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Better than average and better with time: Relative evaluations of self and others in the past, present, and future
Abstract
Evaluations of self and others in the past, present, and future were examined by asking 385 students to rate themselves or an acquaintance relative to their peers on a number of personality traits. We predicted, and found, evidence for self-enhancement, as most participants regarded themselves superior to ‘most others’ at all points in time. We also found a better than average improvement effect, as participants considered themselves more superior now, than they were in the past, and expected to become even more superior in the future. Expected improvement in the future was larger than improvement over an equal span of time in the past. It is suggested that favorable self-constructions are possible to the extent that the past and the future are perceived as ambiguous. Singular acquaintances were also rated better than most others, and were believed to improve over time, but their rate of improvement in the future was smaller than the expected improvement for oneself. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Moreover, people tend to view their future selves in an increasingly positive light the more distant the future they envision (Heller et al., 2011;Lachowicz-Tabaczek & Bajcar, 2017). This effect has been interpreted as a positivity bias rooted in self-enhancement mechanisms (Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Stephan et al., 2015). Thus, throughout this paper, we will call the tendency to make better self-appraisals in the distant (as compared to the near) futurethe future self-enhancement effect. ...
... This latter way of thinking about the future self constitutes the future self-enhancement effect mentioned earlier. This tendency entails enhanced appraisals of one's distant future self than near future self by viewing themselves as having more positive attributes (both general traits and specific attributes, such as competencies), achieving higher levels of desired outcomes, and experiencing greater positive emotions (Heller et al., 2011;Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Lachowicz-Tabaczek & Bajcar, 2017;Stephan et al., 2015). Since this tendency involves often promoting an unrealistically positive self-view, it could be seen as a self-enhancing bias driven by the need for positive self-regard (see Sedikides & Strube, 1997). ...
... What supports the claim that evaluating the distant future self is a kind of self-enhancing bias is that selfappraisals in the distant (vs. near) future are typically stronger when predicting own future than when predicting others' future (Kanten & Teigen, 2008). In addition, longitudinal studies suggest that people tend to overestimate their future life satisfaction in comparison to real-life satisfaction experienced later (Busseri et al., 2009). ...
People tend to appraise their distant future self better than their near future self (future self-enhancement effect). An open question is whether this tendency has implications for current performance. In two sets of experiments (N = 554), after envisioning their near or distant future, participants made future self-appraisals and performed an anagram task. We observed that future self-enhancement effect leads to better task performance, regardless of whether the future self was appraised in an absolute (Experiment 1a) or comparative (Experiment 1b) way. Experiment 2a additionally revealed that future self-enhancement effect might facilitate better task performance through increased current self-evaluations. In each study, future self-enhancement effect suppressed the negative, direct impact of envisioning one’s distant (vs. near) future on task performance.
... In parallel to the research on perceived changes in personality and well-being, there are bodies of research on temporal comparison [21] that concern how people see themselves in comparison to their past selves (what they were like in the past) or their future selves (how they expect to be in the future) [22,23]. This research has focused on people's perceptions of whether they have improved over time and on their perceptions of whether they expect to improve over time, and the changes usually referred to specific time intervals (e.g., 6 months, 2 years, 10 years). ...
... polite, creative) and undesirable (e.g. jealous, lazy) [23,24]. It has been found that people tend to believe they have improved from the past to the present [22,24]. ...
... It has been found that people tend to believe they have improved from the past to the present [22,24]. Some studies have also found that people expect that they will improve from what they are in the present to the future, with future defined as both near-term (e.g., 6 months) and longer-term (e.g., 2 years) [19,23]. ...
This article presents a new framework for understanding how people think personality changes across the life span. In two studies we examined the correspondence among how people thought their personalities would change, how people in general change, and changes found in a meta-analysis of changes in personality. We conceptualized and measured personality in terms of the Big Five model (FFM). In Study 1 participants rated either how they had changed from the past to the present or how they would change from the present to the future. We found that for openness to experience and social vitality participants thought these traits had increased from the past to the present, whereas participants did not think they would change from the present to the future. In contrast, participants thought that conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability would increase from the present to the future, although they did not report changes in most of these traits from the past to the present. The changes that occurred in Study 1 correspond to changes of personality found in previous research. In Study 2 participants rated themselves and other people on the FFM traits for each of nine intervals representing the lifespan. We found that people perceived changes in themselves to be similar to the changes found in meta-analyses, and perceptions of change in the self-corresponded to perception of changes for others. We believe these results can be explained by recognizing that people share normative based beliefs about how people change at certain age. Nevertheless, we also found that people perceived themselves as better than others, i.e., relatively greater increases in some positive traits and relatively smaller decreases in some negative traits, being first among equals. We discuss possible explanations for this phenomenon, which according to our knowledge, has not been discussed in this context previously.
... Although prior research has emphasized the links between the episodic and semantic aspects of future thinking, the recollection of past events might likewise inform knowledge about future selves. Details from the past could provide an actual or alternate version of events (when recombined) to assess the eventual relevance of personal characteristics, particularly in light of everyone's expectation of change from the past to the future (Chambers, 2008;Kanten and Teigen, 2008). Additionally, the recollection of past events to predict future traits might sustain a sense of self-continuity through time. ...
... Previous research shows that selfreferential processing and future-oriented knowledge can interact. For instance, the future traits and preferences predicted for other people may conform to stereotypes, or be heavily influenced by semantic knowledge (Kanten and Teigen, 2008;Renoult, Kopp, Davidson, Taler and Atance, 2016;Wilson and Ross, 2001). Similarly, people tend to imagine events that are impoverished in episodic details when those events feature another person instead of the self (de Vito, Gamboz and Brandimonte, 2012;Grysman, Prabhakar, Anglin and Hudson, 2013;Verfaellie, Wank, Reid, Race and Keane, 2019). ...
... Our LPC findings are consistent with behavioural data showing that predictions about traits and preferences differ when they concern the self versus other people (Bauckham et al., 2019;Kanten and Teigen, 2008;Renoult, Kopp, et al., 2016). That is, our findings (together with Tanguay et al., 2018) suggest that thinking about future traits engages episodic processes, but only for the self. ...
Knowledge about the future self may engage cognitive processes typically ascribed to episodic memory, such as awareness of the future self as an extension of the current self (i.e., autonoetic consciousness) and the construction of future events. In a prior study (Tanguay et al., 2018), temporal orientation influenced the Late Positive Component (LPC), an ERP correlate of recollection. The LPC amplitude for present traits was intermediate between semantic and episodic memory, whereas thinking about one's future traits produced a larger LPC amplitude that was similar to episodic memory. Here, we examined further the effect of temporal orientation on the LPC amplitude and investigated if it was influenced by whether knowledge concerns the self or another person, with the proximity of the other being considered. Participants verified whether traits (e.g., Enthusiastic) were true of themselves and the “other,” both now and in the future. Proximity of the other person was manipulated between subjects, such that participants either thought about the typical traits of a close friend (n = 31), or those of their age group more broadly (n = 35). Self-reference and temporal orientation interacted: The LPC amplitude for future knowledge was larger than for present knowledge, but only for the self. This effect of temporal orientation was not observed when participants thought about the traits of other people. The proximity of the other person did not modify these effects. Future-oriented cognition can engage different cognitive processes depending on self-reference; knowledge about the personal future increased the LPC amplitude unlike thinking about the future of other people. Our findings strengthen the notion of self-knowledge as a grey area between semantic and episodic memory.
... Neuropsychologia xxx (xxxx) xxx-xxx (e.g., jealous) traits, which we expected to show a distinct behavioral pattern across time perspectives. People tend to exhibit an optimistic belief that their personality improves through time and will become even "better than average" in the future (D'Argembeau et al., 2010;Kanten and Teigen, 2008;Wilson and Ross, 2001). ...
... Behavioral data: reaction times We tested whether the memory conditions differ in their mean reaction times (this section) or responses (next section). Through these analyses, we aimed to verify if our study replicates previous findings of an optimism bias (D'Argembeau et al., 2010;Kanten and Teigen, 2008;Wilson and Ross, 2001). We tested whether mean Reaction Time (RT) differed between Valence (2 levels: positive, negative), Response (2 levels: yes, no), and the Memory conditions (4 levels: semantic memory, past, present, and future self-knowledge), and whether these factors interacted (see Fig. 11). ...
... Behavioral results revealed that participants endorsed more positive traits and fewer negative traits as reflecting their future selves, and did so faster, compared to their past and present selves (D'Argembeau et al., 2010;Wilson and Ross, 2001). The participants also rated themselves as "better-than-average": Their own current and future personalities were perceived as containing more positive traits than other people's personalities (similar to: Kanten and Teigen, 2008). ...
Self-knowledge concerns one's own preferences and personality. It pertains to the self (similar to episodic memory), yet does not concern events. It is factual (like semantic memory), but also idiosyncratic. For these reasons, it is unclear where self-knowledge might fall on a continuum in relation to semantic and episodic memory. In this study, we aimed to compare the event-related potential (ERP) correlates of self-knowledge to those of semantic and episodic memory, using N400 and Late Positive Component (LPC) as proxies for semantic and episodic processing, respectively. We considered an additional factor: time perspective. Temporally distant selves have been suggested to be more semantic compared to the present self, but thinking about one's past and future selves may also engage episodic memory. Twenty-eight adults answered whether traits (e.g., persistent) were true of most people holding an occupation (e.g. soldiers; semantic memory condition), or true of themselves 5 years ago, in the present, or 5 years from now (past, present, and future self-knowledge conditions). The study ended with an episodic recognition memory task for previously seen traits. Present self-knowledge produced mean LPC amplitudes at posterior parietal sites that fell between semantic and episodic memory. Mean LPC amplitudes for past and future self-knowledge were greater than for semantic memory, and not significantly different from episodic memory. Mean N400 amplitudes for the self-knowledge conditions were smaller than for semantic memory at sagittal sites. However, this N400 effect was not separable from a preceding P200 effect at these same electrode sites. This P200 effect can be interpreted as reflecting the greater emotional salience of self as compared to general knowledge, which may have facilitated semantic processing. Overall, our findings are consistent with a distinction between knowledge of others and self-knowledge, but the closeness of self-knowledge's neural correlates to either semantic or episodic memory appears to depend to some extent on time perspective.
