Self

The way we think about ourselves is reflected in, and shaped by, the way we think about our actions. The identification of action can vary from mechanistic, low level depictions to far more comprehensive, high level depictions. This study tests the supposition that comprehensive understanding of action is a precondition for coherence in self-concept and that failure to generate stable, high level action identifications interferes with the formation of a stable and personally certain self-concept. It was predicted (and the results confirmed) that persons who experience fragmented action understanding (i.e., relatively low level action identification) demonstrate less coherence in their overall self-evaluative stance and greater self-uncertainty and self-instability. The relationships between self-concept and coherence (i.e., self-stability and self-certainty) and action identification level was studied in both a context-free manner and with respect to specific social roles. The results expand our understanding of the nature and impact of the organizational processes at work within the self system.

This work argues that the self can be viewed as a dynamical system, with lower-level cognitive and affective elements that interact over time giving rise to global patterns of thought and behavior. The underlying structural features of the self-system promote temporal variation in self-evaluation in the stream of thought. To capture the dynamics of self-evaluation, a refinement of the "mouse paradigm" is employed. This procedure assesses the stream of self-evaluative thought and thus provides insight into the global structural features of the self. The goals of this research were to establish the validity of the "mouse paradigm" and to explore the relationship between the structure and dynamics of the self as expressed in self-reflection. The "mouse paradigm" is a procedure where individuals talk about themselves and subsequently indicate the valence of their self-description using a computer mouse. Participants move the mouse pointer (towards a target in the center of the screen to indicate a positive self-evaluation and away from the target to indicate a negative self-evaluation) while listening to the previously recorded version of their self-description. This technique makes it possible to examine self-evaluation as it changes over time. In study 1, participants described themselves after exposure to various self-relevant memory primes (positive, negative, mixed, and no prime). Traditional measures of the structural features of the self were found to be systematically related to the dynamic properties of participants' mouse movements (distance from target, variance, rate of change, and time at rest). Also, the priming manipulations were found to significantly alter the valence and dynamic properties of participants' self-evaluation. Study 2 explored the relationship between individual differences in self-structure and susceptibility to external influence. Participants were asked to describe themselves from three different perspectives (ideal self, actual self, and feared self). Perspective taking was found to systematically alter the nature of participants' self-evaluations. Furthermore, participants with relatively "weak" self-structures were found to be more influenced by the perspective manipulation. In general, results suggest that global properties of self-structure are related to the temporal flow of self-evaluation. Furthermore, individual differences in self-structure result in different levels of susceptibility to extrinsic influence.

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.

Two potential developmental costs of high self-esteem were investigated. One was that high self-esteem leads children to act on antisocial cognitions (the disposition activating hypothesis). The other was that high self-esteem leads children to rationalize antisocial conduct (the disposition-rationalizing hypothesis). Both hypotheses were explored in two longitudinal studies with preadolescents. In Study 1 (N = 189) the antisocial behavior was aggression; in Study 2 (N = 407) the antisocial behavior under focus was avoidance of the mother. There was little evidence for the disposition-activating hypothesis in either study but considerable support for the disposition-rationalizing hypothesis in both studies. Over time, aggressive children with high self-esteem increasingly valued the rewards that aggression offers and belittled their victims, and avoidant children with high self-esteem increasingly viewed their mother as harassing and uninvolved. Results therefore suggest that for antisocial children, high self-esteem carries costs, for both themselves and others.

This thesis applies Higgins (1997) Regulatory Focus Theory to the study of conflict by exploring the relationship between power and promotion vs. prevention orientation. After considering the earlier work of Keltner, Gruenfeld & Anderson (2003) that established the considerable effect that power has on approach and avoidance behaviors, the present research shows that this link also applies to regulatory focus. In this study, participants had their sense of power experimentally manipulated by a set of vignettes and then answered follow-up questions to determine what effect this had on their regulatory focus orientation. Results indicated that high power is associated with a promotion focus, while low power, a prevention focus. The implication of these findings were discussed and were integrated with the work of Cesario, Higgins & Scholer (2008) on regulatory fit and persuasion to create a novel strategy for conflict resolution.