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Toward a Self-Evaluation Maintenance Model of Social Behavior
Abstract
This chapter discusses social behavior through self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model. It describes several studies to provide a feel for the kind of research that has been completed in an attempt to explore the predictions of the model. The SEM model is composed of two dynamic processes. Both the reflection process and the comparison process have as component variables the closeness of another and the quality of that other's performance. These two variables interact in affecting self-evaluation but do so in quite opposite ways in each of the processes Model establishes the comprehensiveness of the research and the interactive quality of its predictions. Next, the SEM model is fit into the perspective of related work, including self-theories, social comparison theory, and Cialdini's BIRGing research. The chapter reviews the epistemological status of the model. It discusses some of the implications of the research for a variety of areas in psychology.
... In addition, under the influence of upward social comparison, individuals often develop a sense of psychological disadvantages, such as "I am not as good as others", which leads to lower self-evaluation [49], and the more extreme the upward social comparison is, the more likely it is to lead to a sharp decline in self-evaluation [38]. The self-evaluation maintenance model [50] also suggests that individuals engage in social comparisons to obtain positive self-evaluations. When individuals perceive a gap between their current standard of living and that of others during upward social comparison and their self-evaluation is threatened, they may increase the likelihood of conspicuous consumption to maintain a positive self-evaluation [51,52]. ...
... If consumption behavior can eliminate this self-difference, it can mitigate the negative emotions caused by lower self-evaluation. The self-evaluation maintenance model [50] supports this point from another perspective. When individuals' self-evaluation is impaired, consumption becomes an important way for individuals to cope with this threat and to maintain and improve their self-awareness. ...
This study explored the effects of social networking site use intensity, upward social comparison, and optimism on college students’ conspicuous consumption and their mechanisms of action using a sample of Chinese college students. A total of 717 Chinese college students (M = 20.08, SD = 1.44; 73.9% female) completed the Social Network Use Intensity Scale, the Upward Social Comparison Scale, the Life Orientation Test, and the Conspicuous Consumption Scale. The results indicate that (1) the intensity of use of social networking sites significantly positively predicts the conspicuous consumption behavior of college students; (2) upward social comparison plays a mediating role between the intensity of social networking site usage and conspicuous consumption; and (3) optimism moderates the second half of the mediating path between the intensity of social networking site use, upward social comparison, and conspicuous consumption. Specifically, the relationship between upward social comparison and conspicuous consumption among college students with low optimism levels is stronger than that among college students with high levels of optimism. Intensity has a stronger positive effect on conspicuous consumption through upward social comparison. It is concluded that the intensity of college students’ use of social networking sites can affect their conspicuous consumption behavior through upward social comparison, and this relationship is moderated by optimism. The results of the study help to reveal the influence of SNS (social networking site) use behavior on conspicuous consumption and its mechanism of action and have implications for reducing the negative impact of conspicuous consumption on college students.
... This process is at the core of our study. Humans activate the "psychological immune system" when they infer or rationalize why someone is doing something to them in a threatening and uncomfortable situation [16]; that is, when there is a detrimental effect on an individual, they offset negative social experiences by focusing on success (e.g., [17,18]). Through this mechanism, employees who believe they are successful at work and contribute to the organization may perceive themselves as objects of envy by their peers [19,20]. ...
Employee health is crucial to organizational success. However, workplace ostracism (WO) has significant negative effects on employee health. Numerous researchers have extensively examined how WO influences employees’ negative health (job stress, burnout); however, the focus on mediating effects in the relationship between WO and health has been lacking. This study examined the cognitive evaluation response to WO by employees who perceive they have been ostracized because another employee envies them. The psychological defense mechanism is expected to be activated—thus triggering job stress and burnout. We investigated envy perceived by individuals as a mediator of WO, job stress, and burnout using data from a 2-wave longitudinal survey of 403 employees of a South Korean firm. We found that employees perceived WO. Specifically, based on the sensitivity to being the target of a threatening upward comparison theory, it was confirmed that envy was a mediator in the relationship between WO and negative health outcomes. Our results are the first to show that the perception of envy can mediate the maintenance of a positive self-image in the context of WO in South Korea. The results suggest that a greater awareness of and focus on envy, and WO is required.
... BIRGing is a strategic impression management technique that enables individuals to raise their esteem in the eyes of others by publicising their connection with a successful other (see Hirt et al. 1992) without having been instrumental to that success. BIRGing involves a process of unit formation between the individual and the successful group (see Cialdini et al. 1976) and is considered an essential means by which individuals maintain a positive self-concept (see Tesser 1988). The tendency to BIRG explains the "fair weather" fandom that is observed when sports teams are successful (see Becker/Suls 1983;Cratty 1983;Hirt et al. 1992) and, following a positively evaluated group performance (e.g. ...