... In Western cultures, when people report their feelings on the past, present, and future, they rate themselves on average, better in the present than the past, and expect the future to be better than the present. This inclining STT (i.e., past < present < future) has been shown regarding people's evaluations of their personality attributes (e.g., Wilson and Ross, 2001;Kanten and Teigen, 2008), physical attractiveness (e.g., Haddock, 2006), and psychological well-being (e.g., Ryff, 1991;Busseri, 2013). For instance, when college students evaluated their past, present, and future on several personality attributes (e.g., self-confident, pleasant), they rated positive attributes to describe themselves now more highly than positive attributes to describe themselves in the past (Wilson and Ross, 2001;Kanten and Teigen, 2008), and expected better in the future than in the present (Kanten and Teigen, 2008). ...
... This inclining STT (i.e., past < present < future) has been shown regarding people's evaluations of their personality attributes (e.g., Wilson and Ross, 2001;Kanten and Teigen, 2008), physical attractiveness (e.g., Haddock, 2006), and psychological well-being (e.g., Ryff, 1991;Busseri, 2013). For instance, when college students evaluated their past, present, and future on several personality attributes (e.g., self-confident, pleasant), they rated positive attributes to describe themselves now more highly than positive attributes to describe themselves in the past (Wilson and Ross, 2001;Kanten and Teigen, 2008), and expected better in the future than in the present (Kanten and Teigen, 2008). Even for physical evaluation, people generally judged their present selves more physically attractive than their past selves, and expected their future attractiveness would be higher than their present attractiveness, especially for those who cared about their attractiveness (Haddock, 2006). ...
... This inclining STT (i.e., past < present < future) has been shown regarding people's evaluations of their personality attributes (e.g., Wilson and Ross, 2001;Kanten and Teigen, 2008), physical attractiveness (e.g., Haddock, 2006), and psychological well-being (e.g., Ryff, 1991;Busseri, 2013). For instance, when college students evaluated their past, present, and future on several personality attributes (e.g., self-confident, pleasant), they rated positive attributes to describe themselves now more highly than positive attributes to describe themselves in the past (Wilson and Ross, 2001;Kanten and Teigen, 2008), and expected better in the future than in the present (Kanten and Teigen, 2008). Even for physical evaluation, people generally judged their present selves more physically attractive than their past selves, and expected their future attractiveness would be higher than their present attractiveness, especially for those who cared about their attractiveness (Haddock, 2006). ...
Although the explicit attitudes of Chinese people toward the self over time are known (i.e., past = present < future), little is known about their implicit attitudes. Two studies were conducted to measure the implicit subjective temporal trajectory (STT) of Chinese undergraduates. Study 1 used a Go/No-go association task to measure participants’ implicit attitudes toward their past, present, and future selves. The obtained implicit STT was different from the explicit pattern found in former research. It showed that the future self was viewed to be identical to the present self and participants implicitly evaluated their present self as better than the past self. Since this comparison of the past and present selves suggested a cultural difference, we aimed to replicate this finding in Study 2. Using an implicit association test, we again found that the present self was more easily associated with positive valence than the past self. Overall, both studies reveal an implicitly inclining-flat STT (i.e., past < present = future) for Chinese undergraduates. Implications of this difference in explicit-implicit measures and the cultural differences of temporal self appraisals are discussed.
... The feeling of impending success enhances the current self by suggesting that the current self is on a path to future improvement, just as disparaging the past self serves to enhance the current self by engendering a sense of current improvement (Wilson & Ross, 2003). For example, Kanten and Teigen (2008) found that people's ratings of their own favourable personality traits were better two years in the future than six months in the future and were better six months in the future than in the present; Heller, Stephan, Kifer, and Sedikides (2011) found that people's predictions of their own affect, personality traits and episodic events were more positive three years in the future than one month in the future; Grysman et al. (2013) found that events 5-10 years in the future were rated as more positive than past events and events within one year in the future, and that this future selfenhancement was more pronounced for events about the self than events imagined for an acquaintance. Together, these three studies demonstrate that self-enhancement plays a role in anticipated future events. ...
... Notably, one finding that was unexpected was the absence of an increase in valence from near future to distant future. The lack of difference found in this study indicates a failure to replicate findings from Grysman et al. (2013), who used the same time periods as were used in this study, Kanten and Teigen (2008), who compared six months to two years in the future, and Heller et al. (2011), who compared one month in the future to three years in the future. An increase in valence from near to distant future events was not central to our hypotheses, nor was it predicted, but it should be noted for future work. ...
... This finding provides further support for the role of self-enhancement in imagining future events. Despite similar processes that underlie past and future thinking (Buckner & Carroll, 2007;Hassabis & Maguire, 2007; that result in substantial similarities between memory and future event simulation, research has repeatedly demonstrated that participants report the anticipated future as substantially better than the past and present (Grysman et al., 2013;Heller et al., 2011;Kanten & Teigen, 2008). This study extends those findings by demonstrating that the selfenhancement provided by future events is evident independent of the life script, participant age and how far in the future the event occurs. ...
Studies comparing memory and future event simulation find that future events are more positive, and more often depend on life script events (e.g., culturally normative landmark events) than past events. Previous research does not address the link between this positivity bias and the life stage of college-age participants or their reliance on these scripted events. To examine this positivity bias, narratives of past and anticipated future events were elicited from participants aged 18-74 years, and were examined for reliance on the life script and valence ratings. Results showed that, across age groups, future events were rated as more positive than past events, and that life script events were common in the distant future. Notably, whereas younger adult age groups wrote primarily about their own life script events, older participants more commonly wrote about attending the life script events of significant others, such as children and grandchildren. These findings suggest that simulated future events play a valuable role in self-enhancement across the lifespan. Furthermore, the life script can be viewed as a useful search mechanism when one is missing the episodic details that are more available in memories; however, it is not the source of positivity bias for future events.
... People believe that they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to experience negative events compared to their peers [8,9]. Positive future events are also generated more easily and quickly than negative future events [10] and people evaluate their future selves as having more desirable traits than their present and past selves [11]. Notably, the dominance of favorable self-views for the future self has important implications for mental health. ...
... In support of construal level theory, Heller et al. (2011) found perceptions of (1) affect, (2) traits, and (3) narratives of one's distant future self (i.e., three years from now) were more positive and less variable than perceptions of one's near future self (i.e., a month from now) in three independent studies [16]. Similarly, Kanten and Teigen (2008) found that people predicted having a more favorable future self in two years' as opposed to six months' time [11]. ...
... In support of construal level theory, Heller et al. (2011) found perceptions of (1) affect, (2) traits, and (3) narratives of one's distant future self (i.e., three years from now) were more positive and less variable than perceptions of one's near future self (i.e., a month from now) in three independent studies [16]. Similarly, Kanten and Teigen (2008) found that people predicted having a more favorable future self in two years' as opposed to six months' time [11]. ...
To investigate perceptual and neural correlates of future self-appraisals as a function of temporal distance, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants (11 women, eight men) made judgments about the applicability of trait adjectives to their near future selves (i.e., one month from now) and their distant future selves (i.e., three years from now). Behavioral results indicated people used fewer positive adjectives, more negative adjectives, recalled more specific events coming to mind and felt more psychologically connected to the near future self than the distant future self. Electrophysiological results demonstrated that negative trait adjectives elicited more positive ERP deflections than did positive trait adjectives in the interval between 550 and 800 ms (late positive component) within the near future self condition. However, within the same interval, there were no significant differences between negative and positive traits adjectives in the distant future self condition. The results suggest that negative emotional processing in future self-appraisals is modulated by temporal distance, consistent with predictions of construal level theory.
... Thus, the greater the perceived future self-continuity, the higher the presence of meaning level under the influence of the inheritance motive (Wang et al., 2020). Moreover, according to the self-enhancement effect (Kanten & Teigen, 2008), people tend to have more positive and vivid evaluations when thinking about the future in relation to the self, thus contributing to a higher presence of meaning level. Thus, individuals with higher future self-continuity have higher presence of meaning levels than those with lower future self-continuity (Waytz et al., 2015). ...
Although studies have confirmed that future self-continuity impacts the presence of meaning, evidence of cross-cultural consistency remains scarce, and the underlying mechanisms between the two are unclear. To fill this research gap, we conducted two studies using a sample of Chinese college students (N = 631). Study 1 verified the positive predictive effect of future self-continuity on the presence of meaning in the context of Eastern culture through two sub-experiments (n = 325), thereby confirming its cross-cultural consistency. Study 2, a three-wave longitudinal study, revealed the mediating mechanisms through which future self-continuity affects the presence of meaning (n = 306). The results suggest that future self-continuity at Time 1 can directly predict the presence of meaning at Time 3 and indirectly predict the presence of meaning at Time 3 through self-concept clarity at Time 2. Thus, self-concept clarity partially mediates the relationship between future self-continuity and the presence of meaning. These findings enrich cross-cultural research on the presence of meaning and provide new ideas and methods for enhancing the presence of meaning in individual lives.
... The tendency to think more positively about one's group's distant future is also consistent with the findings from personal future projection studies (Grysman et al., 2013;Heller et al., 2011;Kanten & Teigen, 2008). Researchers argued that these findings reflected self-enhancement motivation in the sense that people wanted to see themselves improving over time and were motivated to predict that the upward trend will continue (but see Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2013;Salgado & Berntsen, 2019;Sharot et al., 2007). ...
