Life tasks, self-concept ideals, and cognitive strategies in a life transition.

Abstract

Nancy Cantor, Julie K. Norem, Paula M. Niedenthal, and Christopher A. Langston Institute for Social Research University of Michigan Aaron M. Brower School of Social Work University of Wisconsin This paper reports on data from a longitudinal study in which normative life tasks and individuals' personal versions of those tasks are investigated in the context of students making the transition from home and high school to college life. Analyses focus both on common patterns of life-task appraisal in interpersonal and achievement domains and on differences in the self-concepts and cognitive strategies that individual students bring to bear as they confront these normative pressures (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987). In particular, we investigate the impact of students' actual-ideal self-discrepancies (Higgins, Klein, & Strauman, 1985) on subjective stress and satisfaction in achievement and inter- personal life-task domains and suggest that self-concept discrepancy negatively affects adjustment in the achievement domain and positively affects social outcomes. Next, we show that students are able to confront their anxieties in the stressful achievement domain, hut that they often do so in very different ways. Specifically, students using a defensive-pessimism strategy motivated themselves by confronting their anxieties in advance of stressful tasks, whereas those using an optimistic strategy assumed the best until proved otherwise--protecting self-esteem after the fact in the event of disap- pointment (Norem & Cantor, 1986a, 1986b). This analysis, thus, begins at the level of normative readings of life tasks in a shared transition period and gradually moves toward consideration of how individuals navigate those tasks in personally meaningful ways. Substantial agreement exists about the importance of build- ing models of behavior that take into account both the power of situations and the characteristics of individuals (Magnusson & Endler, 1977). As in any theory-building enterprise, one of the primary issues facing those constructing accounts of person-by- situation interactions is how to identify conceptual units that richly characterize the phenomena of interest, while allowing parsimonious generalization beyond particular groups of per- sons in highly constrained situations. Personality psychologists constantly confront this trade-off between the richness and ac- curacy of description provided by idiographic analyses and the breadth and generality attained with nomothetic techniques (see Pervin, 1985). The approach to person-by-situation interactions taken here focuses on (a) the cognitive processes by which individuals in- The research reported in this article was supported by National Sci- ence Foundation grant (BNS 84-11778) to Nancy Cantor and Harold Korn. We appreciate technical assistance from Nancy G. Exelby and com- ments on this work from Harold Korn, John Kihlstrom, Douglas Leber, Hazel Markus, Ethel Moore, Christopher Peterson, and Stephen Ruitins. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nancy Cantor, 426 Thompson, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1248. terpret situations in terms of the relevant tasks or they present, (b) the self-knowledge brought to bear in forming these constructions, and (c) the strategies used to address the problems as constructed. One important advantage of concen- trating on cognitive processes involved in construals of situa- tions is that one is able, potentially, to explore the uniqueness and complexity of individual interpretations (Kelly, 1955; Mis- chel, 1979). However, this approach also has a clear disadvan- tage: There are potentially hundreds of dimensions that individ- uals may use to assess situations; countless memories, triggered by obscure cues, may influence interpretations; and innumera- ble prior experiences may contaminate construal. For theo- rists within a cognitive perspective, the particular problem of selecting units for study thus becomes that of circumscribing the number of dimensions that individuals are apt to use when constructing their interpretations in a particular context, while selecting situations that are relevant enough to tap knowledge and beliefs that appropriately capture individual variation. Life Tasks in a Life Transition The way we have chosen to address this issue is to choose a particular life transition--in this case, the transition from home and high school to college life--within which to study the ways in which individuals are able to cope with situations that important to them (Stewart & Healy, 1985). Our assumption