Self-verification and contextualized self-views.
Whereas most self-verification research has focused on people's desire to verify their global self-conceptions, the present studies examined self-verification with regard to contextualized selfviews-views of the self in particular situations and relationships. It was hypothesized that individuals whose core self-conceptions include contextualized self-views should seek to verify these self-views. In Study 1, the more individuals defined the self in dialectical terms, the more their judgments were biased in favor of verifying over nonverifying feedback about a negative, situation-specific self-view. In Study 2, consistent with research on gender differences in the importance of relationships to the self-concept, women but not men showed a similar bias toward feedback about a negative, relationship-specific self-view, a pattern not seen for global self-views. Together, the results support the notion that self-verification occurs for core self-conceptions, whatever form(s) they may take. Individual differences in self-verification and the nature of selfhood and authenticity are discussed.
Chen
Serena
S
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA. serchen@berkeley.edu
English
Tammy
T
Peng
Kaiping
K
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003071:Cognition; D030141:Feedback, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012649:Self Concept; D012737:Sex Factors; D014481:United States