Although several studies have addressed the relationship between memories and future projections regarding personal events, only a few studies exist on collective past and future events, almost all with North American samples. In two studies with Turkish samples, we investigated the relationship between sociopolitical identity and collective past and future representations. In Study 1, we compared the most important past and future collective events generated by voters of the ruling and the main opposition parties. Participants reported the two most important public events in the last 70 years and two in the next 70 years for Turkey, and rated events' valence, centrality, and transitional impact. Past events were dominated by national political events whereas future events' themes were more varied. Past events were also more negative than future events, with the negativity of future events decreasing as their temporal distance from the present increased. Opposition voters rated both the past and the future events more negatively than ruling party voters. In Study 2, we tested whether the negativity for future events may be due to perceived sociopolitical status of ruling party voters. Participants reported events from Turkey's future and provided ratings of status and privilege. We replicated the reduced negativity of distant compared to near future projections, but subjective sense of privilege was not related to events' valence. Overall, we demonstrated that in highly polarized societies, sociopolitical identity can impact the perceived valence of collective mental time travel outputs, diverging from findings of similar responses among Democrats and Republicans in the USA context.
... This may in turn contribute to more third-person perspectives in future thinking than in memory. An alternative explanation is that participants might perceive the difference between their past and present selves to be less than the difference between their present and imagined future selves, especially for positive changes (Kanten & Teigen, 2008). These questions beg additional research, especially with experimental manipulations. ...
Current understanding of visual perspectives (i.e., first person vs third person) in mental time travel and their relations to psychological well-being is largely based on research with Western populations. To examine whether culture moderates the processes, we asked European American (EA) and Asian or Asian American (AA) college students to recall and imagine personal experiences in ten social situations and to report their psychological well-being. AA participants imagined future events less from a third-person perspective than did EA participants, and there was no cultural difference in visual perspective in the recall of past events. Furthermore, EA participants who retrieved positive memories more from a third-person perspective exhibited worse well-being, whereas AA participants who imagined negative future events more from a third-person perspective exhibited better well-being. These findings advance our understanding of the role of culture in visual perspectives during mental time travel as they relate to psychological well-being.
... Euthymic and clinical populations view the trajectory of their past, present, and future selves in different ways. While euthymic individuals typically appraise their past, present, and future selves in a continuously positive trajectory (Grysman et al., 2015;Heller et al., 2011;Kanten and Teigen, 2008;Wilson and Ross, 2001), this temporal self-appraisal trajectory has not been found to generalize to clinical populations (Sokol and Serper, 2017). ...
Background:
Previous studies found that psychopathology is associated with distinct self-perceptions over time. Euthymic individuals report experiencing a self-enhancement bias, with self-appraisal increasing over time. In contrast, depressed individuals report viewing a personal decline from past to present and anticipated self-improvement from present to future. This study examined the association between the singular presence of anxiety and temporal self-appraisal.
Methods:
Using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale, this study examined a depressed (n = 142), anxious (n = 95), comorbid depressed and anxious (n = 335), and euthymic group (non-depressed and non-anxious, n = 535), on a validated task of temporal self-appraisal.
Results:
Anxiety has a unique association with temporal self-appraisal that differs from the other disorders examined in this study. Specifically, individuals with anxiety had a similar positive trend of self-view to the euthymic group; however, their overall trend was lower at each temporal point. Individuals with depression had a stable past-to-present self-view and an improving present-to-future self-view.
Limitations:
The use of an online self-report sample without longitudinal assessment of variables, while sufficient for the intent of the present study, limits the potential extrapolation from this sample, as well as prevents the determination of the direction of causality.
Conclusions:
While individuals with anxiety demonstrate a positive sense of improvement over time, their psychopathology is associated with a negative bias in their perception of their past, present, and future selves. These findings have important implications for clinicians regarding potential interventions and treatment for anxiety and depression.
... During the encoding tasks, both young and older adults were faster to endorse a trait if it was positive, but slower if it was negative. When considering the percentage of "yes" responses, we observed that young adults endorsed more positive traits and less negative traits in the future compared with the present and past self-knowledge conditions, and also compared with other people's traits (see also Tanguay et al., 2018), consistent with an optimism bias (Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Sharot, 2011). In contrast, in older adults, the temporal orientation of self-knowledge, or whether knowledge concerned the self or other people, did not influence the percentage of endorsed positive and negative traits. ...
Self-knowledge is a type of personal semantic knowledge that concerns one’s self-image and personal identity. It has most often been operationalized as the summary of one’s personality traits (“I am a stubborn person”). Interestingly, recent studies have revealed that the neural correlates of self-knowledge can be dissociated from those of general semantic and episodic memory in young adults. However, studies of “dedifferentiation” or loss of distinctiveness of neural representations in ageing suggest that the neural correlates of self-knowledge might be less distinct from those of semantic and episodic memory in older adults. We investigated this question in an event-related potential (ERP) study with 28 young and 26 older adults while they categorised personality traits for their self-relevance (self-knowledge conditions), and their relevance to certain groups of people (general semantic condition). Participants then performed a recognition test for previously seen traits (episodic condition). The amplitude of the late positive component (LPC), associated with episodic recollection processes, differentiated the self-knowledge, general semantic, and episodic conditions in young adults, but not in older adults. However, in older adults, participants with higher composite episodic memory scores had more differentiated LPC amplitudes across experimental conditions. Moreover, consistent with the fact that age-related neural dedifferentiation may be material and region specific, in both age groups some differences between memory types were observed for the N400 component, associated with semantic processing. Taken together, these findings suggest that declarative memory subtypes are less distinct in ageing, but that the amount of differentiation varies with episodic memory function.
... <Figure 2> The Interaction Effect of PEM and Self-Other Referent Priming on Gapjil (Study 1) the future, PEM is expected to increase Gapjil more among other-referent primed people than among self-referent primed people. The reasoning behind this expectation is based on the effect of landmarks(Dai et al. 2015) and the better than average (BTA) improvement effect(Kanten and Teigen 2008).People perceive temporal selves as a series ofconnected but distinct selves (Peetz and Wilson 2014). Perceived (dis)connection between the present self and a temporally removed self is malleable (Peetz and Wilson 2014). ...
... In a study that examined both temporal and social comparison perceptions held by young adults (college students) in a one-time survey, the students rated themselves as superior (i.e., BTAE) to their peers on a series of personality traits in the past, present and future (Kanten & Teigen, 2008). The temporal self-appraisal theory prediction about making self-serving judgments about the past and future comparisons received support. ...
This study examined temporal and social comparisons of physical health status. Participants in two waves of the MIDUS cohort ranging in age from young adult to young-old (N = 2,408) rated current, past, and future physical health, as well as peer health. Past health was generally rated as better than current health (particularly among young adults). Young adults expected better future health; young-old adults expected declining health. All groups recalled their health as better than they reported a decade earlier. Middle-aged and young-old respondents expected more decline than they reported ten years later; young adults’ ratings were consistent. The two older groups believed they were healthier than same-age peers, whereas younger respondents believed they were less healthy (though as healthy as the other age groups). The nature and trajectories of temporal and social comparisons of physical health across the lifespan suggest the need to examine their consequences for health behaviors.
... <Figure 2> The Interaction Effect of PEM and Self-Other Referent Priming on Gapjil (Study 1) the future, PEM is expected to increase Gapjil more among other-referent primed people than among self-referent primed people. The reasoning behind this expectation is based on the effect of landmarks(Dai et al. 2015) and the better than average (BTA) improvement effect(Kanten and Teigen 2008).People perceive temporal selves as a series ofconnected but distinct selves (Peetz and Wilson 2014). Perceived (dis)connection between the present self and a temporally removed self is malleable (Peetz and Wilson 2014). ...
... Some accounts predict that perceptions of the decline of youth should be person general, largely independent of an individual's own qualities. People tend to view themselves as superior to others across domains (6,7) and often independently of their actual qualities (8). Accordingly, people's disparaging the youth may result from viewing an aspect of themselves (and their generation) as superior to others (the present generation of youths). ...
In five preregistered studies, we assess people’s tendency to believe “kids these days” are deficient relative to those of previous generations. Across three traits, American adults ( N =3,458; Mage = 33-51 years) believe today’s youth are in decline; however, these perceptions are associated with people’s standing on those traits. Authoritarian people especially think youth are less respectful of their elders, intelligent people especially think youth are less intelligent, well-read people especially think youth enjoy reading less. These beliefs are not predicted by irrelevant traits. Two mechanisms contribute to humanity’s perennial tendency to denigrate kids: (1) a person-specific tendency to notice the limitations of others where one excels, (ii) a memory bias projecting one’s current qualities onto the youth of the past. When observing current children, we compare our biased memory to the present and a decline appears. This may explain why the kids these days effect has been happening for millennia.
... Second, to the best of our knowledge there are no direct replications, but only conceptual replications of the study. Building on the findings from Alicke (1985), some studies have found support for the better-than-average effect, such that people tended to regard more positive traits as more descriptive of themselves than of the average other (Brown, 2012;Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Pedregon et al., 2012). However, given that procedural differences may result in discrepant results, conceptual replications alone cannot verify the robustness of the original findings (Simons et al., 2011). ...
People seem to regard themselves as better than the average other. To revisit this phenomenon, we conducted a pre-registered replication and extension of Alicke's (1985) study on the effect of trait dimensions for self versus average other judgments, collecting data from American Amazon Mechanical Turk workers in two waves (N = 670; N = 903). For more effective analyses, we switched to a correlational design after pre-testing the data. We successfully replicated the effect of trait desirability for the self-ratings in relation to average other ratings, such that participants rated more desirable traits as more descriptive of themselves than of the average American (original: ηp2 = .78, 95% CI [.73, .81]; replication: sr2 = .54, 95% CI [.43, .65]). In line with the original findings, we found that the effect was stronger for traits of higher controllability (original: ηp2 = .21, 95% CI [.12, .28]; replication: sr2 = .07, 95% CI [.02, .12]). As an extension, we measured commonness, the degree to which a trait is frequently displayed among the average American. The extension revealed that more desirable traits were rated as more common (sr2 = .04, 95% CI [-.01, .09]) and this held for the average American (sr2 = .41, 95% CI [.31, .52]) but not the self (sr2 = .00, 95% CI [-.01, .01]). Three decades after the original study, the better-than-average effect appears to remain robust. We discuss implications for future research.
