Allure of negative feedback: Self-verification strivings among depressed persons.

Proposes that people with negative self-views are rejected because they gravitate to partners who view them unfavorably. In relation to nondepressed college students (n?=?28), depressives (n?=?13) preferred interaction partners who evaluated them unfavorably (Study 1). Similarly, in relation to nondepressives (n?=?106), depressives (n?=?10) preferred friends or dating partners who evaluated them unfavorably (Study 2). Dysphorics (n?=?6) were more inclined to seek unfavorable feedback from their roommates than were nondepressives (n?=?16); feedback-seeking activities of dysphorics were also associated with later rejection (Study 3). Finally, people with negative self-views (n?=?37) preferentially solicited unfavorable feedback, although receiving such feedback made them unhappy, in comparison with people with positive self-views (n?=?42; Study 4). It seems a desire for self-verification compels people with negative self-views to seek unfavorable appraisals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Authenticity and positivity strivings in marriage and courtship.

Proposed that married persons would want their spouses to see them as they saw themselves but that dating persons would want their relationship partners to evaluate them favorably. A survey of 176 married and dating couples tested these predictions. Just as married persons were most intimate with spouses whose evaluations verified their self-views, dating persons were most intimate with partners who evaluated them favorably. For married people with negative self-views, then, intimacy increased as their spouses evaluated them more negatively. Marriage apparently precipitates a shift from a desire for positive evaluations to a desire for self-verifying evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why people self-verify.

Why do people choose interaction partners who see them as they see themselves? Self-verification theorists propose that a desire to bolster perceptions of predictability and control underlies such activities. In contrast, advocates of positivity strivings argue that people choose such interaction partners in the hope of making themselves feel good. Two studies tested these competing explanations by examining the spontaneous verbalizations of participants as they chose interaction partners. The results suggest that positivity as well as self-verification strivings caused participants with positive self-views to choose partners who appraised them favorably. The epistemic considerations underlying self-verification processes, however, best explained why people with negative self-views chose partners who appraised them unfavorably. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Partner verification: Restoring shattered images of our intimates.

When spouses received feedback that disconfirmed their impressions of their partners, they attempted to undermine that feedback during subsequent interactions with these partners. Such partner verification activities occurred whether partners construed the feedback as overly favorable or overly unfavorable. Furthermore, because spouses tended to see their partners as their partners saw themselves, their efforts to restore their impressions of partners often worked hand-in-hand with partners' efforts to verify their own views. Finally, support for self-verification theory emerged in that participants were more intimate with spouses who verified their self-views, whether their self-views happened to be positive or negative. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Agreeable fancy or disagreeable truth? Reconciling self-enhancement and self-verification.

Three studies asked why people sometimes seek positive feedback (self-enhance) and sometimes seek subjectively accurate feedback (self-verify). Consistent with self-enhancement theory, people with low self-esteem as well as those with high self-esteem indicated that they preferred feedback pertaining to their positive rather than negative self-views. Consistent with self-verification theory, the very people who sought favorable feedback pertaining to their positive self-conceptions sought unfavorable feedback pertaining to their negative self-views, regardless of their level of global self-esteem. Apparently, although all people prefer to seek feedback regarding their positive self-views, when they seek feedback regarding their negative self-views, they seek unfavorable feedback. Whether people self-enhance or self-verify thus seems to be determined by the positivity of the relevant self-conceptions rather than their level of self-esteem or the type of person they are. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The waxing and waning of the social self: Assimilation and contrast in social comparison.

Past research has revealed that social comparisons often lead to contrast effects in self-evaluation (such that people who encounter a highly talented person come to feel less talented by comparison). In this report, however, it is argued that when people possess confidently held self-views in a particular area, they are unlikely to engage in explicit social comparisons with close others. Instead, they assume that because "birds of a feather flock together," the strengths and weaknesses of their close relationship partners reflect directly (rather than comparatively) on themselves. A cross-sectional survey, a prospective survey, and a quasi-experiment all supported this idea. The implications of these findings for social comparison and for self-regulation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From self-conceptions to self-worth: On the sources and structure of global self-esteem.

Three factors were identified that uniquely contribute to people's global self-esteem: (a) people's tendencies to experience positive and negative affective states, (b) people's specific self-views (i.e., their conceptions of their strengths and weaknesses), and (c) the way people frame their self-views. Framing factors included the relative certainty and importance of people's positive versus negative self-views and the discrepancy between people's actual and ideal self-views. The contribution of importance to people's self-esteem, however, was qualified in 2 ways. First, importance contributed only to the self-esteem of those who perceived that they had relatively few talents. Second, individuals who saw their positive self-views as important were especially likely to be high in self-esteem when they were also highly certain of these positive self-views. The theoretical and therapeutic implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accuracy of person perception: Do people know what kinds of impressions they convey?

