s be blunt about it: Sometimes we lie to ourselves. Minor self-deceptions show up in

many parts of our lives. For example, when our romantic partner asks, “Does this outfit

make me look fat?” most partners understand that the desired responses are “No,” or, “You

look great, but your black top might look even better.” But is there anything wrong with

believing that we are a little bit more attractive, caring, intelligent, or insightful than we

really are? Baumeister (1989) developed optimal margin theory, which proposes a slight to

moderate range of healthy distortions of reality. A little bit of self-deception can make us

feel good—but too much distortion of reality causes problems.

Instead of the “cold, hard truth,” we often prefer to believe positive illusions, beliefs that

depart from reality in ways that influence us to remain optimistic. For example, drivers

know that a potential car accident is around every corner, but positive illusions help us

manage such chronic stress by maintaining an illusion of more control over our driving fate

than we really have (Taylor, Kemeny, Reed, Bower, & Gruenewald, 2000). Shelley Taylor

and her colleagues assert that we use three types of self-deceptions that promote our own

positive mental health. We:

1. cling to the belief we can control our own lives more than we can (control),

2. believe in an unrealistically optimistic view of the future (optimism), and

3. discover meaning in critical life events, such as bereavement (meaning).

Age can just be a number—how old you feel is subjective.

For example, one way that many older people use positive illusions to feel more optimistic

and in control is called subjective age, our sense of how old we feel compared to our

chronological age. For example, the chronological age range was between 60 and 95 in a

study of more than 800 French retirees (Gana, Alaphilippe, & Bailly, 2004). The

researchers wanted to test (a) whether self-deception about their subjective age was harmful

or helpful and (b) whether the possible benefits of self-deception stopped when people

deceived themselves too much—when they, so to speak, “went off the deep end” of the self-

deception continuum.

Optimal margin theory suggests that, like wine, a little self-deception can be a good thing

—too much, however, can become dangerous. For the French retirees, those with positive

illusions about their age “reported more satisfaction with daily pursuits (leisure time),

higher self-worth, and less boredom proneness” (Gana et al., 2004, p. 63). But the people

in this sample may not have gotten too close to the edge of unhealthy self-deception. The

85-year-olds, for example, may have thought of themselves as closer to 70 but probably did

not think of themselves as 20-year-olds. Subjective age is not the only way we use moderate

amounts of self-deception to improve the quality of our lives.

Optimal margin theory: Psychological theory that proposes a slight to moderate range of healthy

distortions of reality improves psychological and physiological well-being.

Positive illusions: Beliefs that depart from reality in ways that help us to remain optimistic, especially in

relation to the belief we can control our own lives more than we can, the tendency to have an unrealistically

optimistic view of the future, and the desire to discover meaning in critical life events.

Subjective age: How old individuals feel compared to their chronological age.

Self-Serving Cognitive Biases

Research has established that a little bit of self-deception—making us feel slightly more

intelligent, attractive, funnier, more talented, and so on—has a lot of benefits. These

benefits include less anxiety (Brockner, 1984), better coping with stress and setbacks

(Steele, 1988), lower levels of depression (Tennen & Herzberger, 1987), and general life

satisfaction (Myers & Diener, 1995). Cognitive distortions that enhance our self-concept

by making us perceive that we’re a little better than we are, objectively, are called self-

serving cognitive biases. Let’s look at three specific examples of how we distort reality, just

a little, to maintain these self-serving views.

Biased Views of Our Own Traits.

On a piece of scrap paper or in the margin of this book, quickly jot down three of your best

traits or qualities and three of your worst. Now, for each trait you wrote down, estimate on

a scale from 0 to 100 the percentage of students at your college or university who also

possess this trait.

When Marks (1984) had college students do this exact task, people underestimated how

many of their peers shared their positive traits and overestimated how many people shared

their negative traits. How does this cognitive bias enhance our self-concept? It works

because if you think that your positive qualities are rare, that makes you really special. And

if your negative qualities are common—hey, everyone has this problem!—then your worst

qualities are bad, sure, but not really a big deal.

We underestimate how many people share our talents (Goethals, Messick, & Allison, 1991)

and we normalize our negative attitudes or traits so that we don’t feel singled out or

stigmatized (Suls & Wan, 1987). We can admit fears, such as speaking in front of a group,

but we tell ourselves that everyone else shares our anxieties and, thus, these problems are

not “fatal flaws.” We comfort ourselves by simply framing our “best” and “worst” qualities

in this way that makes us feel just a little better.

Biased Views of Our Own Behaviors.

Another self-serving cognitive bias emerges when we consider causes for our own successes

and failures. Like admitting negative traits we possess, we can admit that we’ve done bad

things or failed at something—but we often protect our view of the self by coming up with

an excuse or justification for bad behaviors.

Sometimes, our view of our self isn’t quite accurate. But is that a bad thing?