... Wilson et al. (2012) proposed that self-enhancement motives are underlying people's tendency to praise subjectively close future selves. Kanten and Teigen (2008) asked college students to evaluate either themselves or an acquaintance on desirable and undesirable attributes at 6 months and 2 years from now, and in both past and future directions. They found that participants evaluated themselves with improvement equal to their acquaintances from past to the present. ...
Numerous studies on episodic future thinking have demonstrated that individuals perceive their future as more positive and idyllic than their past. It has been suggested that this positivity bias might serve a self-enhancement function. Yet, conflicting findings and lack of systematic studies on the generalizability of the phenomenon leave this interpretation uncertain. We provide the first systematic examination of the positivity bias across different domains and tasks of future thinking. First, we use the same tasks in two different domains of future thinking, representing an episodic (events) and a semantic dimension (self-images), respectively. Second, we use two different measures of positivity bias (i.e., frequency of positive versus negative instances and their distance from present). Third, we contrast each measure in each domain for events/self-images related to self versus an acquaintance. Experiments 1 and 2 showed a strong, general tendency for the generation of positive future events/self-images, but most pronounced for self, relative to an acquaintance. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that positive future events/self-images were dated closer to present, whereas negative ones were pushed further into the future, but only for self and not for an acquaintance. Our results support the idea that the positivity bias in future thinking serves a self-enhancement function and that this bias likely represents a similar underlying motivational mechanism across different domains of future thinking, whether episodic or semantic. The findings add to our understanding of the motivational functions served by different forms of future thoughts in relation to the self.
... When imagining the future, however, most people seem to focus on positive scenarios (Newby-Clark & Ross, 2003;Robinson & Ryff, 1999). It manifests in that appraisals of one's future self improves as the future temporal distance considered increases (Heller, Stephan, Kifer, & Sedikides, 2011;Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Lachowicz-Tabaczek & Bajcar, 2017;Weinstein, 1980). ...
People with low global self-esteem tend to have more negative self-evaluations and experience less positive affect than do individuals with high self-esteem. However, they appraise themselves better when thinking about the distant future than about the near future. The aim of this study was to determine if temporal distance in thinking about one's own future is also related to better affect in individuals with low global self-esteem. In Study 1 (N = 177), wherein participants envisioned their future selves while comparing it with their present selves, people with low global self-esteem appraised themselves better in the distant than in the near future, and experienced, as a result, better mood and had higher state self-esteem. In Study 2 (N = 169), in which participants assessed their future selves with no reference point, individuals with low self-esteem had better self-appraisals in the distant than in the near future. However, future thinking had no impact on their affect. These results suggested that the increased distance in thinking of one's own future is related to a better mood and more positive self-feelings among individuals with low self-esteem, but only when assessing their future self by comparing it to their present self.
... In contrast, those relevant in the future, the stereotypically-old items, were rated as more preferred by the self now but more preferred by a generic peer in the future. This indicates that participants perceived themselves to be less typical than average for both types of items, and that false uniqueness biases are similar for judgements related to the present and the future (Kanten & Teigen, 2008; see also Renoult et al., 2016). ...
People underestimate how much their preferences will change in the future, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as a "presentism bias." Recently, we found that this presentism bias is attenuated when thinking about the preferences of other people. The aim of this study was to investigate whether predicting future preferences also differs depending on the level of social distance between self and other. A total of 67 participants completed a perspective-taking task in which they were required to think about their own preferences, those of a generic peer, and those of a close other both now and in the future. They were also asked to consider the preferences of an older adult now. Participants predicted less change between their current and future preferences than between the current and future preferences of a generic peer. Predicted change in preferences for a close other were similar, but not identical, to those made for the self. When considering relevant future preferences, participants predicted less change for themselves than for their close others and less change for close others than for generic peers. In other words, as social distance increases, the presentism bias decreases. Interestingly, participants estimated that both they and their peers would not change so much that they become similar to current older adults. Simulating the future perspectives of a generic peer or, even better, the current perspectives of an older adult may thus result in improved long-term decision-making, as it may enable a more realistic estimation of the magnitude of likely changes in the future.
... In addition, individuals tend to believe that they will exhibit more self-improvement relative to others as they move towards the future (Kanten and Teigen, 2008) and bias towards self-enhancement tends to worsen with greater temporal distance (Stephan et al., 2015). When making judgements about their future selves, individuals tend to equally emphasize their own present and past selves, adopting a holistic perspective. ...
People tend to perceive themselves more favourably than others, but the degree to which individuals exhibit this bias may be influenced by cultural upbringing. Korean ( n = 271) and American ( n = 503) participants were asked to evaluate current and future health expectations for themselves and others. Results showed that American participants rated their own future health more positively than others' future health, whereas Korean participants rated their own and others' future health similarly. Given its role in patient health behaviour, implications for creating context-sensitive interventions for future health expectations are discussed.
... People also have a tendency to self-enhance by making highly positive future judgments about the self (Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Ross & Newby-Clark, 1998). Indeed, Robinson and Ryff (1999) argue that "the positivity of the future self may be critical to the maintenance of a positive self-evaluation" (p. ...
Two studies investigated how authenticity is believed to change over time. We tested for two possible trajectories: (1) A simple positive linear progression driven by self-enhancement motives and (2) a linear progression followed by a plateau indicative of the end of the history illusion. Across both studies, participants completed measures of perceived authenticity for different points in their lives. Study 1 was over a relatively short period of time. Study 2 was over the course of the lifespan. Both studies revealed upward linear trends suggesting that participants believe they are becoming more authentic over time. Study 2 also revealed that people perceive particularly high rates of change in the recent past and near future. The preponderance of evidence favored the self-enhancement perspective.
... improvements with growing temporal distance as more applicable to themselves than to others (Kanten & Teigen, 2008) and to consider their potential for development to be greater than that of others (Williams & Gilovich, 2008;Williams, Gilovich, & Dunning, 2012). ...
People tend to think positively about their future selves. However, it remains unclear to what extent this tendency depends on the positivity of their current self-appraisal. To study this problem, we employed the assumptions of construal level theory, the concept of self-enhancement, and the assumptions of temporal self-appraisal theory, and we examined the role of global self-esteem in the relationship between temporal distance and future self-appraisals measured in absolute (Study 1), comparative temporal (Study 2), or comparative social (Study 3) ways. In all three studies, when assessed in terms of specific dimensions, future self-appraisals increased with temporal distance only in people with low self-esteem, but when assessed in terms of general dimensions, self-appraisals were higher in the distant compared to the near future irrespective of self-esteem level.
... Euthymic individuals typically maintain a positive view of their current self by denigrating their past selves (i.e., self-enhancement bias; Wilson and Ross, 2001;Ross and Wilson, 2003). That is, most euthymic individuals believe that their lives follow a continuously improving trajectory where evaluation of their past-self includes more self-criticism than their evaluation of their present-self and that their future-self is evaluated even more positively than their present-self (Kanten and Teigen, 2008;Grysman et al., 2015;Heller et al., 2011). ...
... Conversely, in the present study, males reported that their children looked more like themselves than females. This might be because both males and females tend to display a self-serving bias-a belief that they are better than the averagewhich had been extensively demonstrated in various domains of social psychology (Lee and Waite, 2005;Kanten and Teigen, 2008;Krizan and Suls, 2008). Compared to females, males may have stronger self-serving biases in perceiving facial resemblance with their children. ...
Father–child facial resemblance is an important cue for men to evaluate paternity. Previous studies found that fathers’ perceptions of low facial resemblance with offspring lead to low confidence of paternity. Fathers’ uncertainty of paternity could cause psychological stress and anxiety, which, after a long time, may further turn into trait anxiety. Conversely, females can ensure a biological connection with offspring because of internal fertilization. The purpose of this study was thus to examine the role of parents’ gender in the effect of parents’ perceived facial resemblance with child on their trait anxiety. In this study, 151 parents (father or mother) from one-child families reported their facial resemblance with child and their trait anxiety. Results showed that (i) males tended to perceive higher facial similarity with child than did females and (ii) males’ perceived facial resemblance with child significantly predicted trait anxiety, whereas females’ perceived facial resemblance did not. These findings suggested that the uncertainty of paternity contributed to the trait anxiety of fathers, but not mothers.
... For example, cue-word methods lead to comparisons of reaction times for retrieval or of numbers of memories recalled (e.g., Davis, 1999;Robinson, 1976;Ros & Latorre, 2010). Within narrativebased analyses, researchers can ask for any event that occurred within a specified time period (e.g., Grysman, Prabhakar, Anglin, & Hudson, 2013;Kanten & Teigen, 2008), which has the advantage of imposing limited bias on the memory search process, but may elicit mundane memories rather than personally significant events. Other studies explicitly solicit a specific type of event, often a highly emotional event (a high or low point: e.g., Grysman & Hudson, 2010; or a traumatic memory: e.g., Sales, Fivush, Parker, & Bahrick, 2005) or a self-defining memory (Singer & Salovey, 1993;see, e.g., Liao, Bluck, & Cheng, 2015). ...
Gender differences in autobiographical memory emerge in some data collection paradigms and not others. The present study included an extensive analysis of gender differences in autobiographical narratives. Data were collected from 196 participants, evenly split by gender and by age group (emerging adults, ages 18-29, and young adults, ages 30-40). Each participant reported four narratives, including an event that had occurred in the last 2 years, a high point, a low point, and a self-defining memory. Additionally, all participants completed self-report measures of masculine and feminine gender typicality. The narratives were coded along six dimensions-namely coherence, connectedness, agency, affect, factual elaboration, and interpretive elaboration. The results indicated that females expressed more affect, connection, and factual elaboration than males across all narratives, and that feminine typicality predicted increased connectedness in narratives. Masculine typicality predicted higher agency, lower connectedness, and lower affect, but only for some narratives and not others. These findings support an approach that views autobiographical reminiscing as a feminine-typed activity and that identifies gender differences as being linked to categorical gender, but also to one's feminine gender typicality, whereas the influences of masculine gender typicality were more context-dependent. We suggest that implicit gendered socialization and more explicit gender typicality each contribute to gendered autobiographies.
