Intentionalism

A critical discrepancy in the self-evaluation literature concerns whether self-uncertainty leads to accurate or biased self-evaluations. After discussing the prior research which has rendered this discrepancy, I propose an experiment to reach a resolution to the discrepancy. Principles of action identification theory are used in proposing that the link between self-uncertainty and self-evaluation is moderated by the amount of evaluative threat inherent to the situation in which the self-evaluation is taking place. The experiment established that subjects who are induced to identify their actions in low level terms are more likely to exhibit biases when pursuing self-evaluations of their social ability, with the biases manifested in these subjects' preferences to be evaluated in non-diagnostic ways. The implications of this general finding and suggestions for further research are discussed.

The primary goal of this research was to determine if the emergence process of action identification could be applied to the way a person perceives another's actions and therefore predict contrasting judgments of right and wrong. Specifically, subjects read transcripts depicting a crime of either grand theft or murder under an induced high or low level of action identification, followed by one of two closing arguments which summarized the position of either the defense or the prosecution. Judgments of blame were obtained from all subjects. Results suggest that the emergence process is more general than originally conceived and can be applied to person perception. As predicted, compared to high level subjects, low level subjects who read about the crime of grand theft, were more influenced by whatever closing argument they read. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Action identification theory asserts that people undertake action with a particular identity for what they are doing, and that this identity is resistant to change. Emergence of a new understanding of action occurs when the person thinks about some detail of the action and is then exposed to a new higher level identity for the act. To test the emergence hypothesis with respect to sexual behavior, subjects were asked to think about having sex and list either the high level aspects (i.e., consequences and implications of having sex) or lower level aspects (i.e., details of having sex). Subjects then read an article identifying sex as responsible behavior or physical pleasure. As predicted, subjects induced to think about the act of having sex in terms of its details expressed their cognitive representation of the act in a way which conformed with the target emergent identity (pleasure or responsibility) to which they were exposed.

The present research examined within the framework of action identification theory the issue of self-awareness and its effect on impression management. The optimality hypothesis predicts that people should successfully perform an act when their prepotent identification for what they are doing closely matches their capacity to perform the action. In general, difficult acts warrant lower level identities, whereas easy acts warrant higher level identities for optimal performance. The belief was that self-awareness (a focus on the self-relevance of one's behavior or a focus on the mechanics of one's behavior) parallels the dimension of identification level (high vs. low). Thus, self-focused attention should impair people's performance only to the extent that it pulls their attention away from an optimal level of identification of the action. Overall, the findings support this notion and suggest that when a task is difficult or unfamiliar, it is better to focus on the lower level details of performing the act rather than on the significance or implications of the act. Theoretical issues and implications for self-presentation are discussed.