Romilly Lockyer / The Image Bank / Getty Images

In a review of over 20 studies on this topic, Miller and Ross (1975) found that often,

people engage in self-enhancing views of success. When people succeed at a task, they are

more likely to perceive that this success is due to their own behaviors, effort, and talent

than when they fail. Failures are due to some external, situational factor instead. Did you

get an A on the test? You must have studied hard or be really good at this subject! Did you

fail the test? It’s probably because you were sick, or you stayed up late helping a friend with

a crisis, or the test was unfair. By attributing successes to our own efforts—but failures to

something we can’t control or to something about the situation—we can take credit for

doing well and simultaneously avoid blame for doing badly.

Biased Views of Feedback About the Self.

A third self-serving cognitive bias is the tendency for people to view feedback about

themselves in a skewed manner. Many people enjoy taking little quizzes about themselves

on websites like Facebook, for example. When you like the outcome, you might think,

“Hey, that was a great quiz! Really insightful.” But if you don’t like the outcome, it’s easy

for you to see how the questions were flawed.

People often “discover” validity problems in tests that depict them in a negative or

unflattering light; however, they are far less critical of evidence that portrays them positively

(Baumeister, 1998; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Holt, 1985). For example, one study led

participants to either “succeed” or “fail” at a fake social sensitivity test. After seeing their

results, participants then saw information that indicated that the test itself was either valid

or invalid. Participants who had “succeeded” evaluated the valid conclusion significantly

more favorably than people in the invalid condition, and the opposite occurred for people

who had “failed” (Pyszczynski et al., 1985).

As usual, more research is needed. But it’s interesting that we have several studies with

different methodologies that seem to be telling the same story. Optimal margin theory

might be right: A little bit of self-deception seems pretty common, and moderate levels can

be helpful to maintaining a positive self-concept. To learn about how positive illusions can

be applied to social relationships, read the Spotlight on Research Methods feature on

“Positive Illusions in Dating Relationships.”

Spotlight on Research Methods: Positive Illusions in Dating Relationships

One of this book’s authors [Wind] focused my graduate school research on positive illusions in romantic

couples (Goodfriend, 2005; Goodfriend, Agnew, & Cathey, 2017). I measured positive cognitive biases

within relationships in two different ways. First, I asked college students to list the five “best” and five

“worst” aspects of their current partner. After making these lists (which everyone could easily do), the

participants then considered each of these 10 traits and rated how common or rare they are in general

society. As expected, people said their partner’s best traits were rare—making them special and “a keeper”—

but their worst traits were common and therefore no big deal. In short, the participants showed bias by

thinking their partner was “better than average.”

In a second study, I asked people to consider six hypothetical positive things their partner might do—such

as giving them a surprise gift—and six hypothetical negative behaviors, such as betraying a secret of theirs to

a third person. Each hypothetical behavior was presented as the first half of a sentence, and participants

were asked to write in the second half of the sentence to explain why their partner might have done this. I

found that when people were in happy, committed relationships, they wrote that positive behaviors must

have been done because their partner was a good person or because they were in love. But, when trying to

explain negative behaviors, they wrote that there must have been strange circumstances that required this

behavior to protect each other. That trend didn’t reach statistical significance for people in unhappy

relationships.

In other words, in happy couples, positive behaviors had “dispositional” attributions, while negative

behaviors had “situational” attributions. When in love, we give our partners the benefit of the doubt and

provide excuses for their bad behavior. My data suggest that the insight attributed to philosopher Francis

Bacon 400 years ago is probably still true of modern romantic relationships: “We prefer to believe what we

prefer to be true.”

The Main Ideas

The self is a constructed story that we tell our selves about ourselves. Optimal margin theory

explains that small to moderate levels of positive illusions can be helpful in maintaining a positive

self-concept.

own behaviors, and (3) feedback about the self.

Positive illusions can also be seen within social relationships, such as between dating partners.

In the movie Liar Liar (Grazer & Shadyac, 1997), a lawyer is compelled to always tell the truth, both to

others and to himself. How is lying to others different from lying to yourself?

If optimal margin theory is true, then how will you know when you have gone beyond the boundary of

healthy self-deception? Can you identify ways that you are currently engaging in self-deception?

Moderate positive illusions about romantic partners seem to be correlated with relationship satisfaction.

How far can this tendency go before it starts to harm people and keep them in relationships that are

actually unhealthy or abusive?

What Is Self-Esteem and How Can We Measure It?

— LO 3.5: Apply both explicit and implicit methods to the many facets of self-esteem,

including its dark side.

Let’s begin with a practical question: What do we mean by “self-esteem”? Bosson, Swann,

and Pennebaker (2000) compare researchers’ attempts to define self-esteem to the classic

story of six blind men trying to describe an elephant. One feels its trunk and says an

elephant is like a large snake; another feels its side and concludes that an elephant is like a

wall. A third feels its tail and reports that an elephant is like a broom. Each of the six blind

men offers a different description based on their private experience of touching the

elephant. Research on self-esteem can be kind of like the story of the blind men; each study

or scientist can pick one aspect of the concept and examine in it detail—but encapsulating

the entire idea of self-esteem can be difficult.

Defining Self-Esteem

Here’s a definition to get us started on the path to understanding: Self-esteem is our

subjective, personal evaluation of our self-concept. Earlier, we learned that our self-concept

is our perception of qualities, relationships, beliefs, and opinions. When we evaluate that

self-concept and decide that it is good, bad, worthwhile, worthless, or any other type of

judgment, that’s self-esteem.