... Third, intrapersonal comparisons seem to be made as frequently as interpersonal ones (Summerville & Roese, 2008). Finally, people not only perceive themselves to be superior to others, but they also view the present self as superior to past selves on many trait and ability dimensions (Kanten & Teigen, 2008). ...
Social self-analysis is the process by which people use comparison information to define and modify their self-concepts or identity images. Self-concepts are beliefs about one's abilities, attitudes, emotions, and behavior tendencies that range from relatively concrete to abstract in a self-knowledge hierarchy. Comparison information includes contrasting one's own task and social feedback with others' or with past and future states of one's own or others'. We use an analogy with psychometric test theory to highlight the features of social self-analysis and view these comparisons as comparison tests that people encounter or conduct to assess their self-concepts. Comparison test feedback is assessed for its reliability, validity, and generalizability and is abstracted to low- to high-level self-concepts. Accurate translation from comparison test feedback to self-concepts is hindered by the absence of adequate comparison samples, the tendency to eschew large-scale comparison data for local comparisons (what we call " local dominance" ), and by the desire to construct and maintain favorable identity images.
... Comme nous l'avons vu auparavant, dans sa théorie initiale, Albert (1977) avance que la comparaison temporelle aurait un rôle dans la recherche de stabilité chez l'individu. Plus tard, de nouvelles raisons sont apparues par la théorie de l'auto-évaluation de Wilson et Ross (2000) et les études qui ont suivi (Haddock, 2004(Haddock, , 2006Haynes et al., 2007 ;Kanten & Teigen, 2008 ;Ross & Wilson, 2002 ;Sanna, Chang, Carter & Small, 2006). Selon cette théorie, les individus dénigrent leur soi passé pour se sentir mieux avec leur soi présent. ...
The aim of this thesis is to find ways of improving psychology students’ statistics performance, by examining the influence of social or temporal comparison feedback delivered in a web-based training environment. This aim is based on three observations. Firstly, immediate feedback has been shown as a central characteristic of web-based learning environments for statistics, but studies rarely interrogate which kind of feedback is delivered. Secondly, studies generally focus on taskoriented feedback rather than on psychosocial processes such as social and temporalcomparison. Thirdly, these two comparisons have rarely been examined at the same time, a fortiori in web-based training environments. The research program is divided in two sets of studies. The first three studies examine theinfluence of social or temporal comparison feedback on statistics performance. In the last two studies, interventions in class were implemented to encourage students to use the web-based training environments. Overall, results do not show a robust effect of comparison feedbacks but confirm the crucial influence of procrastination and initial knowledge on students’ performance. The implications are discussed considering thenaturalistic nature of this research.
... As predictions about a more distant future entail more uncertainty and ambiguity, distant self-predictions may reflect greater self-enhancing bias in terms of the BTAE. Earlier work that focused on comparing the present self to the future self, showed that individuals expect to improve more relative to others in the future than the present (Kanten & Teigen, 2008). Advancing this line of research, we predicted that magnitude of temporal distance within the future (imagining the self in the near vs. distant future) increases the BTAE and that this pattern would hold true for individuals with varying levels of self-esteem. ...
Information people rely on when making self-predictions may be influenced by temporal distance and the self-enhancement motive. We proposed, drawing from Construal Level Theory, that temporally distant (vs. near) predictions reflect the “gist” self-attributes, rather than other attributes (“noise”). Based on the self-enhancement literature, positive (vs. negative) attributes will be perceived as the “gist"; In three studies, we tested the hypothesis that positive attributes are more prominent in distant predictions. Distant (compared to near) predictions reflect the “gist” attributes, are more positive and confident (Study 1). Such predictions rely on positive (rather than negative) attributes (Study 2). Distant predictions reflect a greater better-than-average effect, better ratings on positive (and not-as-bad on negative) attributes in comparison to peers (Study 3). These tendencies hold true for individuals with varying levels of self-esteem (Studies 1, 3). The studies suggest that temporal distance and motivation to enhance the favorability of self-concept both influence prediction.
... Research on temporal comparisons from a developmental or educational perspective has primarily focused on comparisons with past selves (e.g., Butler, 2000;Ross & Wilson, 2002;Ruble & Frey, 1991;Suls & Mullen, 1982;Wilson & Ross, 2001), but comparisons with future selves also shape peoples' self-evaluation and motivation (e.g., Hanko, Crusius, & Mussweiler, 2010;Wilson, Buehler, Lawford, Schmidt, & Yong, 2012). Thinking about positive possible selves can benefit the self in the here and now (Markus & Nurius, 1986;Oyserman, Bybee, & Terry, 2006;Ruvolo & Markus, 1992).The direction of temporal comparison might be important, because people generally perceive themselves as improving over time (Busseri, Choma, & Sadava, 2012;Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Ross & Wilson, 2002;Ryff, 1991;Wilson & Ross, 2001). Thus, comparing with past selves often translates into a downward comparison, and comparing with future selves often translates into an upward comparison. ...
Temporal selves are a rich source of potential comparison standards, yet little is known about the preference for specific temporal selves. We examine whether regulatory focus influences to what extent people compare themselves to future or past selves. Promotion-focused individuals, who focus on positive outcomes, were more likely to compare themselves to their future selves (Study 1), specifically while appraising themselves in a domain in which the future self was seen as superior to the current self (Study 2). However, prevention-focused individuals, who focus on negative outcomes, did not orient themselves towards their past, inferior, selves. Supporting a cognitive fit hypothesis, individuals in a promotion-mindset were more motivated to improve when comparing with their future (vs. past) self (Study 3).
... Memories might color our current outlook on the world (e.g., Baumgartner, Sujan, & Bettman, 1992;Gillihan, Kessler, & Farah, 2007), and the present might pale or shine in comparison with a rosier or a gloomier point in time (Haddock, 2004;Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Wilson & Ross, 2001). Apart from their influence on present judgments, judgments about temporally extended points in time are meaningful in their own right. ...
... Specifically, people tend to retrospectively change memories of themselves to fit their beliefs about stability over time. For example, people who believe attitudes remain stable "remember" their past self as being more similar to their current self and people who believe in growth over time "remember" their past self as weaker than their current self (e.g., Kanten & Teigen, 2008;Karniol & Ross, 1996). In the domain of social exclusion, perhaps people who are still feeling the sting of rejection believe their feelings must have been more intense during the actual exclusion event because this fits their implicit theory about emotional dissipation over time. ...
Self-reported feelings of personal distress (i.e., thwarted needs for belonging, lowered selfesteem) following social exclusion are commonly used as the sole determinant of whether an event was experienced as rejection as well as whether a person has recovered from the experience (e.g., Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004). However, the present research reveals that the temporal framing (past or present tense) of self-report measures shapes responses. In two studies, we manipulated social exclusion and the tense of self-report personal distress measures (i.e., basic needs satisfaction and self-esteem). The results suggest that differences based on tense are the result of biased self-reports (due to social desirability concerns or implicit theories of change over time), rather than representing actual recovery from exclusion. The present research highlights the importance of attending to question tense when assessing reactions to social exclusion.
... Third, intrapersonal comparisons seem to be made as frequently as interpersonal ones (Summerville & Roese, 2008). Finally, people not only perceive themselves to be superior to others, but they also view the present self as superior to past selves on many trait and ability dimensions (Kanten & Teigen, 2008). ...
... This " decline " is only implied because our experiments were conducted between-subjects, and indeed a within-subjects approach may not be feasible if it involved inducing people to feel close to—and distant from—the same future point in time. Is this pattern of implied " subjective decline " inconsistent with evidence that people prefer to believe they are getting better and better (Heller et al., 2011; Kanten & Teigen, 2008 )? No—both psychological effects can occur under different circumstances and may in some cases exert opposing influences on self-appraisal. Although in the current studies, calendar time exerted no influence because it was held constant, in many real situations, objective and subjective time covary. ...
We examined the role of subjective temporal distance in people's future self-predictions. Consistent with temporal self-appraisal theory, we hypothesized that people would be motivated to evaluate future selves more favorably when they felt closer in time, because subjectively close future selves have more direct implications for current identity than do subjectively distant future selves. Subjective temporal distance of a future self was manipulated, holding constant actual temporal distance. Participants predicted more favorable personal qualities (Study 1) at a future time that seemed close rather than distant. Supporting a self-enhancement account, subjective distance effects were specific to appraisals of future self but not acquaintances (Study 2), and the link between subjective distance and future self-appraisals was eliminated when participants satisfied their self-image goals via a self-affirmation exercise (Study 3). Study 4 provided evidence that subjectively close future selves influence current identity to a greater extent than do distant selves: Participants evaluated their current selves more positively when feeling close to, rather than distant from, a future success. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
We investigated comparisons to the average other in shaping how individuals view their lives as unfolding over time, affective reactions, and motivation. Participants described their current life (Study 1; N = 382; M age = 30.01 years; 43% female) or their life as unfolding over time (Study 2; N = 451; M age = 30.89; 54% female) as either better (BTA) or worse (WTA) than the average person their age and gender (both studies included a ‘no comparison’ control group). In both studies the BTA (vs. WTA) condition resulted in greater perceived improvement in life satisfaction, more positive affective reactions, and greater motivation to achieve one’s goals for the future. Thus, we conclude that viewing one’s current life or one’s progress in life over time as better (vs. worse) than average leads to more favourable temporal life evaluations, more positive affective responses, and greater motivation.
People tend to regard themselves as better than average. We conducted a replication and extension of Alicke's (1985) classic study on trait dimensions in evaluations of self versus others with U.S. American MTurk workers in two waves (total N = 1573; 149 total traits). We successfully replicated the trait desirability effect, such that participants rated more desirable traits as being more descriptive of themselves than of others (original: ηp2 = .78, 95% CI [.73, .81]; replication: sr2 = .54, 95% CI [.43, .65]). The effect of desirability was stronger for more controllable traits (effect of desirability X controllability interaction on self-other ratings difference, original: ηp2 = .21, 95% CI [.12, .28]; replication: sr2 = .07, 95% CI [.02, .12]). In an extension, we found that desirable traits were rated as more common for others, but not for the self. Thirty-five years later, the better-than-average effect appears to remain robust.
