Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect.

“Third, the Online Self-Differentiation factor reveals a new manifestation of Higgins’ ( 1987 ) self-discrepancy theory in the digital context.”

“According to the Self-Discrepancy Theory (Higgins, 1987), when there is a significant gap between an individual’s “actual self” and their “ideal self” or “ought self,” their self-esteem is adversely affected.”

“Higgins [24] proposed the self-discrepancy theory, emphasizing cognitive conflict as a driver of anxiety.”

“In support of Higgins’ self-concept theory [14], ToM could therefore contribute to creating a real self, congruous to adolescents’ role as students, because it modulates their internal world in relation to their own self with the evolved needs that are typical in the developmental period of early…”

“Self-discrepancy theory posits two cognitive dimensions: self-domains (i.e., actual, should, and ideal) and self-standpoints (i.e., self and others; Higgins, 1987).”

“The work of Bargh et al. (2002), building on Higgins (1987), expanded self-presentation styles by applying them to online dating and introduced the concepts of the real self and the ideal self.”

“As a result, adverse effect arises from accessing the self-discrepancies (Higgins, 1987 ).”

“Low self-confidence may be associated with a perceived difference between one’s own (or other people’s) ideas about the ideal and the real self (Higgins 1987; also, see; Strauman 2017).”

“These feelings can be explained using self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987), which highlights the emotional discomfort caused by mismatches between the actual and ideal/ought self.”

“…that how individuals adjust to a visible difference reflects how they interpret their visible difference, their self and their interactions with others, influenced by underlying cognitive self-schemas, discrepancies between actual/ideal/ought selves (Higgins, 1987), and the social context.”

“This could cause them to view treatment as pointless and halt it (Higgins, 1987).”

“Like self-discrepancy theory [69, 70], body dissatisfaction emerges from a discrepancy between the perceived and ideal body images.”

“Grounded in self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987), the theory accounts for individuals’ behaviors in relation to their goals.”

“According to the theory of self-improvement, individuals are assumed to be motivated to seek information that can improve their self-esteem [66].”

“On the other hand, when it comes to avatar idealization, our results provided partial support for the identity compensatory process hypothesized by the literature, and based on Self-Discrepancy Theory by Higgins (1987).”

“These results are consistent with Higgins' Self-Discrepancy Theory (1987), which postulates that unpleas-ant emotions are evoked or sparked by differences between the real and ideal selves.”

“A more comprehensive theory that explains how discrepancies between self-state representations lead to different types of emotional reactions and behavioral consequences, is the self-discrepancy theory (SDT) proposed by Higgins (1987).”

“The description of this type of self is compatible with Higgin's theory, where he uses "ought-to self" to refer to a person's portrayal of the qualities they believe they should possess, as different from their desires or wishes [15].”

“Negative emotional patterns may serve to activate adaptive re-adjustments in behavior and/or cognition to restore consistency and balance (Higgins, 1987; Brandtstädter and Greve, 1994).”

“In light of this, creating and maintaining an ideal self may be possible with the help of the avatar, which would lessen the anguish that results from self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987).”

“as part of their efforts to reduce the gap between their actual and ideal body images [20].”

“Built on the theory of possible selves, Higgins (1987, 1998) further specified the notion of possible selves and proposed that ideal self, which denotes the attributes that individuals would ideally like to possess, is one of the critical components according to the self-discrepancy theory…”

“In addition, promotion nonclosure (or “non-gain”) could arouse feelings of sadness and dejection (i.e., deactivating emotions; Higgins, 1987;Higgins, 1997;Higgins et al., 1997; Shah & Higgins, 2001) rather than frustration.”

“Whereas, self-verification focuses on a need to obtain feedback from others that confirms one’s self-identity, selfenhancement (Jones, 1973; Shrauger, 1975) emphasizes people’s desires for favorable and/or “better” self-concepts in order to enhance their self-esteem (Higgins, 1987).”

“Guilty feelings may motivate PEB because people may hold a firmly established self-concept and self-esteem schema for environmental issues (Branden, 1994; Higgins, 1987).”

“Relational sexual shame, or anxiety and self-consciousness during partnered sex (Higgins 1987) may be heightened by secrecy and alleviated through transparency (Sævik and Konijnenberg 2023).”

“Some scholars tried to use SDT [35] to explain the relationship between avatar similarity and psychological (dis)comfort in virtual environments [16].”

“That is, differential integration of that feedback is capable of enhancing or disrupting the stability of individuals’ self-concept [7,41].”

“According to self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987) conflict arises when one’s ideal sense of self is different from one’s sense of who one actually is.”

“Since the lack of progress induces greater discrepancy, it should also increase subsequent goal commitment because such a situation suggests that more effort is needed (Carver & Scheier, 1998; Higgins, 1987; Miller et al., 1960; Powers, 1973).”

“Regulatory focus theory is a social psychological theory of individual motivation originating from self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987).”

“Individuals may compare themselves with an ideal self (Higgins 1987), others (i.e., social comparison in Festinger, 1954, as cited in Morina 2021), or to themselves in the past (i.e., past-temporal comparison in Albert, 1977, as cited in Morina 2021).”

“Numerous theoretical frameworks including self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987), strategies of self presentation (Arkin, 1981) and self-presentation (Goffman, 1990), have been applied to the study of self in digital environments (e.g., Johnson & Ranzini, 2018).”

“Higgins, 1987) is associated with increased identification, and then translated into greater enjoyment during gameplay (Hefner et al., 2007).”

