title: Does self-enhancement facilitate task performance?
abstract: Self-enhancement is a pervasive motivation that manifests broadly to promote and protect the positivity of the self. Research suggests that self-enhancement is associated with improved task performance. Untested, however, is whether that association is causal. The present research experimentally manipulated self-enhancement to examine its causal effect on task performance. Participants in 5 experiments were randomly assigned to self-enhance or not before completing a creativity task (Experiments 1-4) or pain-inducing cold-pressor task (Experiment 5). Results indicate that self-enhancing (but not self-effacing) on a dimension relevant (but not irrelevant) to the task facilitated performance. Furthermore, the data were consistent with the possibility that the performance facilitating effect of self-enhancement was mediated through task-relevant self-efficacy. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Erin M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: O'Mara
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee.
authors.forename: Lowell
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gaertner
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003405:Creativity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D017288:Pain Threshold; D012649:Self Concept; D020377:Self Efficacy; D055815:Young Adult