People evaluate themselves against a variety of standards. In addition to measuring themselves against relevant others (social comparisons), individuals often appraise their current selves by looking to their former and future selves (temporal comparisons). This chapter first considers temporal comparison in relation to social comparison and then describes processes of temporal self-appraisal in more detail. The authors first consider the relative frequency and impact of temporal comparison relative to social comparison and describe how comparison preference and impact depends on method, context, and self-appraisal goals. Both comparison types are meaningful, and people show considerable fluidity in their use of these self-appraisal standards. Next, the authors describe temporal self-appraisal theory, which unpacks the nuanced mechanisms underlying active selection and construction of temporal comparisons, drawing parallels to similar social comparative processes.
According to the ‘end of history illusion’ (EOHI) individuals underestimate the amount of future change they will experience. Using results from a three-wave longitudinal study of American adults (N = 2390, mean age = 55.31 years, 56% female), we examined ratings of recollected past (10 years prior), current, and anticipated future (10 years later) life satisfaction at Wave 2, as well as current life satisfaction at Wave 1 (nine years earlier) and at Wave 3 (nine years later). Younger adults typically underestimated their past and overestimate their future LS, whereas older adults tended to underestimate their future LS. Contrary to the EOHI, most individuals either were accurate or anticipated too much change into the future, rather than too little.
Agency theory considers information the most decisive element in investor–entrepreneur relations. Building on the notion of better‐than‐average (BTA) beliefs, we investigate the extent to which information asymmetries between investors and entrepreneurs may also emerge on paths other than the self‐interest or opportunistic behaviour of rational actors. Based on a data set of 176 investors from 23 different German financial institutions, we conduct a conditional process analysis that indicates approximately 30% of all professional investors hold unjustified BTA beliefs regarding their abilities to identify flaws in new venture ideas, which leads to inaccurate financing decisions. We further find evidence that investors generally tend to underfund start‐up projects if they perceive little similarity with the founders, but overfund projects if interpersonal similarities are high. Moreover, we demonstrate that high BTA beliefs facilitate engagement in competition with peers for the best investment option.
The purposes of this study were to examine the two processes of social comparison and self-comparison, and to suggest the applications of social comparison theories and self-comparison theories. For these purposes, social comparison theory, self-evaluation maintenance model, control theory, self-discrepancy theory, regulatory focus theory, and temporal comparison theory were reviewed. The processes of social comparison and self-comparison are different, but both comparisons are similar in that they have some effects on self-evaluation, emotion, motivation and behaviors. Suggestions on education, health, economic justice and interpersonal relationships were discussed.
Diese Studie untersucht den Einfluss verzerrter Selbsteinschätzungen von Entscheidern auf die (relative) Qualität ihrer Prognosen. Der Fokus der Studie liegt auf dem Better-Than-Average-Effekt (BTA-Effekt) als Ursache für verzerrte Selbsteinschätzungen. Mittels eines Labor-Experimentes wird insbesondere untersucht, wie sich der BTA-Effekt auf die Anpassung einmal getätigter Prognosen an neue Informationen auswirkt. Im Experiment geben Teilnehmer eine anfängliche Prognose ab und erhalten daraufhin entscheidungsrelevante Informationen, um ihre Prognose entsprechend anzupassen. Wir stellen die Hypothesen auf, dass verzerrte Selbsteinschätzungen im Sinne des BTA-Effektes zwar keinen Einfluss auf die anfängliche Prognosequalität haben, dass sie sich jedoch negativ auf angepasste Prognosen auswirken, da sie die Anpassungsstärke an neue Informationen beeinflussen. Die Ergebnisse der Studie unterstützen die aufgestellten Hypothesen. Im Einklang mit bisherigen Studien finden wir keinen systematischen Zusammenhang der Selbsteinschätzung mit der Prognosequalität. Die Ergebnisse zeigen aber einen negativen Einfluss einer Selbstüberschätzung auf die Anpassungsstärke und auch auf die durchschnittliche Qualität der angepassten Prognosen. Wir folgern, dass eine verzerrte Selbsteinschätzung der Prognosequalität negative ökonomische Folgen bei der Revision von Prognosen nach sich ziehen kann. Die Studie kommt damit u. a. dem Appell von Dunning et al. (Psychol Sci Pub Interest 5(3):69–106, 2004) nach, die praktischen Konsequenzen einer verzerrten Selbsteinschätzung in den Fokus zu stellen.
Three hundred and sixty three participants (233 from New Zealand, 130 from overseas) were surveyed on their preparedness for, and confidence at performing tasks in two hypothetical scenarios; being lost in the bush and losing their home after an earthquake. Participants compared their abilities to those of the average person from their own country. In the bush scenario, 67% of New Zealanders and 69% of those from overseas showed an optimism bias by rating themselves better than average. However, in the earthquake scenario 72% of New Zealanders and only 33% of those from overseas showed this bias. The difference in confidence between scenarios can be explained by the likelihood of having experienced the scenario examined, and it is suggested that New Zealanders may be overconfident in their abilities in a scenario they have not experienced.
The relationships between the stability and flexibility of the self (self-system) is a much debated issue in self-psychology. Sometimes they are treated as contrary oppositions while they presuppose each other as a matter of fact: change is serving stability and stability emerges through changes. Dynamic stability is a basic feature of the self-system. This is provided for by the stability of ego-functions and by the continuous editing of the situation-dependent contextual self. Coherence of the self-system is provided by the evaluating–self-evaluating functions. Crucial events of the life history script as well as historical-social crucial events induce critical changes in the system. Resistance against the need for self-reflections in these cases is frequently observed. The most crucial functional moments in the stability of. the self-experience ands the self-system are the following: stability of the positive outcome of general self-evaluation; the realization of autonomy in peer selection and the balance in the social network around the individual; coherence and elaboration in life history narratives; the formation and reflectivity of somatic histories.
Drawing on temporal and social comparison perspectives, we examined sources of the widespread belief that life gets better and better over time by determining how young adults evaluate their past, present and anticipated future life satisfaction (LS) relative to beliefs about normative others. We assessed whether patterns of subjective LS trajectories based on self-versus-normative other discrepancies varied as a function of self-esteem and whether such patterns were accounted for by hope, encompassing goal-related cognitions and motivations. University participants (n = 394) completed measures of their own and normative others' past, present and anticipated future LS, as well as self-esteem and hope scales. Results from latent growth curve analyses demonstrated that high-self-esteem and low-self-esteem individuals perceived normative others' LS as progressing on a similar upward subjective temporal trajectory; however, high-self-esteem individuals perceived self-improvement from past to present LS and self-consistency from present to future LS relative to others. Low-self-esteem individuals perceived self-consistency from past to present LS and self-improvement from present to future LS relative to others. These associations were accounted for by hope. This research highlights the utility of combining temporal and social comparison perspectives for understanding how people envision their LS unfolding over time. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Drawing on equity and expectancy theories, we hypothesize that the perception of accountants about their ability to contribute relative to a peer (operationalized as the better-than-average [BTA] bias) negatively influences their satisfaction with the outcomes of the performance evaluation process (operationalized as performance outcome satisfaction [POS]). We hypothesize further that this negative influence is mitigated by the amount of relative performance pay. We test these hypotheses using data collected from a survey of and an experiment involving 164 entry-level accountants. We found that in general our participants rated themselves better than the average audit professional and their immediate work associate; that is, they displayed a BTA bias. Moreover, we found that both the BTA bias and performance pay individually influenced POS; we also found a moderately significant interaction effect. In their entirety, the results indicate that the greater an entry-level accountant believes that she or he is better than average the more likely her or his performance outcome satisfaction will fall.
College students (n = 244) predicted that the current goals of both themselves and an acquaintance would remain relatively stable into the future. In contrast, they believed their level of achievement would increase more in the future than it had in previous years. They also believed that the relevant goals were more important to them than to their acquaintances, and comparisons of predicted future (but not present) achievements exhibited a self-enhancing bias. In addition to demonstrating the relative perceived stability of covert aspects of the current self, the findings suggest a fundamental difference between conceptualizations of self and conceptualizations of acquaintances. They suggest that participants may define themselves, more than others, in terms of current aspirations and expectations that those aspirations will be met.
IntroductionReview of Retrieval in the Self-Memory SystemRetrieval In Situ: You Get What You NeedA Review of Empirical Research Using a Functional PerspectiveConclusion
References
In Studies 1–8, participants judged an anonymous student as better than the average student, as above the group median, and as better than most other students on a variety of desirable traits. This effect was retained when name and age were removed and student ID number was the only individuating feature, when both the average student and the anonymous student were provided with a first name, and when the order of presentation was reversed. However, the effect was reduced when an enriched version of the average student was provided. In Study 9, an anonymous member of a highly disliked out-group was judged as worse than the out-group average member. These results indicate difficulty in comparing a singular target to a generalized target. A singular-target-focused model of comparative judgments is used to describe how people conduct these assessments.
This article examines whether adults perceive different levels of their own personality traits at different target ages, and what the differences are. Using abbreviated versions of assessments of the 5-factor model of personality (NEO-FFI, P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 1989) and of well-being (C. D. Ryff, 1989), 398 heterogeneous participants (age 26–64) described their own personality (a) in the present, (b) when they were 20–25 years old, (c) when they will be 65–70 years old, and (d) in the ideal. Participants’ responses across the 3 target ages indicated moderate change across adulthood and more variability than is typically observed in longitudinal studies of adult personality development. Anticipated late adulthood personality contained more losses than gains, although all target ages showed some gains. Participants’ perceptions were characterized by early adulthood exploration, middle adulthood productivity, and later adulthood comfortableness. Additionally, older adults reported slightly lower ideals but in other ways responded very similarly to younger and middle-aged adults.