In the past decade, various recommendations have been published to enhance the methodological rigor and publication standards in psychological science. However, adhering to these recommendations may have limited impact on the reproducibility of causal effects as long as psychological phenomena continue to be viewed as decomposable into separate and additive statistical structures of causal relationships. In this article, we show that (a) psychological phenomena are patterns emerging from nondecomposable and nonisolable complex processes that obey idiosyncratic nonlinear dynamics, (b) these processual features jeopardize the chances of standard reproducibility of statistical results, and (c) these features call on researchers to reconsider what can and should be reproduced, that is, the psychological processes per se, and the signatures of their complexity and dynamics. Accordingly, we argue for a greater consideration of process causality of psychological phenomena reflected by key properties of complex dynamical systems (CDSs). This implies developing and testing formal models of psychological dynamics, which can be implemented by computer simulation. The scope of the CDS paradigm and its convergences with other paradigms are discussed regarding the reproducibility issue. Ironically, the CDS approach could account for both reproducibility and nonreproducibility of the statistical effects usually sought in mainstream psychological science.
We investigate the extent that political identity, political belief content (i.e., attitude stances), and political belief system structure (i.e., relations among attitudes) differences are associated with affective polarization (i.e., viewing ingroup partisans positively and outgroup partisans negatively) in two multinational, cross-sectional studies (Study 1 N = 4,152, Study 2 N = 29,994). First, we found a large, positive association between political identity and group liking-participants liked their ingroup substantially more than their outgroup. Second, political belief system content and structure had opposite associations with group liking: Sharing similar belief system content with an outgroup was associated with more outgroup liking, but similarity with the ingroup was associated with less ingroup liking. The opposite pattern was found for political belief system structure. Thus, affective polarization was greatest when belief system content similarity was low and structure similarity was high.
Tested the hypothesis that empathy leads to altruistic rather than egoistic motivation to help. 44 female college students watched another female undergraduate receive electric shocks and were then given a chance to help her by taking the remaining shocks themselves. In each of 2 experiments, Ss' empathic emotion (low vs high) and their ease of escape from continuing to watch the victim suffer if they did not help (easy vs difficult) were manipulated in a 2 × 2 design. It was reasoned that if empathy led to altruistic motivation, Ss feeling a high degree of empathy for the victim should be as ready to help when escape without helping was easy as when it was difficult. But if empathy led to egoistic motivation, Ss feeling empathy should be more ready to help when escape was difficult than when it was easy. Results followed the former pattern when empathy was high and the latter pattern when empathy was low, supporting the hypothesis that empathy leads to altruistic rather than egoistic motivation to help. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
The tendency to "bask in reflected glory" (BIRG) by publicly announcing one's associations with successful others was investigated in 3 field experiments with more than 300 university students. All 3 studies showed this effect to occur even though the person striving to bask in the glory of a successful source was not involved in the cause of the source's success. Exp I demonstrated the BIRG phenomenon by showing a greater tendency for university students to wear school-identifying apparel after their school's football team had been victorious than nonvictorious. Exps II and III replicated this effect by showing that students used the pronoun we more when describing victory than a nonvictory of their school's football team. A model was developed asserting that the BIRG response represents an attempt to enhance one's public image. Exps II and III indicated, in support of this assertion, that the tendency to proclaim a connection with a positive source was strongest when one's public image was threatened. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Forty-three subjects were stimulated in the laboratory to "fear" and "anger," during which the following physiological reactions were recorded: (1) heart rate, (2) ballistocardiogram, (3) respiration rate, (4) face temperature, (5) hand temperature, (6) skin conductance, and (7) integrated muscle potential. The scores used were the maximum rise and maximum fall from the preceding resting level and the number of responses of a critical value per unit time. Of the 14 scores thus obtained, 7 showed significant discrimination between anger and fear. Diastolic blood pressure rises, heart rate falls, number of rises in skin conductance, and muscle potential increases, were greater for anger than for fear, whereas skin conductance increases, number of muscle potential increases, and respiration rate increases were greater for fear than for anger. Profile difference scores, computed from appropriate combinations of these differences, were found to be greater than zero in 42 of the 43 cases and to have a mean which deviated very significantly from zero, which rejects the null hypothesis that there is no difference in physiological reaction between anger and fear. The patterns obtained for anger and fear argue against the Arnold proposal that anger is a strong reaction of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous systems, whereas fear is but a sympathetic reaction. Another finding was the very low correlations among the physiological reactions and the significantly higher intercorrelations for anger than for fear, which was interpreted as indicating greater physiological integration during anger. Between-subject variance was significantly greater than within-subject variance, which supports the findings of Lacey and Malmo that there is considerable specificity in physiological response patterns. The physiological response patterns of anger were suggested as being similar to those produced by injections of epinephrine and nor-epinephrine combined, and those of fear as being similar to injections of epinephrine. Copyright (C) 1953 by American Psychosomatic Society
One's self-definition is hypothesized to change, in the service of self-esteem maintenance, as a function of the relative performance and the psychological similarity (closeness) and dissimilarity (distance) of others. Specifically, a dimension should become less self-definitional if another performs better on that dimension, particularly if that other is psychologically similar. Fifty-two subjects were given an opportunity to perform on a "social sensitivity" task and an "esthetic judgment" task with an experimental confederate. Half of the subjects were led to believe (on the basis of pretest materials) that the confederate was very similar to them, i.e., close, and the remaining subjects were led to believe that the other was dissimilar, i.e., distant. Subjects found that they performed at the same level as the confederate on one of the tasks and that the confederate outperformed them on the other task. The dependent variable, self-definition, was measured by task choice, an interview regarding the self-definitional character of the two dimensions, and the subjects' self-descriptions on these dimensions. The hypothesis is supported on the choice and the self-description measures.