Unfortunately, the nonpsychology public’s understanding of self-esteem includes many

related constructs that, like barnacles on a boat, have attached themselves to the construct

of self-esteem—and taken a free ride into our social thinking. Let’s start scraping off some

of those barnacles by clarifying what self-esteem is not (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996;

Crocker & Major, 1989, 2003; Greenwald et al., 2002).

For example, self-esteem is not the same thing as self-compassion, an orientation to care

for oneself. Leary, Tate, Adams, Allen, and Hancock (2007) describe self-compassion as

self-esteem but without “the self-enhancing illusions” (p. 887). Self-esteem is also separate

from narcissism, an excessive self-love based on unwarranted belief in one’s specialness

relative to others (Neff & Vonk, 2009). Narcissism is basically arrogance. Self-esteem

focuses on whether we regard ourselves as a person of worth; narcissism focuses on whether

we regard ourselves as more worthy than others (Donnellan, Trzesniewski, Robins, Moffitt,

& Caspi, 2005).

Self-esteem is also distinct from self-efficacy, the degree to which you believe that you are

capable of completing a specific task or achieving a particular goal. Self-efficacy seems to be

a good thing, at least most of the time. Self-efficacy contributes to self-esteem (Begue,

2005), helps people cope with failure in the workplace (Newton, Khanna, & Thompson,

2008), and encourages resilience in the face of chronic diseases such as diabetes (Yi,

Vitaliano, Smith, Yi, & Weinger, 2008). Self-esteem is not self-compassion, narcissism, or

self-efficacy. It’s our evaluation of our own worth, based on our assessment of our self-

concept.

Self-serving cognitive biases: Cognitive distortions that enhance people’s self-concept by making them

perceive that they are a little better than they actually are.

Self-esteem: Individuals’ subjective, personal evaluation of their self-concept, including judgments made

about self-worth.

Self-compassion: An orientation to care for oneself.

Narcissism: Excessive self-love based on unwarranted belief in one’s specialness relative to others.

Self-efficacy: The degree to which individuals believe that they are capable of completing a specific task or

achieving a particular goal.

Two Strategies for Measuring Self-Esteem

Because self-esteem is a complex, abstract, and subjective construct, it’s important to think

about how researchers operationalize it in scientific studies. There are two general strategies

for measuring self-esteem: explicit, direct measures and implicit, indirect measures (Bosson

et al., 2000).

Measuring Explicit Self-Esteem (Directly).

One of the most popular self-report scales in the entire field of psychology is a short and

simple, 10-item questionnaire created by Rosenberg over 50 years ago (1965). Rosenberg’s

Self-Esteem Scale is a direct, explicit measure. It has what is called face validity because it is

obvious (on its face) what the scale is intended to measure: how much you value your self.

The Rosenberg scale has clarified many of the connections between self-esteem and related

psychological constructs (Brummett, Wade, Ponterotto, Thombs, & Lewis, 2007; Hair,

Renaud, & Ramsay, 2007; Penkal & Kurdek, 2007).

Try it for yourself in the Applying Social Psychology to Your Life feature (you will find it

easier to understand the material that comes next if you know your own self-esteem score).

As we discussed in Chapter 2 (Research Methods), the idea of any direct or self-report

measure is simple: We ask; you tell. The critical assumption is that you are able and willing

to provide a consistent (reliable) and accurate (valid) response to each item. Notice that

some statements indicate high self-esteem and others (such as Question 2) indicate low self-

esteem. Researchers often use this technique, called reverse scoring, to encourage careful

reading of each item on a scale; it prevents people from simply writing the same response to

every question without really reading them. Read the scoring instructions to make sure you

come up with the correct result.

Measuring Implicit Self-Esteem (Indirectly).

As you learned in Chapter 2, sometimes people are neither willing nor able to give

researchers an accurate report. A problem called social desirability (one type of impression

management) may encourage inaccurate responding to topics that, if answered honestly,

might trigger an uncomfortable response. For example, social desirability might encourage

dishonest responses to self-reports of taboo or personal sexual behavior, family violence, or

out-of-favor political loyalties. When this is the case, indirect or implicit methodologies

may produce more reliable, valid responses than direct, explicit, self-report approaches to

collecting data.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is an indirect way to measure the strength of particular

beliefs and constructs (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000; Pinter & Greenwald, 2005). The

IAT does not rely on pesky critical assumptions such as being willing and able to accurately

respond to each item, as the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale does. Instead, the IAT measures

our implicit associations between two constructs. It attempts to measure, for example,

whether your mental view of “self” is more associated with positive words or with negative

words.

The underlying procedures of the IAT are a bit complicated, but faster reaction times (the

dependent variable) suggest a strong mental connection for whatever constructs we are

trying to measure (see Schnabel, Asendorpf, & Greenwald, 2008; von Stülpnagel &

Steffens, 2010). If you can respond more quickly to a computer task that pairs “self” with

positive words (compared to pairs of “self” and negative words), then the IAT results might

indicate that you have a positive self-esteem.

