Self-evaluation motives
Encyclopedia
Self-Enhancement
The self-enhancementSelf-enhancement
Self-enhancement is a type of motivation that works to make people feel good about themselves and to maintain self-esteem. This motive becomes especially prominent in situations of threat, failure or blows to one's self-esteem...
motive states that people engage in self-evaluation in view of, not only improving the positivity
Positivity effect
In psychology and cognitive science, the positivity effect is the tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they like or prefer, to attribute the person's inherent disposition as the cause of their positive behaviors and the situations surrounding them as the cause...
of their self-concept
Self-concept
Self-concept is a multi-dimensional construct that refers to an individual's perception of "self" in relation to any number of characteristics, such as academics , gender roles and sexuality, racial identity, and many others. Each of these characteristics is a research domain Self-concept (also...
ions, but also protecting the self
Self
The self is an individual person as the object of his or her own reflective consciousness. The self has been studied extensively by philosophers and psychologists and is central to many world religions.-Philosophy:...
from negative information (they search for positivity and avoid negativity
Negativity effect
In psychology, the negativity effect is the tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they dislike, to attribute their positive behaviors to the environment and their negative behaviors to the person's inherent nature...
)
In order to do this, people process information important to the self in a selective manner (for instance, by focusing on information that has favourable implications to the self and discarding information with unfavourable implications to the self). People also choose to compare themselves socially to others so as to be placed in a favourable position. By doing this, people seek to boost the positivity] of the self or decrease its negativity, aiming to make others see them as socially desirable, hence increasing their levels of self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
.
Self-Assessment
The self-assessmentSelf-assessment
In social psychology, self-assessment is the process of looking at oneself in order to assess aspects that are important to one's identity. It is one of the motives that drive self-evaluation, along with self-verification and self-enhancement...
motive is based on the assumption that people want to have an accurate and objective evaluation of the self. To achieve this goal, they work so as to reduce any uncertainty about their abilities or personality traits
Trait theory
In psychology, Trait theory is a major approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are relatively stable over...
. Feedback
Feedback
Feedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...
is sought to increase the accuracy and objectivity of previously formed self-conceptions. This is regardless of whether the new information confirms or challenges the previously existing self-conceptions.
Self-Verification
The self-verification motive asserts that what motivates people to engage in the self-evaluation process is the desire to verify their pre-existing self-conceptions, maintaining consistency between their previously formed self-conceptions and any new information that could be important to the self (feedback) By doing this, people get the sense of control and predictability in the social world.Self-Enhancement
The self-enhancement motive states that people want to see themselves favourably. It follows that people should choose tasks with a positive valenceValence (psychology)
Valence, as used in psychology, especially in discussing emotions, means the intrinsic attractiveness or aversiveness of an event, object, or situation. However, the term is also used to characterize and categorize specific emotions. For example, the emotions popularly referred to as "negative",...
, regardless of task diagnosticity (this motive is more active in presence of tasks high in diagnosticity of success than in presence of tasks high in diagnosticity of failure). Tasks that disclosure a failure and negative feedback are considered less important than tasks with an outcome of success or positive feedback. As a result, the former are processed faster and more thoroughly, and remembered better than the latter.
Each motive
Motivation
Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
originated a different type of reaction (cognitive, affective or behavioural). The self-enhancement motive creates both affective and cognitive responses. Affective responses result in negative feedback leading to less positive affect then positive affect. This is moderated by trait modifiability, in the sense that we can find the former event to be especially true for unmodifiable traits. On the other hand, cognitive responses lead to favourable feedback being judged as more accurate, but only in the case of modifiable traits.
Self-Assessment
The self-assessment motive postulates that people want to have an accurate view of their abilities and personality traitsTrait theory
In psychology, Trait theory is a major approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are relatively stable over...
. Hence, when evaluating the self people tend to preferably choose tasks that are high in diagnosticity (people want to find out about their uncertain self-conceptions). This is found even when the diagnosis leads to a disclosure of failure (i.e., regardless of task valence).
The responses generated by the self-assessment motive are behavioural responses, which becomes evident by the fact that people choose to receive feedback on their performance (they prefer tasks for which feedback is available, as opposed to tasks with unavailable feedback). This pattern is emphasized when the trait is considered to be modifiable.
Self-Verification
The self-verification motive asserts that people want verify their previously existing beliefs about the self. No preference regarding the task valence is apparent. Regarding task diagnosticity, people seek knowledge about their certain self-conceptions to a greater extent than they do for their uncertain self-conceptions.Cognitive responses guide the self-verification motive partially depending on their previously formed self-concept. That is, when a certain trait is present, positive feedback regarding this trait is judged to be more accurate than unfavourable feedback; but when in the presence of the alternative trait, there isn’t any difference in the judgement of the feedback accuracy. However, this pattern is conditional on perceived trait modifiability.
The self-verification motive resulted in cognitive responses to traits considered to be unmodifiable, but not to traits considered modifiable. In the former, positive feedback is considered more accurate than negative feedback, when in the presence of the trait. On the other hand, negative feedback is viewed as more accurate than positive feedback in the presence of the alternative trait.