A recently developed self-evaluation maintenance model suggests that relative quality of another's performance and the relevance of the performance dimension to one's self-definition will interact in determining how close one will choose to be to that other. Specifically, the better another's performance on a dimension relevant to an individual's self-definition, the more threatening this would be for the individual. Thus the individual should progressively decrease interpersonal closeness toward that other with the other's improving performance. However, when the dimension in question is not relevant to the individual, as the other's performance increases interpersonal closeness should also increase. Male subjects engaged in a question-answering competition with a confederate. The questions dealt with a topic that was important to the subject (high relevance) or not important (low relevance). All subjects were given feedback that had performed at about the 50th centile. The confederate's performance differed across subjects: 20th, 40th, 60th, or 80th centile. Although an affective measure was not influenced by these manipulations, the predicted interaction between relative performance and relevance held for behavioral, behavioroid, and cognitive measures of closeness, but only when the confederate outperformed the subject.
Earlier experiments (see Wheeler et al., 1969) showed that when a person has a vague idea that he is somewhere in the middle of the group with respect to an ability, he will choose the person ranking highest in the ability as a comparison other when given the chance to gain more information about his position. These experiments utilized a private comparison situation where the outcome of the comparison would be known only by the subject. It was predicted that in a public situation, where comparison occurs through compettition with another member while others evaluate the outcome, there would be more defensive avoidance of the highest ranking person than in the private situation. It was also predicted that in the public situation a person with high self-esteem would be more likely to choose the highest in ability as a comparison other while those with low self-esteem would choose someone lower in ability. Further, it was expected that in the public situation, defensive avoidance of the highest ranking person, and the effect of self-esteem would be greater when a person was certain about his standing in the group. An experiment was designed to test these predictions. The predictions were supported for male subjects while females showed some deviations from the predictions.
Subjects were tested in groups of nine for the presence of the positively valued trait of intellectual flexibility (Pos conditions) or the negatively valued trait of intellectual rigidity (Neg conditions). The subjects were told the approximate range of the group's test scores (R conditions) or they were not told the range (NR conditions). After the tests were scored, all subjects were told that they ranked fifth in the group of nine and were given their own scores. In the first variation of the experiment, the subjects were then asked to indicate which other score in the group (according to rank) they would most like to see. The subjects were then asked to indicate a second choice. It was predicted that: (1) NR subjects would attempt to determine the range by first choosing the highest numerical score, and (2) among R subjects, those in the Pos condition would choose a higher score for their first choice, while those in the Neg condition would choose a lower score, both groups thus comparing in the positively valued direction, and (3) among R subjects, the most frequent choice in the positively valued direction would be of the most similar other. All predictions were supported.
In a 2 × 2 factorial design, goal valence, and assumed similarity to someone better off than oneself were manipulated and locus of social comparison measured. Comparison with someone better off than oneself was found to be more frequent under (a) conditions of positive than of negative goal valence, and (b) conditions of low than of high assumed similarity. These results appear partially explicable in terms of two postulated ends served by the social comparison of abilitics—one self-evaluative and the other self-enhancing. Data on degree of interest expressed in the scores of others provide independent support for this interpretation. The major difference between Festinger's and the present conceptualization involves the role of similarity in mediating self-evaluation. Within reasonably broad limits, it appears to be the positive instance, rather than the similar one, which affords accurate self-evaluation.