This is a game-like measure that most people enjoy experiencing. However, it’s important

to note that there are many criticisms of the IAT and whether scores on this test can really

predict behaviors, whether scores are reliable over time, and so on (see, e.g., Blanton et al.,

2009). You might want to try it for yourself by going to the website

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. You can then compare your score to the averages of

thousands of others who have taken the test and think about whether you believe this is a

good way to measure people’s implicit attitudes about anything, including their self-esteem.

Instructions: Below is a list of statements dealing with your general feelings about yourself. If you strongly

agree, circle SA. If you agree with the statement, circle A. If you disagree, circle D. If you strongly disagree,

circle SD.

On the whole, I am satisfied with myself. SA A D SD

At times, I think I am no good at all. SA A D SD

I feel that I have a number of good qualities. SA A D SD

I am able to do things as well as most other people. SA A D SD

I feel I do not have much to be proud of. SA A D SD

I certainly feel useless at times. SA A D SD

I feel that I’m a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others. SA A D SD

I wish I could have more respect for myself. SA A D SD

All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure. SA A D SD

I take a positive attitude toward myself. SA A D SD

Scoring Instructions: Assign the following scores to your answers by writing the appropriate number on the

blank next to each item. Then, add your scores up:

For Items 1, 3, 4, 7, 10: SA = 3, A = 2, D = 1, SD = 0.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

For Items 2, 5, 6, 8, 9: SA = 0, A = 1, D = 2, SD = 3.

Press.

Collective Self-Esteem

Earlier, we learned that the self-concept includes both individual parts of the self (such as

our attitudes and personality traits) and our relationships with others—the self is social.

Given the fact that our self-concept includes our group memberships, our self-esteem must

also then be tied to how we evaluate the worth of our in-groups.

Collective self-esteem is our evaluation of the worth of the social groups in which we are

members. Tajfel (1981) defined it as “that aspect of an individual’s self-concept which

derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group (or groups) together with

the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (p. 255). You have

collective self-esteem for the reputation of your college or university, for example; do you

feel proud of your school? What about your religious group, political party, chosen major,

and so on? Do you feel good about these groups?

Collective Self-Esteem and Race.

One group of psychologists (Crocker, Luhtanen, Blaine, & Broadnax, 1994) studied

collective self-esteem in college students in terms of how they felt about their own racial

group; participants were White, Black, and Asian. To do this, they created a new self-report

scale to measure collective self-esteem. It includes items such as, “The social groups I

belong to are an important reflection of who I am,” and, “In general, others respect the

social groups that I am a member of.”

Their findings showed that on average, people from these three races felt differently about

their own status regarding their race (Crocker et al., 2004). Specifically, Asians said that

they didn’t feel like they were very worthy members of their racial group. Black students

perceived that their race was judged most negatively by the general public. White students

(members of the dominant group) said that their racial membership didn’t matter in terms

of how they thought about their identity—but both Asian and Black participants said that

race did factor into their self-concept. How we think about our group memberships—and

what we think other people think about those groups—seems to have an influence on how

we view ourselves.

Sports Fan Psychology: Basking in Reflected Glory.

If evaluation of our social groups affects our self-esteem, then it makes sense that when our

groups are successful, we’d want to make our membership more obvious to others. The

opposite should also be true; if our group does badly or embarrasses us, we might not be so

Collective self-esteem: Individuals’ evaluation of the worth of the social groups of which they are a

member.

excited to display our group membership for everyone to see. This general hypothesis can

be tested in fascinating ways by exploring one aspect of social psychology tied to many

people’s lives: the world of sports fans.

Being a sports fan often involves much more than just rooting for your favorite team; hard-

core sports fans identify personally with their team and incorporate how well their team

does into their collective self-esteem. Robert Cialdini began investigating the connection

between fan psychology and our sense of self after he noticed that his Ohio State university

students tended to say, “We won,” after a school victory but, “They lost,” following a defeat.

The pronoun we includes the self, as if the person speaker were personally involved. He also

noticed that Ohio State students were more likely to wear clothing displaying their school

name and colors following a victory compared to a defeat (Cialdini et al., 1976).

Cialdini called this kind of behavior basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) because

participants’ sense of self is enhanced by the success of the groups with whom they identify.

We try to make our membership or affiliation with the group more obvious to others in

order to feel good about ourselves—but only when our group has succeeded. One easy way

to do that is by wearing clothes showing that we’re part of that winning group. However,

when the group is getting negative press or has a failure, we tend to try to distance ourselves

from the group by choosing to wear more generic clothes or by using pronouns like they

instead of we. These are subtle but fascinating insights into the world of collective self-

esteem.

Students are more likely to wear their school colors after a big athletic win. We make our

group identity more obvious to others when our group does well.

Hero Images / Hero Images / Getty Images

Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing): A method of self-enhancement that involves affiliating with an

ingroup when that group has been successful.

