Self-enhancement Effect Research Articles

Self-Concept as a Mediating Factor in Delinquency

Self-reported data from a national panel survey are examined to determine whether self-esteem is a mediating event between evaluative social experiences (school, family and social support) and delinquency. Path analytic procedures are employed to test the most explicit causal paradigm of the self-concept-delinquency relation: the delinquency-as-self-enhancement model. Despite: (1) variations in the types of delinquency analyzed, (2) restrictions placed on the sample in testingfor possible contingent relations, and (3) variations in the time lags used to compute the regression coefficients, no substantial effect of self-esteem on subsequent delinquency was found when the effects of prior causal variables were partialled out. Additionally, no evidence of a self-enhancement effect (i.e., a positive effect of delinquency on subsequent self-concept) was discovered. These results are discussed in relation to prior research and social policy assumptions which focus on self-images as a key variable for reducing delinquency. The self-concept has figured prominently in many explanations of deviance and delinquency, particularly those theories which seek to explain individual deviance as the effects of

Self-esteem and cognitive consistency effects on self-other evaluation

Reactions to bogus evaluations of one's self, either positively or negatively discrepant from one's own self-evaluation, were investigated among subjects differing in self-ideal discrepancy. All subjects exhibited greater acceptance of the source of favorable information than the source of unfavorable information, and changed their self-evaluation more toward the favorable than unfavorable position. However, among low self-ideal discrepancy subjects, the change in self-evaluation was accompanied by a similar change in friend evaluation, thereby maintaining their standing in relation to this friend after receiving either positive or negative evaluations. In contrast, high discrepancy subjects downgraded the friend more and upgraded the friend less than themselves, thereby enhancing their relative standing as a result of the feedback. These findings indicated that defensive or self-enhancing effects on self-evaluation processes are determined by self-ideal discrepancy.

Effects of Self-Enhancement and Consistency on Causal and Trait Attributions following Success and Failure in Motor Performance

Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine the relative contributions of self-enhancement and consistency to causal and trait attributions of performance outcome (success and failure) in an achievement motor task. For this purpose, an experiment with a 2 × 2 × 2 (ego involvement x past outcome x present outcome) factorial design was conducted. Eighty college undergraduates performed ten practice trials on a motor task under the high or low ego-involving instructions and were told that they had performed much better or much worse than other college students. Following this past-outcome manipulation, subjects performed ten test trials and were given positive or negative feedback as in the case of the practice trials. The results supported the self-enhancement hypothesis in that: (a) causal and trait attributions to internal factors were greater following success than following failure on test trials and (b) trait attributions of task difficulty were greater under failure than under success on the t...

Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction?

A review of the evidence for and against the proposition that self-serving biases affect attributions of causality indicated that there is little empirical support for the proposition in its most general form. The literature provides some support for the contention that individuals engage in self-enhancin g attributions under conditions of success, but only minimal evidence was found to suggest that individuals engage in self-protecti ve attributions under conditions of failure. Moreover, it was proposed that the self-enhancing effect may not be due to motivational distortion, but rather to the tendency of people (a) to expect their behavior to produce success, (b) to discern a closer covariation between behavior and outcomes in the case of increasing success than in the case of constant failure, and (c) to misconstrue the meaning of contingency. We are prone to alter our perception of causality so as to protect or enhance our self esteem. We attribute success to our own dispositions and failure to external forces. (Hastorf, Schneider, & Polefka, 1970,