Assessment, enhancement, and verification determinants of the self-evaluation process.

“To support his averaging model, Anderson (1965) provided participants with various personality traits that allegedly characterized a stimulus person.”

“Attempts to protect or enhance self-esteem may also cause distortions in self-knowledge (Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1993; Sedikides, 1993; Taylor & Brown, 1988), making it difficult to identify areas in which change or growth is needed.”

“Questing for self-affirmation, we’re especially motivated to enhance our self-image (Sedikides, 1993).”

“1987); and they are not strongly motivated to gain accurate feedback (Sedikides, 1993).”

“Self-presentation can be protective (e.g., avoiding social disapproval, Richins, 1983; Sedikides, 1993) or acquisitive (e.g., seeking social approval, Brown, Collins, & Schmidt, 1988).”

“The reason seems to be that people are motivated to be seen by others in ways that verify their self-concepts, and certain central traits are not only important to the self-concept, but serve to organize it (Sedikides, 1993).”

“As a consequence, they may take less personal responsibility for harmful actions and develop an inaccurate self-concept, hindering growth and change (Sedikides, 1993).”

“While Western psychologists and educators have frequently focused on enhancing self-esteem as a response to adolescents' negative self-evaluations (Mecca, Smelser, & Vasconcellos, 1989 ), self-esteem is difficult to raise (Sedikides, 1993 ; Swann, 1996 ).”

“Self-ratings are susceptible to self-enhancement biases (e.g., Sedikides, 1993 ).”

“As a result, they may take less personal responsibility for actions and develop an inaccurate self-concept, hindering potential growth (Sedikides, 1993).”

“Another line of research (Sedikides, 1993) highlights the interplay of several of the moderators that we have discussed thus far.”

“more diagnostic questions about positive rather than negative traits in important domains and about traits they hold in high rather than low certainty (Sedikides, 1993).”

“We hypothesized that the traits on which narcissists and HSE individuals rate themselves as better than average also will be the traits that they deem to be positive (Alicke,1985; Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Green, 2000).”

“Demonstrating effects in private response conditions has become a common feature of self-enhancement/self-protection experiments that wish to minimise self-presentational concerns (Sedikides, 1993).”

“Normal adults are motivated to protect, maintain, or enhance the positivity of the self-concept (Brown & Dutton, 1995; Dunning, 1993; Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997).”

“…feedback under certain circumstances, the fact that this effect is stronger when the potential information is likely to be positive suggests that self-assessment often takes a backseat to self-enhancement (Sedikides 1993). www.annualreviews.org • Self-Related Motives and Emotions 319 A nn u.”

“To put it another way, self-enhancement appears to operate as a maintenance motive (Sedikides, 1993; Steele, 1988; Tesser, 1988).”

“In the following, we first develop testable hypotheses and then report from five studies in which we tested them empirically.”

“Kenrick and Stringfield, 1980; Taylor and Brown, 1988; Sedikides, 1993; Xie et al., 1999).”

“Beginning with the well-validated premise that individuals in our culture are motivated to think highly of themselves (Baumeister, 1998; Higgins, 1996; Sedikides, 1993), we propose that people tend to evaluate their past selves in a manner that makes them feel good about themselves now.”

“Ego-protective strategies can screen out error signals to maintain high self-esteem (Reich, 1949; Sedikides, 1993), which undermines the reporting of errors that may have contributed to a project’s failure.”

“Accordingly, individuals engaged in self-evaluation are believed to be "peering inward" (Hixon & Swann, 1993), asking themselves questions about such topics as their self-attributes (Pelham & Swann, 1989; Sedikides, 1993), the causes of their behavior (Bradley, 1978; Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, & Elliott, 1998), thei…”

“…self-esteem as the fundamental resource that people protect with compensatory defenses and include theories of egocentricity (Beauregard & Dunning, 1998; Dunning & Hayes, 1996; Tesser, 2000), self-evaluation maintenance (Sedikides, 1993; Tesser, 1988), and the totalitarian ego (Greenwald, 1980).”

“Individuals have a fundamental need for positive selfesteem (Sedikides 1993, Sedikides and Strube 1997), and self-enhancement is the tendency to “develop, protect, and more generally to sustain the positivity of [social] identities” (Brown et al. 1992, p. 328) as a means of supporting self-esteem.”

“A central characteristic of narcissism is self-enhancement (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997).”

“On the premise that individuals in western culture are motivated to think highly of themselves (Baumeister, 1998; Higgins, 1996; Sedikides, 1993; Taylor & Brown, 1988), temporal self-appraisal theory suggests that people tend to react to their past selves and outcomes in a manner that makes them feel good about themse…”

“A rather well-worn path through which tactical self-enhancement treks is boasting on a few important, but nonboasting or even deprecating on many unimportant, selfattributes (Alicke, 1985; Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Green, 2000).”

“Assuming that most individuals have a positive attitude toward themselves (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997), one can predict that participants will find it easier to give the extrinsically positive response to their own name than to give the extrinsically negative re-”

“…individual level ideals, goals, and desires to obtain and maintain a state of relatedness, security, and intimacy with another individual (Campbell, Elliott, Reeder, & Sedikides, 1994; Guisinger & Blatt, 1994; Sedikides, Oliver, & Campbell, 1994; Sedikides & Strube, 1994; see also Sedikides, 1993).”