Self-Esteem Has a Dark Side

Our students often express bewilderment and even shock when we suggest that building

self-esteem is not necessarily a good idea. Debates about the complexities of self-esteem

have been around for a long time (see Hume, 1888). We certainly do not want to dismiss

the genuine benefits of high self-esteem (Swann et al., 2007) or the problems associated

with low self-esteem (Donnellan et al., 2005). But the evidence is becoming clearer: Self-

esteem has a dark side.

The Boosting Self-Esteem Movement.

On the surface, the case for boosting self-esteem makes sense. Low self-esteem is associated

with a wide range of minor and major social problems, from overusing a cell phone when

you can’t afford it to child abuse, school failure, teenage pregnancy, crime, welfare

dependency, substance abuse, aggression, antisocial behavior, and delinquency. There is a

long, impressive list of troubles associated with low self-esteem (Bianchi & Phillips, 2005;

Donnellan et al., 2005; Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007; Mecca, Smelser, &

Vasconcellos, 1989; Phillips, Butt, & Blaszczynski, 2006).

As a psychology student, you understand better than most people that correlation does not

imply causation. Just because certain behaviors are correlated with low self-esteem does not

mean that they were caused by low self-esteem. Being related to a problem is not the same

thing as causing the problem, just as being second cousin to a bank robber doesn’t make

you guilty of robbing a bank. Nevertheless, the self-esteem movement caught fire in the

public’s imagination. The California State legislature even created a special task force on

self-esteem and eventually published a book titled, The Social Importance of Self-Esteem

(Mecca et al., 1989). Self-esteem was such a nice thing to believe in that its influence didn’t

stop in people’s optimistic imaginations or even at the California State legislature. Twenge

(2006) discovered that among elementary schools, the word self-esteem is often included in

the opening part of the school’s mission statement, sometimes listed before reading,

writing, and arithmetic. For example:

Cannon Elementary School, Spartanburg, South Carolina: “We are committed to

building self-esteem, enhancing creativity and individuality.”

The Margaret Gioiosa School, Staten Island, New York City, New York: “We believe

that a child’s self-esteem directly affects his/her achievement.”

Oak Park Elementary, Laurel, Mississippi: “To provide a safe and positive learning

environment, promoting high self-esteem and parental involvement ...... ”

Green Lake School, Seattle, Washington: “In pursuing its mission, Green Lake School

adheres to these values: Building self-esteem ........ ”

Grant Foreman Elementary School, Muskogee, Oklahoma: “The mission of Grant

Foreman Elementary School will be achieved when all exiting sixth grade students

possess: A healthy sense of self-esteem ....... ”

Should children receive trophies just for participating or only for winning?

Dangers of Elevated Self-Esteem.

But, you might argue, don’t we want children to feel good about themselves? Yes, probably

—but not to such an extreme that they feel “better,” “more deserving,” or even “more

pure” than other people or other groups (see Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs,

2003).

Elevated self-esteem closely resembles narcissism, especially when it’s built on platitudes

instead of actual achievements. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that school bullies

usually have high self-esteem. In fact, Scottish researchers discovered that the self-esteem of

14-year-old bullies was highest when they were comparing themselves to the people they

bullied: other 14-year-olds (Karatzias, Power, & Swanson, 2002). It wasn’t beating up just

anybody that made them feel good about themselves—they evaluated themselves the

highest when they were bullying their peers. And, in case you are wondering, bullies don’t

seem to be putting on a public show of high self-esteem to hide their private or secret low

self-esteem. Instead, the crux of the problem appears to be that “what individuals want is

not necessarily what society values” (J. I. Krueger, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2008, p. 64).

Negative Feedback Can Help Us Improve.

Here’s a different way to get at an understanding of the questionable benefits of high self-

esteem: If you were about to go into surgery, would you prefer a surgeon with

1. high self-esteem despite low skills,

2. low self-esteem despite high skills, or

3. moderate self-esteem and moderate skills?

The teaching doctors in the department of surgery at the Southern Illinois University

School of Medicine were not trying to study self-esteem directly, but they were asking a

similar question. They were worried about whether their chronically high-achieving

medical students were paying attention to the feedback they were giving them. So they

arranged for “an academic surgeon, who was seen by (medical) students as being an expert”

(Boehler et al., 2006, p. 747) to provide two different kinds of feedback to medical students

learning how to tie two-handed surgical knots.

The surgeon gave one group of medical students self-esteem boosting feedback such as,

“Great job,” “You’re making progress,” and “Outstanding”—the kind of praise that high-

achieving medical students had probably received most of their lives from their teachers.

The comparison group of students was given feedback based on their deficiencies, things

they were doing wrong. In other words, the independent variable was whether the medical

students got false but esteem-boosting praise or accurate, specific, but potentially harsh

feedback. The dependent variable became the quality of their knots by the end of training.

Did their ability improve?

How do you fairly evaluate the quality of two-handed surgical knots? In this case, “three

faculty evaluators observed and scored blinded videotapes of each performance” and made

sure that there was “agreement among expert ratings of performance.” This is an example of

a blind study because the three expert evaluators did not know the experimental group each

student belonged to. The goal of this (and all other) procedural tricks of the trade is to

produce fair, unbiased assessments. If one of the expert raters wanted the study to come out

a certain way, she might unconsciously evaluate knots from one of the two experimental

groups in a biased manner.