“As per the regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997), the promotion focus emphasizes accomplishments, advancement, and growth.”

“Their concept of the “anti-ought-to self” centers on the interplay between the “I” and the “other” (cf. Higgins, 1987 self-discrepancy theory).”

“According to the Three Domains of Self [23], it is plausible that the ending people achieved, does not comply with their ‘ideal’ or ‘ought’ self.”

“Past research on self-regulation suggest discrepancies between the actual and ideal self lead to negative emotions, and the emotions these discrepancies arouse motivate individuals ’ to engage in self-control (Carver & Scheier, 2001; Higgins, 1987).”

“In terms of welfare, as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI), regions or countries with higher HDI values typically possess stronger healthcare systems, higher educational attainment, and generally better population well-being [32].”

“On the other hand, localized social capital could create advantages for outside stakeholders: corporate managers in high-social-capital areas tend to take trustworthy actions, even when such actions toward distant stakeholders are unobservable (Elster, 1989; Higgins, 1987).”

“The ideal self is understood as ideal attributes such as aspirations, hopes, desires and may involve negative and positive versions of the self (Higgins, 1987).”

“Additionally, self-discrepancy theory ‏ (Higgins, 1987) offers a possible explanation for clarifying the research findings, i.e., in our case the gap between masculine actual self and masculine ought self, which is positively related to masculine discrepancy stress.”

“In Goffman’s differentiation between frontstage and backstage, the real self encompasses the attributes an individual possesses, whereas the ideal self embodies the attributes an individual aspires to possess (Higgins, 1987).”

“Theoretically, the relationship between the two mediators (COM and INT) and self-esteem may be explained by the self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987).”

“These findings are based on the theory of self-discrepancy [30], which suggests that the ideal self represents the best version that a person can see themselves as, whereas the actual self represents how a person currently perceives themselves.”

“This section discusses: (1) key findings, reflections, and their connections with existing research; (2) avatars as an alternative solution between camera on and off; and (3) the unexpected emergence of a self-prioritization in avatar-mediated collaborative interactions.”

“High dietary adherence could predict less psychological distress among vegetarians, as they may view low dietary adherence as indicative of self-regulation failure, and hence experience lower self-esteem and more negative emotions [31, 52, 67].”

“Acute pain resulting from tissue damage is usually highly salient and has inherent aversive properties inducing negative affective states (44).”

“This idea is rooted in Higgins’ Self-Discrepancy Theory [31] and implies that such convergence may lead to reduced self-discrepancy, especially when aspects of the ideal self of the player are present in the avatar [8, 39].”

“Likewise, the “Theory of the discrepancy of the Self” by Tory Higgins [37] states that a discrepancy between the actual perception of the self and the ideal self (i.e., how the person wish to be) generates contrasting emotions, which can be contained if this gap is reduced; in this case through…”

“Endocentric altruistic motivation is based on identifying of the other person’s needs and activating of the Self standards – the ought or the ideal ones (Higgins, 1987) which, in turn, inspire willingness to commit altruistic acts.”

“When people perceive self-discrepancies in status, they may use compensatory consumption to resolve those discrepancies.(27,28,69,70) Many studies have shown that people view conspicuous consumption as psychological comfort and compensation for unmet needs.”

“Unlike existingmeasures of values, the self-related statements included in the new measure aim toavoid activating self-discrepancies between actual and ideal self-states, as thismay result inemotional discomfort (Higgins, 1987, 1997).”

“Actual–ideal self-discrepancy can be a motivator of compensatory behavior such as material acquisition aimed at reducing the perceived gap between the actual self and the ideal self [37,39,40].”

“Conceptual models of internalizing disorders often encapsulate two motivational systems: the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and the behavioral activation system (BAS) (Carver & Scheier, 1990; Higgins, 1987).”

“One, it embraces and explores the inter-connected nature of players’ online and offline worlds, and how these interconnections might help players to close the gap between the “actual” and “ideal” self (James Ash, Rob Kitchin and Agnieszka Leszczynski 2018; Higgins 1987; Orlando Woods 2020, 2021a).”

“Second, researchers may define how the canvas is used – whether participants have complete creative freedom (open format) or must partition it into predefined sections (closed format) to explore specific themes, such as ‘actual self’ and ‘ideal self’ (Higgins 1987).”

“…self-evaluations are typically assessed using indirect measures that infer participants’ self-evaluations through assessing their evaluations of self-relevant stimuli (e.g., Implicit Association Test; Farnham et al., 1999; Greenwald & Farnham, 2000; Name Letter Paradigm; Nuttin, 1985, 1987).”

“Such reflection may help researchers recognize the discrepancy between their current and ideal selves (Higgins, 1987), which can evoke emotional discomfort.”

“…focused, is motivated by minimizing discrepancies between ideal perceptions of self and a person's actual behavior (i.e., the pursual of ideal self-guides; Higgins, 1987, 1989) and is concerned with the presence or absence of positive outcomes as a result of particular actions (Higgins, 1998).”

“…onto somatic terrain is coherent with self-discrepancy theory, where gaps between actual, ideal, and ought selves fuel shame and agitation that ED rituals promise to regulate [4], and with objectification theory, which links internalized body surveillance and shame to disordered eating [5,6].”

“Importantly, they are distinct from both the suppressed or hidden “Real Self”—which may remain private—and the “Ideal Self”, conceptualized by Higgins (1987), which may involve unrealistic or overly aspirational traits.”

“Self ‐ discrepancy refers to the perceived misalignment between an individual's self ‐ concept and their desired self (Higgins 1987).”