“Assuming that most individuals have a positive attitude toward themselves (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997), one can predict that participants will find it easier to give the extrinsically positive response to their own name than to give the extrinsically negative re-”

“Based on individuals’ internal standards, private self-motives serve intra-personal acceptance purposes (Sedikides, 1993).”

“Those aspects of identity that are highly accessible and deemed to be an integral part of self-definition become core or central traits (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Green, 2000).”

“Self-consistency theory proposes that people desire self-relevant information that matches their preexisting self-concepts (Jussim et al., 1995; Sedikides, 1993; Shrauger, 1975; Swann et al., 1989; Swann, Griffin, Predmore , & Gaines, 1987).”

“This dynamic is particularly strong for individuals with high levels of self-monitoring and independent self-construals (Brown & Gallagher, 1992; Gregg et al., 2012; Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1995).”

“, 1978; Zuckerman, 1979) and the notion that the self-enhancement motives dominates the self-assessment motive (Sedikides, 1993).”

“, 2001), self-serving bias (Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, & Elliot, 1998), social comparisons (Taylor, Neter, & Wayment, 1995), and feedbackseeking (Sedikides, 1993).”

“mings, 1983) and identifies them as proactive in obtaining information useful for self-assessment (Sedikides, 1993).”

“Self-assessment concerns prevail when certainty is low, whereas self-verification concerns prevail when certainty is high ( Sedikides, 1993 ).”

“In contrast to self-verification, whereby individuals attempt to affirm both positive and negative aspects of their identity (Swann, 1983), self-enhancement motive drives individuals to promote only the positive aspects of identity and avoid the negative ones (Sedikides, 1993).”

“In the interest of maintaining a positively balanced affective state, people bias their processing of self-relevant information to maintain (Swann, 1990) or enhance (Brown & Dutton, 1995; Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, in press) the symbolic self.”

“Self-perception seems to be most influenced by two fundamental motives: a self-enhancement motive (i.e., the desire to perceive the self positively; Sedikides, 1993, 2007) and a self-verification motive (i.e., the desire to confirm one’s identity; Swann, 1992, 1997).”

“Because people want to see themselves as capable and successful, and thus seek out information consistent with such self-views (Sedikides 1993), they are likely to note and process others’ failures so that they can avoid failing in the same ways and suffer from a negative self-evaluation.”

“…(on 9-point scales) two central traits (trustworthy and kind) and synonyms (dependable and thoughtful, respectively) as well as two peripheral traits (modest and uncomplaining) and synonyms (humble and nonwhining, We selected these traits on the basis of prior research (Sedikides, 1993, 1995).”

“…has explored the social and psychological ramifications of threatened and bolstered self-esteem (Fein & Spencer, 1997; Greenberg et al., 1992; Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides, Campbell , Reeder, & Elliot, 1998), the current research examines the extent to which situations that challenge or…”

“The SSB is partly distorted by demanding task, because one must evaluate all strategic self-enhancement (Sedikides, 1993; possible alternatives (Andrews, 2001).”

“For example, they desire and pursue feedback that accentuates their positive attributes (Gaertner, Sedikides, & Cai, 2012; Sedikides, 1993).”

“inant self-motive ( Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997), we argue that individuals seek distinctive group identities as much as positive group identities.”

“Personal relevance of an attribute reflects the importance one attaches to possessing the attribute and its centrality to one's self-concept (see e.g., Chaiken & Stangor, 1987; Dunning, 1995; Linville & Carlston, 1994; Pelham, 1991; Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997; Tesser, 1988).”

“Given that participants generally think positively of themselves (Brown & Dutton, 1995; Sedikides, 1993), they will assume that the audience also holds a favorable view of them (Felson, 1993).”

“…more independent often behave in a manner consistent with a self-enhancement motive (Heine et al. 1999; Heine and Lehman 1995, 1997; White and Lehman 1995b), or the desire “to enhance the positivity of their self-conceptions and to protect the self from negative information” (Sedikides 1993, 18).”

“The most typical examples concern perceptions of the self and show that people see themselves in a particularly flattering light (Sedikes, 1993; Taylor & Brown, 1988).”

“We assume that those who have more status define their superior position as a relatively more central, or important, component of their self than lowstatus individuals, because people strive to maintain and to enhance positive self-views (Brockner, 1988; Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997).”

“…when people are uncertain they are more motivated to verify and confirm aspects of themselves, often positive aspects of self, than to obtain accurate information about themselves and their attitudes and perceptions (e.g., Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Strube, 1997; Swann, Rentfrow, & Guinn, 2003).”

“A typical finding in the literature is that people rate themselves as higher on communal than on agentic traits (Abele & Wojciszke, 2007; Schwartz & Bardi, 2001; Sedikides, 1993), and the same pattern also emerged in all countries of the present sample, all ts > 127.37, dfs > 13,898, ps < .001.”

“Finally, a third category of studies has shown that different motives might be activated simultaneously and are very likely to interact with each other (Neiss et al. 2006; Sedikides 1993; Swann et al. 1989).”

“The motive to be viewed positively by others is a fundamental, powerful, and important driver of human behavior (Baumeister, 1982; Leary & Kowalski, 1990; Sedikides, 1993; Tetlock, 2002), as countless social and material rewards (social approval, friendships, career advancement) depend on others’ impressions (Gilmore…”

“According to self-enhancement theory (Sedikides, 1993), people are motivated to maintain a high level of self-esteem, and thus have a powerful desire for positive labels and feedback.”