Figure 3.5 tells a sobering but also amusing story. It’s sobering because the group that had

been criticized tied better surgical knots than the group receiving complimentary (esteem-

boosting) praise. It’s amusing because they also measured student satisfaction ratings.

Although the self-esteem group was less competent at tying surgical knots, they gave higher

ratings to the teacher.

The Self-Esteem Intervention That Backfired.

Instead of high-achieving medical students, a second study about the dangers of boosting

self-esteem involved low-achieving psychology students who were earning grades of D and

F (Forsyth, Lawrence, Burnette, & Baumeister, 2007)—the kind of people that the

California State legislature was trying to help by boosting their self-esteem. Their professors

sent some of them self-esteem boosting email messages such as, “Studies suggest that

students who have high self-esteem not only get better grades, but they remain self-

confident and assured ....... Bottom line: Hold your head—and your self-esteem—high.”

They thought they might be helping students, but the results were so startling that the

authors subtitled their paper, “An Intervention That Backfired.”

Figure 3.5 Boosting self-esteem in surgeons might not lead to positive medical

consequences.

Source: Data from Lawrence, Burnette, & Baumeister (2007).

Figure 3.6 Can too much self-esteem lead to poor academic results?

Source: Data from Lawrence, Burnette, & Baumeister (2007).

Here’s what happened: First of all, the self-esteem boosting messages worked; more than

two thirds (70%) of the participants recorded the highest possible self-esteem scores that

the scale would allow. But Figure 3.6 tells us that their academic performance actually got

worse. Promoting self-esteem didn’t just fail to help between Test 1 and Test 2—it

backfired. The struggling students’ scores fell dramatically, from 57% to 38%, while the

group that did not receive those messages (the control group) stayed the same. This study,

unfortunately, is sobering without being amusing. Boosting self-esteem appeared to harm

these students—and there is nothing funny about that.

What in the world is going on? Why isn’t boosting self-esteem helping high-achieving

medical students or struggling psychology students?

The Relentless Pursuit of Self-Esteem May Be Harmful

What if self-esteem itself just isn’t all that important to our lives—but the relentless pursuit

of self-esteem is harmful? Other research indicates that the relentless pursuit of self-esteem

triggers a wide range of negative behaviors: making excuses, self-sabotage, blaming others,

arguing, scheming, and cheating (Crocker & Nuer, 2003). Why not? If the goal is to feel

good about ourselves by, for example, scoring well on a test, then it is as easy to justify

academic cheating as it is speeding in traffic—others are doing it and I have to keep up

with them (see Wajda-Johnston, Handal, Brawer, & Fabricatore, 2001).

Insidious Dangers of Overvaluing Self-Esteem.

There are other insidious dangers lurking behind the relentless pursuit of self-esteem (see

Baumeister et al., 2003; Crocker & Nuer, 2003). Research shows that people with fragile

but high self-esteem:

1. Are more reluctant to take intelligent risks

2. Make fewer mistakes from which to learn

3. Substitute competitive social comparisons for cooperative social supports

4. Decrease their academic performance

5. Avoid helpful feedback

6. Increase levels of intergroup prejudice

7. Increase bullying and aggression toward others

In Greek mythology, Narcissus fell so deeply in love with his own image that he continued

to stare at his reflection until he died. The personality disorder called narcissism is not the

same thing as self-esteem, a subjective assessment of one’s own self-worth.

Echo and Narcissus, John William Waterhouse, 1903

So, what can we say about the effects of boosting self-esteem? Yes, we can improve self-

esteem. But no, boosting self-esteem doesn’t solve the social problems that the self-esteem

movement hoped it would solve. In fact, there is increasing evidence that, under some

circumstances, building self-esteem is an intervention that backfires.

The Dangers of Narcissism.

The extreme dark side of high self-esteem is narcissism, an absorbing love of oneself.

Narcissism can even be considered a mental health personality disorder when it gets so out

of control that it starts interfering with someone’s ability to have a happy, healthy life and

relationships with other people. This is perhaps fitting given the original Greek myth of

Narcissus.

Narcissus was a proud hunter who loved himself more than anyone else. In most versions of

this story, Narcissus is out in the forest one day and happens to see his own reflection in a

pool of water. He’s so arrogant and self-absorbed that he immediately falls in love with

himself and stops eating or giving anyone else any attention at all. Narcissus eventually dies

because he can’t do anything except stare at the reflection of himself with absolute

admiration. While the myth is clearly an extreme example of what can happen when self-

esteem is too high, the moral of the story is pretty simple: A little humility might go a long

way toward building a healthy, resilient, socially productive self.

The Main Ideas

Self-esteem is our subjective evaluation of our self-concept. It can be measured through explicit,

direct tests such as self-report scales or through implicit, indirect tests such as the Implicit

Association Test.

Collective self-esteem is our evaluation of the social groups in which we are members. One example

is how we view sports teams; when our favorite team does well, we tend to show our affiliation with

that team. This tendency is called Basking in Reflected Glory.

can

lead to negative effects (such as decreased academic performance).