This research explored how older adults recall the traits they possessed at an earlier age. It was hypothesized that older adults' recollections would be related to their theories about aging. In Study 1, a group of older Ss provided their theories concerning how various traits change with age. Another group of older Ss rated their current status on these traits and recalled the status they possessed at a younger age. In addition, a group of younger adults rated their current status on the same traits. On traits theorized to increase with age, older Ss recalled themselves as possessing lower levels at an earlier age than the younger group reported possessing. On traits theorized to decrease with age, older Ss recalled themselves as possessing higher levels at an earlier age than the younger group reported possessing. Study 2 indicated that this effect is obtained regardless of trait positivity.
164 undergraduates rated the degree to which various traits represented desirable characteristics and the degree to which it was possible for a person to exert control over each of these characteristics. From these initial ratings, 154 trait adjectives for which 4 levels of desirability were crossed with 2 levels of controllability were selected. 88 undergraduates then rated the degree to which each of these traits characterized the self and the average college student. Results support the prediction that self-ratings in relation to average college student ratings would be increasingly positive as traits increased in desirability and that in conditions of high desirability, self-ratings in relation to average college student ratings would be greater for high- than for low-controllable traits, whereas in conditions of low desirability the opposite would occur. Results are discussed in terms of the adaptive advantages of maintaining a global self-concept that implies that positive characteristics are under personal control and that negative characteristics are caused by factors outside of personal control. Mean preratings of desirability and controllability are appended. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Most people judge themselves to be content with their lives. However, they also judge themselves to be more content than the others in their group, which is a logical impossibility. In line with previous speculations, the authors found in two studies that comparative contentment judgments were highly related to judgments of one’s own contentment but entirely unrelated to judgments of comparison of others’ contentment. That is, comparative contentment judgments are predominantly self-focused. Researchers asking the question, “How content are you relative to your peers?” should be aware that the response might well be to the question “How content are you?”
Like the inhabitants of Garrison Keillor's (1985) fictional community of Lake Wobegon, most people appear to believe that their skills and abilities are above average. A series of studies illustrates one of the reasons why: When people compare themselves with their peers, they focus egocentrically on their own skills and insufficiently take into account the skills of the comparison group. This tendency engenders the oft-documented above-average effect in domains in which absolute skills tend to be high but produces a reliable below-average effect in domains in which absolute skills tend to be low (Studies 1 and 2). In Study 3, cognitive load exacerbated these biases, suggesting that people “anchor” on their assessment of their own abilities and insufficiently “adjust” to take into account the skills of the comparison group. These results suggest that the tendency to see oneself as above average may not be as ubiquitous as once thought.
Although past literature emphasizes the importance of social comparisons, in this study it was predicted that participants would often mention temporal comparisons in their self-descriptions. The first 3 studies revealed that participants report as many or more temporal-past comparisons than social comparisons. It was predicted that people would particularly favor temporal-past comparisons when they are interested in enhancing themselves. Temporal-past comparisons are gratifying, because they tend to indicate improvement over time. Social comparisons may be preferred when people are motivated to evaluate themselves accurately. These predictions were supported when self-evaluation and self-enhancement goals were explicitly manipulated (Study 4) or primed (Study 5).
Proposes a theory of temporal and historical comparison, developed from L. Festinger's (see record
1955-02305-001) theory of social comparison by means of a metatheoretical device,
conceptual translation, a semantic algorithm that consists of an informal dictionary and a set of rewriting rules. For example, a proposition in social comparison theory about the comparison of 2 different individuals is rewritten in temporal comparison theory as a proposition about the same individual comparing himself at 2 different points in time. A small set of rewriting rules is utilized such that every proposition within social comparison theory can be shown to yield a new proposition of temporal or historical comparison. A subset of these propositions resembles propositions within dissonance theory. That a temporal translation of social comparison theory is possible suggests that the temporal dimension of human experience (which has been omitted from Festinger's theory) may nonetheless be organized by the same principles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research in which people compare themselves with an average peer has consistently shown that people evaluate themselves more favorably than they evaluate others. Seven studies were conducted to demonstrate that the magnitude of this better-than-average effect depends on the level of abstraction in the comparison. These studies showed that people were less biased when they compared themselves with an individuated target than when they compared themselves with a nonindividuated target, namely, the average college student. The better-than-average effect was reduced more when the observer had personal contact with the comparison target than when no personal contact was established. Differences in the magnitude of the better-than-average effect could not be attributed to the contemporaneous nature of the target's presentation, communication from the target, perceptual vividness, implied evaluation, or perceptions of similarity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Focused on beliefs about one's own compared with other people's development in adulthood. Young, middle-aged, and old adults rated person-descriptive attributes with respect to developmental change throughout adulthood for the self and most other people, controllability for self and other, desirability, degree of self-descriptiveness, relevance as a developmental goal, and typical age-timing of attribute as developmental goal. Various aspects of subjective identification with age groups were also assessed. Findings suggested 3 modes of social comparison: self-assessment reflected in congruence between self and other-ascribed developmental trajectories, self-enhancement involved in more favorable expectations for the self regarding old age, and self-improvement expressed in developmental aspirations toward higher status age groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In Study 1, over 200 college students estimated how much their own chance of experiencing 42 events differed from the chances of their classmates. Overall, Ss rated their own chances to be significantly above average for positive events and below average for negative events. Cognitive and motivational considerations led to predictions that degree of desirability, perceived probability, personal experience, perceived controllability, and stereotype salience would influence the amount of optimistic bias evoked by different events. All predictions were supported, although the pattern of effects differed for positive and negative events. Study 2 with 120 female undergraduates from Study 1 tested the idea that people are unrealistically optimistic because they focus on factors that improve their own chances of achieving desirable outcomes and fail to realize that others may have just as many factors in their favor. Ss listed the factors that they thought influenced their own chances of experiencing 8 future events. When such lists were read by a 2nd group of Ss, the amount of unrealistic optimism shown by this 2nd group for the same 8 events decreased significantly, although it was not eliminated. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
It is hypothesized that people possess implicit theories regarding the inherent consistency of their attributes, as well as a set of principles concerning the conditions that are likely to promote personal change or stability. The nature of these theories is discussed in the context of a study of beliefs about life-span development. It is then suggested that people use their implicit theories of self to construct their personal histories. This formulation is used to interpret the results of a wide-ranging set of studies of memory of personal attributes. It is concluded that implicit theories of stability and change can lead to biases in recall. The extent and practical implications of these biases are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
When people are asked to compare their abilities to those of their peers, they predominantly provide self-serving assessments that appear objectively indefensible. This article proposes that such assessments occur because the meaning of most characteristics is ambiguous, which allows people to use self-serving trail definitions when providing self-evaluations. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that people provide self-serving assessments to the extent that the trait is ambiguous, that is, to the extent that it can describe a wide variety of behaviors. Study 3 more directly implicated ambiguity in these apraisals. As the number of criteria that Ss could use in their evaluations increased, Ss endorsed both positive and negative characteristics as self-descriptive to a greater degree. Study 4 demonstrated that the evidence and criteria that people use in self-evaluations is idiosyncratic. Asking Ss explicitly to list the evidence and criteria they considered before providing self-evaluations did not influence their self-appraisals. However, requiring Ss to evaluate themselves using a list generated by another individual caused them to lower their self-appraisals. Discussion centers on the normative status of these self-serving appraisals, and on potential consequences for social judgment in general.
Research in which people compare themselves with an average peer has consistently shown that people evaluate themselves more favorably than they evaluate others. Seven studies were conducted to demonstrate that the magnitude of this better-than-average effect depends on the level of abstraction in the comparison. These studies showed that people were less biased when they compared themselves with an individuated target than when they compared themselves with a nonindividuated target, namely, the average college student. The better-than-average effect was reduced more when the observer had personal contact with the comparison target than when no personal contact was established. Differences in the magnitude of the better-than-average effect could not be attributed to the contemporaneous nature of the target's presentation, communication from the target, perceptual vividness, implied evaluation, or perceptions of similarity.
The authors present and test a theory of temporal self-appraisal. According to the theory, people can maintain their typically favorable self-regard by disparaging their distant and complimenting their recent past selves. This pattern of appraisals should be stronger for more important attributes because of their greater impact on self-regard and stronger for self-ratings than for ratings of other people. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that participants are more critical of distant past selves than of current selves, and Study 3 showed that this effect is obtained even when concurrent evaluations indicate no actual improvement. Studies 4 and 5 revealed that people perceived greater improvement for self than for acquaintances and siblings over the same time period. Study 6 provided support for the predicted effects of temporal distance and attribute importance on people's evaluation of past selves.
Young, middle-aged, and elderly adults (N = 308) evaluated themselves on 6 dimensions of psychological well-being according to present, past, future, and ideal self-assessments. Young and middle-aged adults saw considerable improvement in themselves from the past to the present on all dimensions of well-being. The elderly, however, indicated largely a perception of stability with prior levels of functioning. Future ratings showed that the 2 younger groups expected continued gains in the years ahead, whereas the oldest respondents foresaw decline on most aspects of well-being. The comparison of present and ideal self-ratings supported (cross-sectionally) the hypothesis that with age, individuals achieve a closer fit between their ideal and their actual self-perceptions.
In Studies 1-8, participants judged an anonymous student as better than the average student, as above the group median, and as better than most other students on a variety of desirable traits. This effect was retained when name and age were removed and student ID number was the only individuating feature, when both the average student and the anonymous student were provide with a first name, and when the order of presentation was reversed. However, the effect was reduced when an enriched version of the average student was provided. In Study 9, an anonymous member of a highly disliked out-group was judged as worse than the out-group average member. These results indicate difficulty in comparing a singular target to a generalized target. A singular-target-focused model of comparative judgments is used to describe how people conduct these assessments.
People typically believe they are more likely to engage in selfless, kind, and generous behaviors than their peers, a result that is both logically and statistically suspect. However, this oft-documented tendency presents an important ambiguity. Do people feel "holier than thou" because they harbor overly cynical views of their peers (but accurate impressions of themselves) or overly charitable views of themselves (and accurate impressions of their peers)? Four studies suggested it was the latter. Participants consistently overestimated the likelihood that they would act in generous or selfless ways, whereas their predictions of others were considerably more accurate. Two final studies suggest this divergence in accuracy arises, in part, because people are unwilling to consult population base rates when predicting their own behavior but use this diagnostic information more readily when predicting others'.