Do people know what kinds of impressions they convey to other people during particular social interactions? In a study designed to answer this question, subjects interacted individually with three partners on each of four different tasks. After each interaction, participants reported their impressions of the other person's likability and competence. They also postdicted the impressions they believed they conveyed to the other person along the same dimensions. Accuracy was computed as recommended by Cronbach (1955) and by Kenny's (1981) Social Relations Model. Subjects could tell to a significant degree how the impressions they conveyed to their partners changed over time (time accuracy) and how they changed over time in different ways with different partners (differential accuracy). They could also tell how their competence was differentially perceived by different partners (dyadic accuracy). However, they were not very accurate at discerning which partners perceived them as most competent or most likable across all interactions (person accuracy). Subjects believed that they conveyed similar impressions of themselves to all of their partners, although actually partners evidenced little agreement with each other in their impressions of a given subject. The implications of these findings for symbolic-interactionist theories of the development of the self and impression-management perspectives on social behavior are described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intuition and the correspondence between implicit and explicit self-esteem.

Four studies tested whether the perceived validity of intuition increases the correspondence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Studies 1 and 2 found, with 2 different measures of implicit self-esteem, that people who chronically view their intuition as valid have more consistent implicit and explicit self-esteem. In contrast, people with relatively low faith in their intuition had a negative relation between implicit and explicit self-esteem, suggesting that they may overcorrect their explicit self-views for the potential bias posed by implicit self-esteem. In Studies 3 and 4, participants who were induced to view their intuition as valid reported explicit self-views (self-evaluations made under time pressure, or state self-esteem) that were more consistent with their implicit self-esteem. These results suggest that people experience implicit self-esteem as intuitive evaluations. The correspondence between implicit and explicit self-esteem among individuals who view their intuition as valid may suggest that these individuals incorporate implicit self-esteem into their explicit self-views. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment, attractiveness, and social interaction: A diary study.

To what extent are attachment styles manifested in natural social activity? A total of 125 participants categorized as possessing secure, avoidant, or anxious–ambivalent attachment styles kept structured social interaction diaries for 1 week. Several theoretically important findings emerged. First, compared with secure and anxious–ambivalent persons, avoidant persons reported lower levels of intimacy, enjoyment, promotive interaction, and positive emotions, and higher levels of negative emotions, primarily in opposite-sex interactions. Analyses indicated that avoidant persons may structure social activities in ways that minimize closeness. Second, secure people differentiated more clearly than either insecure group between romantic and other opposite-sex partners. Third, the subjective experiences of anxious-ambivalent persons were more variable than those of the other groups. Finally, the authors examined and rejected the possibility that attachment effects might be confounded with physical attractiveness. These findings suggest that feelings and behaviors that arise during spontaneous, everyday social activity may contribute to the maintenance of attachment styles in adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why would social networks be linked to affect and health practices?

Objective: To examine the relation among social integration (SI), affect, and smoking and alcohol consumption. Design: The authors administered social network and psychological questionnaires to 193 adults and then interviewed them on 14 consecutive evenings about their daily social interactions, affect, and smoking and alcohol consumption. Main outcome measures: The main outcome measures were positive and negative affect, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Results: Between-subjects analyses found that those with more diverse social networks (high in SI) interacted with more people and smoked and drank less. SI was not, however, associated with affect. In contrast, within-subject analyses found that the more people participants interacted with during a day, the greater their positive affect, drinking, and smoking on that day. However, this occurred primarily for persons low in SI. High-SI persons reported high positive affect irrespective of the number of people with whom they interacted, and their smoking and drinking behaviors were less influenced by number of interactants. Conclusion: SI may alter health because it affects responsiveness to the social influences of others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-esteem and perceptions of conveyed impressions: Is negative affectivity associated with greater realism?

Two studies examine the notion that negative affectivity (Watson & Clark, 1984) is associated with more accurate perceptions of conveyed impressions in social interactions. In Study 1 (n?=?160), low self-esteem (LSE) and high self-esteem (HSE) subjects were paired with either an LSE or an HSE partner. After a 15-min interaction, they rated themselves, their partners, and how they believed their partners would rate them on 20 adjectives related to social competence. Study 2 (n?=?40) was identical except that each interaction was observed by 2 observers who rated each participant, and participants also rated how they believed an observer would rate them. LSE subjects exhibited greater accuracy only with respect to the elevation component of observers' ratings; HSE subjects overestimated the positivity of observers' evaluations, whereas LSE subjects were relatively accurate. However, LSE subjects exhibited less overall accuracy with respect to their partners' ratings. We argue that when these results are considered with earlier research, there is no support for the notion of depressive realism in assessing conveyed impressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeking self-evaulative feedback: The interactive role of global self-esteem and specific self-views.