Considering BIRGing in your own life. Do you tend to show more affiliation with certain groups, such

what specific ways does this happen?

Beyond sports, there are many social groups created for people with similar self-interests, such as Star

Trek conventions or religious retreats. What is the function of this sort of social gathering in terms of

BIRGing?

Describe three situations that might lead you to alter your answers while filling out the Rosenberg Self-

Esteem Scale.

How important is having self-esteem to you? Based on the research reviewed above, should elementary

and middle schools focus on increasing students’ self-esteem? Why or why not?

Chapter Summary

What is the “self”?

The self is an abstract and subjective psychological construct that makes it sometimes hard to define and

measure. We start with self-awareness, the understanding that we are a separate entity from other people

and objects in our world. Infants seem to show self-awareness from very early on when they imitate the

facial expressions and sounds they observe. Scientists have created the “mirror self-recognition test” to

measure self-awareness; here, they place red dye on an animal’s forehead then show the animal a mirror. If

the animal touches the dye on its own head—and not on the mirror—this seems to indicate that the animal

is aware that the dye is on itself.

The self-concept is a personal summary of who we believe we are, including our qualities (both good and

bad), our relationships, beliefs, values, and so on. This book has covered three theories on how our self-

concept is formed. The first is social comparison theory, which says that we define subjective traits (such as

whether we are “good looking” or “shy”) by comparing our self to others. Upward social comparisons are

when we compare ourselves to people who are better than us, which can help us improve but don’t usually

make us feel particularly good about ourselves. Downward social comparisons (when we compare ourselves

to people who aren’t as good as we are on any given trait) may make us feel better but don’t help us

improve.

Social identity theory suggests that the self-concept is made up of both personal, individual characteristics

(such as our personality traits) and social role characteristics, which include our relationships (e.g., brother,

mother) and our social groups (e.g., Muslim, student, Republican). Our social self-concept can include

regional or cultural selves or self-construals. Finally, self-schema theory suggests that we interpret our own

actions and decisions through schemas, which are cognitive and memory structures for organizing the

world. The same action—say, not giving money to a homeless person—can be perceived along a schema

that distinguishes between selfish versus generous people, or along a schema that distinguishes between

savvy city dwellers versus gullible suckers. Which schemas we use to perceive ourselves form our self-

concept.

How do we know the self is social?

Self-perception theory notes that when we form impressions of others, we do so by observing their

behaviors, then making guesses about those people’s values, opinions, and so on. The theory suggests that

we form our self-concept in the same way; we observe our own behavior and form our self-concept by

inferring what our own values, opinions, and so forth are based on those behaviors.

Self-discrepancy theory is the idea that instead of one, single self-concept, we actually have three self-

concepts. Our actual self is our perception of who we are right now, while our ideal self is the person we’d

like to be. Finally, our ought self is the self-concept we have that reflects what we think other people in our

social world expect of us. Self-discrepancy theory hypothesizes that when our actual self and ideal self don’t

match, we’ll feel dejection-related emotions such as disappointment and shame. On the other hand, when

our actual self and ought self don’t match, we instead feel agitation-related emotions such as guilt or

anxiety.

A third theory, called self-expansion theory, suggests that we all want to grow and improve over time,

reaching the best possible self-concept. One way to “expand” our self-concept is to include other people into

our cognitive view of our self, which provides us access to other people’s skills, memories, perspectives, and

so on. A measure of the degree to which we’ve included someone else into our self-concept is called the

Inclusion of the Other in the Self (IOS) Scale, which asks people to choose one pair of overlapping circles

out of seven choices. The choices show progressive degrees of overlap, with one circle labeled “self” and the

second circle labeled “other.”

Why do we present different selves in different

situations?

Self-presentation is the tendency to adjust how we publicly display the self to gain social influence; this

tendency is also called impression management. For example, ingratiation involves attempts to get others to

like us by either praising other people (other-enhancement) or pretending to agree with other people

(opinion conformity). Self-promotion is an impression management technique that makes us appear more

successful or more significant that we really are, and conspicuous consumption is when we show off the use

of expensive, flashy products such as cars or jewelry.

Brain damage can apparently decrease someone’s ability to manage self-presentation. A famous case study

can be seen in the story of Phineas Gage, a man who experienced an explosion that caused portions of his

frontal lobe to be destroyed. This damage caused Gage’s personality to change, and it also seems to have

prevented him from being able to engage in self-presentation strategies.

People who often look around to assess the current situation to change their self-presentation are called high

self-monitors. On the other hand, people who act consistently regardless of the current situation are called

low self-monitors. There are advantages and disadvantages to either approach to self-presentation.

Is the truth always the self’s friend?

Optimal margin theory is the idea that it can be healthy to maintain a small to moderate distortion of

reality when it comes to our self-concept. In other words, maintaining some positive illusions about how

wonderful we are may be beneficial. For example, some older individuals seem to be happier when their

subjective age (how old they feel) is younger than their actual age.

