The Multifaceted Self Effect: Flexibility or Merely Self-Enhancement?

Abstract

Previous research has shown that people ascribe more traits to themselves than to others, and more traits to liked others than to disliked others, suggesting that the self and liked others are viewed as “multifaceted.” A limitation of those studies was their use of generally desirable traits. The present studies asked subjects to describe themselves and liked and disliked well-known others and acquaintances on trait pairs spanning the full range of social desirability. The results for desirable traits replicated previous studies, but the results for undesirable traits did not. Subjects judged themselves to have the same number of undesirable traits as others and judged liked others to have fewer undesirable traits than disliked others. Nondepressed subjects showed these biases to enhance the self and liked others to a greater degree than did depressed subjects.