People who verify a negative self-view expose themselves to criticism and rejection. Because people with low global self-esteem are hurt more by negative feedback than are people with high global self-esteem, the authors predicted that they would be less apt to verify a negative self-view in a more specific domain. Three investigations found support for this hypothesis. In all 3 investigations, high self-esteem participants sought (or tended to seek) self-verifying feedback, even if it was negative, but low self-esteem participants sought (or tended to seek) positive feedback, even if it was nonself-verifying. These findings show that low self-esteem people are especially concerned with self-protection and that global self-esteem and specific self-views interact to guide people's responses to self-evaluative feedback. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Meta-insight: Do people really know how others see them?

Although people can accurately guess how others see them, many studies have suggested that this may only be because people generally assume that others see them as they see themselves. These findings raise the question: In their everyday lives, do people understand the distinction between how they see their own personality and how others see their personality? We examined whether people make this distinction, or whether people possess what we call meta-insight. In 3 studies, we assessed meta-insight for a broad range of traits (e.g., Big Five, intelligent, funny) across several naturalistic social contexts (e.g., first impression, friends). Our findings suggest that people can make valid distinctions between how they see themselves and how others see them. Thus, people seem to have some genuine insight into their reputation and do not achieve meta-accuracy only by capitalizing on the fact that others see them similarly to how they see themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disclose or conceal? Strategies of information management in persons with epilepsy

PURPOSE: When handling information about their disease in their social contacts, persons with epilepsy try to avoid or limit stigmatization. We report two basic strategies of information management: general concealment and preventive disclosure. To test whether persons with epilepsy apply a strategy of preventive disclosure, we hypothesized that they would disclose their epilepsy when anticipating that their disease would make them conspicuous in social contacts and when believing that they would be able to forestall stigmatizing attribution processes through disclosure. METHODS: One hundred nineteen outpatients at the Bethel Epilepsy Center, Bielefeld, Germany, aged 16-74 years responded to a questionnaire assessing willingness to disclose their epilepsy in various fictitious daily scenarios, the perceived risk that the interaction partner might find out about their epilepsy (risk of detection), as well as the anticipated positive and negative social consequences of disclosure in these social situations. RESULTS: Willingness to disclose varied across the different scenarios, and only a few respondents rejected disclosure categorically. Willingness to disclose depended on the subjectively perceived risk of detection and the anticipated consequences of disclosure: Respondents were more willing to disclose their epilepsy the more they feared that their interaction partner would detect their disease or find out about it in another way and the more they anticipated that disclosure would enable them to exert a favorable impact on their partner's social judgment formation. CONCLUSIONS: Many persons with epilepsy appear to apply a strategy of preventive disclosure with which they strive to influence social judgment formation in their environment by purposefully disclosing their disease to forestall possible stigmatization processes.     

Age differences in social preferences among Taiwanese and mainland Chinese: The role of perceived time.

Socioemotional selectivity theory holds that as people recognize the inevitable constraint of time imposed by mortality, their social goals change, motivating them to limit social contacts to those with whom they are emotionally close. This theory was tested among Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese. As predicted, results showed that older adults (aged 60–90 years) in both cultures were more likely than younger adults (aged 18–30 years) to prefer familiar social partners who were most likely to provide emotionally close social interactions. Mainland Chinese, who as a group have shorter actuarial life expectancy, were more likely to prefer familiar social partners than were Taiwanese. These age and cultural differences were eliminated when differences in perceived time were statistically controlled for. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-esteem, construal, and comparisons with the self, friends, and peers.

Extending the better than average effect, 3 studies examined self-, friend, and peer comparisons of personal attributes. Participants rated themselves as better off than friends, who they rated as superior to generalized peers. The exception was in direct comparisons, where the self and friends were not strongly differentiated on unambiguous negative attributes. Self-esteem and construal played moderating roles, with persons with high self-esteem (HSEs) exploiting both ambiguous positive and ambiguous negative traits to favor themselves. Persons lower in self-esteem exploited ambiguous positive traits in their favor but did not exploit ambiguous negative traits. Across self-esteem level, ratings of friends versus peers were exaggerated when attributes were ambiguous. HSEs seemed to take advantage of ambiguity more consistently to present favorable self-views; people with low self-esteem used ambiguity to favor their friends but were reluctant to minimize their own faults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On What It Means to Know Someone: A Matter of Pragmatics.

Two studies provide support for W. B. Swann's (1984) argument that perceivers achieve substantial pragmatic accuracy--accuracy that facilitates the achievement of relationship-specific interaction goals--in their social relationships. Study 1 assessed the extent to which group members reached consensus regarding the behavior of a member in familiar (as compared with unfamiliar) contexts and found that groups do indeed achieve this form of pragmatic accuracy. Study 2 assessed the degree of insight romantic partners had into the self-views of their partners on relationship-relevant (as compared with less relevant) traits and found that couples do indeed achieve this form of pragmatic accuracy. Furthermore, pragmatic accuracy was uniquely associated with relationship harmony. Implications for a functional approach to person perception are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)