Specific ways we maintain these positive illusions are called self-serving cognitive biases. One self-serving

cognitive bias is that we tend to perceive that our positive qualities or traits are rare (and therefore special),

whereas our negative qualities are common (and therefore not particularly stigmatizing). We also tend to

attribute successes to something internal about ourselves (such as talent or effort) but attribute failures to

something about the situation; in this way, we can take credit for success but avoid blame for failure.

Finally, we also question feedback about the self that is negative but happily believe that positive feedback

about our self is valid. This type of bias has also been seen in people’s views of others, such as current

romantic partners.

What is self-esteem and how can we measure it?

Self-esteem is our subjective, personal evaluation of our self-concept. It is not the same thing as self-

compassion, narcissism, or self-efficacy. There are two general strategies for measuring self-esteem. The first

is explicit, direct tests such as self-report scales that simply ask people about their view of themselves. The

second is implicit, indirect tests that measure self-esteem in other ways. For example, the Implicit

Association Test measures how quickly people respond on a computer when given different pairs of

concepts. If people can respond more quickly when the “self” is paired with positive words or images,

compared to negative words or images, then that might indicate a positive self-esteem. There are several

criticisms of this approach, however.

Collective self-esteem is our evaluation of the worth of social groups in which we are members, such as our

racial groups. Another example of collective self-esteem is seen in sports fans, when people affiliate with

certain teams. Researchers have noticed that sports fans are more likely to make their chosen affiliations

salient or obvious to others when their team is doing well compared to when it’s not; this tendency is called

Basking in Reflected Glory.

Despite the popularity of movements to increase self-esteem, several studies have shown that boosting self-

esteem can actually lead to negative effects, such as lower academic performance. It seems that receiving

negative feedback about one’s performance may cause self-esteem to suffer, but it can also lead to improved

performance next time the task is attempted.

Theories in Review

Social identity theory

Self-schema theory

Self-perception theory

Self-monitoring

Optimal margin theory

Collective self-esteem

Do you think it’s possible for any individual to really achieve full matching between his or her actual,

ideal, and ought selves? Would this full matching be a good thing or a bad thing, and why?

Consider the advantages and disadvantages to presenting different versions of yourself in different

settings. Is this simply having social intelligence, or is it being less than authentic? Is the success and

popularity that may follow from high self-monitoring worth changing who you appear to be? Or is your

changing self always authentic—and you’re simply choosing different aspects of yourself to be

highlighted, like when stores choose to display certain products in more prominent locations? If you

knew that a certain friend, politician, or romantic partner was very high in self-monitoring, could you

truly trust that person and feel you knew who he or she “really” is?

flaws in glaring detail? On a scale of 0 to 100, how much “positive illusion” do you think would be the

ideal amount, with 0 indicating none (potentially unhappy accuracy) and 100 being complete (happy but

inaccurate perceptions)?

What is your personal opinion about cultural or educational programs designed to enhance the next

drawbacks, such as inflated narcissism or a sense of entitlement?

Personal Reflection

Like most small children, I wondered about lots of weird things. For example, could Superman really go

backward in time by flying around Earth really fast? If I dug a hole all the way through the Earth and jumped in

feet-first, would I come out on the other side head-first? I also worried about all those other people who hadn’t

been as “lucky” as I was to have been born into a particular faith. Things didn’t look so good for them. And that

made me wonder: What if I had been born in a different part of the world? Would I still be me? Those questions

bugged me then and still do today. If I had decided to hitch-hike directly back home instead of impulsively

taking a detour to see a friend, then I would not have met my future wife and started a family. I would still be

me, but I would have been a very different me. And our children . . . well, they just wouldn’t be. But now, here

they are—and their children are wrestling with the same questions about the self that psychological science is

slowly starting to answer. [TH]

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Visual Key Concepts

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LO3.1 Explain how we adjust our public self-presentation in order to influence others.

self-awareness 59

self-recognition 59

mirror self-recognition test 59

self-concept 59

social comparison theory 60

upward social comparison 60

downward social comparison 60

social identity theory 61

independent self-construal 62

interdependent self-construal 62

self-schemas 62

schema 62

self 65

LO3.2 Analyze how our self-perceptions are influenced by others.

self-perception theory 64

actual self 65

ideal self 65

self-expansion theory 66

ought self 65

self-discrepancy 66

Inclusion of the Other in the Self (IOS) scale 66

LO3.3 Explain how social psychology has defined self-awareness and the self-concept.

impression management 68

other-enhancement 69

opinion conformity 69

self-presentation theory 68

self-enhancements 69

entitlement 69

conspicuous consumption 69

self-insight 71

self-monitor 71

LO3.4 Articulate why we sometimes benefit from positive illusions and moderate self-

deceptions.

optimal margin theory 73

positive illusions 73

subjective age 74

self-serving cognitive biases 74

LO3.5 Apply both explicit and implicit methods to the many facets of self-esteem,

including its dark side.

self-esteem 77

self-compassion 77

narcissism 77

self-efficacy 77

face validity 78

collective self-esteem 79

Implicit Association Test (IAT) 78

Implicit methodologies 78

reverse scoring 78

basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) 80

comparison group 83

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