The goal of this study is to investigate the consistency of diachronous ratings of subjective well-being (SWB). A heterogeneous sample (25-74-year-olds; N = 3,596) provided ratings of their present SWB, reconstructed their SWB of 10 years ago, and anticipated their SWB 10 years from now. Developmental tasks and self-evaluative principles were used to predict age differences in diachronous consistency. As predicted, in young adulthood, past SWB was rated lower and future SWB higher than present SWB. In contrast, in later adulthood, the past was rated higher and the future lower than present SWB. Analyses of rank-order consistency demonstrated that in later adulthood both future and past SWB were more strongly related to present SWB than in young adulthood. Results show how models of self-evaluation play out at different points in the life span.
Autobiographical memory plays an important role in the construction of personal identity. We review evidence of the bi-directional link between memory and identity. Individuals' current self-views, beliefs, and goals influence their recollections and appraisals of former selves. In turn, people's current self-views are influenced by what they remember about their personal past, as well as how they recall earlier selves and episodes. People's reconstructed evaluations of memories, their perceived distance from past experiences, and the point of view of their recollections have implications for how the past affects the present. We focus on how people's constructions of themselves through time serve the function of creating a coherent--and largely favourable--view of their present selves and circumstances.
Biases in social comparative judgments, such as those illustrated by above-average and comparative-optimism effects, are often regarded as products of motivated reasoning (e.g., self-enhancement). These effects, however, can also be produced by information-processing limitations or aspects of judgment processes that are not necessarily biased by motivational factors. In this article, the authors briefly review motivational accounts of biased comparative judgments, introduce a 3-stage model for understanding how people make comparative judgments, and then describe how various nonmotivational factors can influence the 3 stages of the comparative judgment process. Finally, the authors discuss several unresolved issues highlighted by their analysis, such as the interrelation between motivated and nonmotivated sources of bias and the influence of nonmotivated sources of bias on behavior.
Part 1. The Emergence of the Self and Memory. Denise R. Beike, James M. Lampinen, Douglas A. Behrend, Evolving Conceptions of the Self and Memory. Jochen Barth, Daniel J. Povinelli, John G. H. Cant, Bodily Origins of Self. Mark L. Howe, Early Memory, Early Self, and the Emergence of Autobiographical Memory. Part 2. Narrative Conceptions of the Self and Memory. Robyn Fivush, The Silenced Self: Constructing Self from Memories Spoken and Unspoken. Dan P. McAdams, The Redemptive Self: Narrative Identity in America Today. Jefferson A. Singer, Pavel Blagov, The Integrative Function of Narrative Processing: Autobiographical Memory, Self-defining Memories and the Life Story of Identity. Part 3. The Self and Memory for Emotionally Valenced Information. Denise R. Beike, Erica E. Kleinknecht, Erin T. Wirth-Beaumont, How Emotional and Non-Emotional Memories Define the Self. Constantine Sedikides, Jeffrey D. Green, Brad Pinter, Self-Protective Memory. Part 4. The Self and Memory across Time. John J. Skowronski, W. Richard Walker, Andrew L. Betz, Who Was I When That Happened? The Timekeeping Self in Autobiographical Memory. Jessica J. Cameron, Anne E. Wilson, Michael Ross, Autobiographical Memory and Self-Assessment. James M. Lampinen, Timothy N. Odegard, Juliana K. Leding, Diachronic Disunity. James M. Lampinen, Denise R. Beike, Douglas A. Behrend, The Self and Memory: It's about Time.
Three investigations are reported that examined the relation between self-appraisals and appraisals of others. In Experiment 1, subjects rated a series of valenced trait adjectives according to how well the traits described the self and others. Individuals displayed a pronounced “self-other bias,” such that positive attributes were rated as more descriptive of self than of others, whereas negative attributes were rated as less descriptive of self than of others. Furthermore, in contrast to C. R. Rogers's (1951) assertion that high self-esteem is associated with a comparable regard for others, the tendency for individuals to evaluate the self in more favorable terms than they evaluated people in general was particularly pronounced among those with high self-esteem. These findings were replicated and extended in Experiment 2, where it also was found that self-evaluations were more favorable than were evaluations of a friend and that individuals with high self-esteem were most likely to appraise their friend...
We here examine the nature of the pasts and futures that people construct and the role that implicit theories and motivation play in such creations. People's views of their pasts and futures are qualitatively different. They give their pasts mixed reviews, whereas they view their futures as unequivocally positive. We examine conditions that lead individuals and social groups to bias history in either an aggrandizing or effacing direction. We then discuss the nature of people's forecasts in a variety of domains - ranging from the general (e.g., "What does my future hold?") to the specific (e.g., predicting completion times of tasks). Finally, we examine factors that affect whether predictions are accurate and influence behavior.
Four motives (self-assessment, self-enhancement, self-verification, and self-improvement) are hypothesized to guide self-evaluation. Results of an empirical investigation suggest that two sets of circumstances may commonly elicit all four motives: a situation of past threat or failure and anticipation of some important future threat or challenge. These findings suggest the need to develop an integrative approach to self-evaluation that specifies not only the distinctive circumstances in which each motive may be satisfied but also the ways multiple motives may be simultaneously satisfied. Evidence is presented to suggest that the four motives are satisfied by drawing on different information sources. Individual differences and domain under investigation are also found to moderate self-evaluation processes. Directions for future integrative efforts are suggested.
Previous research suggests that self-deception is maximized when (a) there is a lack of concrete information, and (b) the motivation to self-deceive is high. In applying this model to past, present, and future judgments about the self, the future is unique because of its uncertainty, whereas the past is unique because of its lesser relevance to current motivations. We therefore predict that people will be the most self-deceptive when thinking about their future, a prediction supported in four studies ( Ns = 96, 125, 40, and 298) using various measures of self-deception and subjective well-- being. Studies 1 and 2 provide basic evidence for future self-- enhancement, whereas Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that concrete information about the future reduces this bias. More generally, the findings highlight the special status of future well-being judgments as well as the flexible link between self-deception and self-evaluation.
The authors present and test a theory of temporal self-appraisal. According to the theory, people can maintain their typically favorable self-regard by disparaging their distant and complimenting their recent past selves. This pattern of appraisals should be stronger for more important attributes because of their greater impact on self-regard and stronger for self-ratings than for ratings of other people. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that participants are more critical of distant past selves than of current selves, and Study 3 showed that this effect is obtained even when concurrent evaluations indicate no actual improvement. Studies 4 and 5 revealed that people perceived greater improvement for self than for acquaintances and siblings over the same time period. Study 6 provided support for the predicted effects of temporal distance and attribute importance on people's evaluation of past selves.
This research explored how older adults recall the traits they possessed at an earlier age. It was hypothesized that older adults' recollections would be related to their theories about aging. In Study 1, a group of older Ss provided their theories concerning how various traits change with age. Another group of older Ss rated their current status on these traits and recalled the status they possessed at a younger age. In addition, a group of younger adults rated their current status on the same traits. On traits theorized to increase with age, older Ss recalled themselves as possessing lower levels at an earlier age than the younger group reported possessing. On traits theorized to decrease with age, older Ss recalled themselves as possessing higher levels at an earlier age than the younger group reported possessing. Study 2 indicated that this effect is obtained regardless of trait positivity.
This article examines whether adults perceive different levels of their own personality traits at different target ages, and what the differences are. Using abbreviated versions of assessments of the 5-factor model of personality (NEO-FFI, P.T. Costa & R.R. McCrae, 1989) and of well-being (C. D. Ryff, 1989), 398 heterogeneous participants (age 26-64) described their own personality (a) in the present, (b) when they were 20-25 years old, (c) when they will be 65-70 years old, and (d) in the ideal. Participants' responses across the 3 target ages indicated moderate change across adulthood and more variability than is typically observed in longitudinal studies of adult personality development. Anticipated late adulthood personality contained more losses than gains, although all target ages showed some gains. Participants' perceptions were characterized by early adulthood exploration, middle adulthood productivity, and later adulthood comfortableness. Additionally, older adults reported slightly lower ideals but in other ways responded very similarly to younger and middle-aged adults.
Like the inhabitants of Garrison Keillor's (1985) fictional community of Lake Wobegon, most people appear to believe that their skills and abilities are above average. A series of studies illustrates one of the reasons why: when people compare themselves with their peers, they focus egocentrically on their own skills and insufficiently take into account the skills of the comparison group. This tendency engenders the oft-documented above-average effect in domains in which absolute skills tend to be high but produces a reliable below-average effect in domains in which absolute skills tend to be low (Studies 1 and 2). In Study 3, cognitive load exacerbated these biases, suggesting that people "anchor" on their assessment of their own abilities and insufficiently "adjust" to take into account the skills of the comparison group. These results suggest that the tendency to see oneself as above average may not be as ubiquitous as once thought.
Extending the better than average effect, 3 studies examined self-, friend, and peer comparisons of personal attributes. Participants rated themselves as better off than friends, who they rated as superior to generalized peers. The exception was in direct comparisons, where the self and friends were not strongly differentiated on unambiguous negative attributes. Self-esteem and construal played moderating roles, with persons with high self-esteem (HSEs) exploiting both ambiguous positive and ambiguous negative traits to favor themselves. Persons lower in self-esteem exploited ambiguous positive traits in their favor but did not exploit ambiguous negative traits. Across self-esteem level, ratings of friends versus peers were exaggerated when attributes were ambiguous. HSEs seemed to take advantage of ambiguity more consistently to present favorable self-views; people with low self-esteem used ambiguity to favor their friends but were reluctant to minimize their own faults.
Although myths and stereotypes about lottery winners tend to be negative (e.g., winners become extravagant), people continue to spend billions of dollars buying lottery tickets in the hope of winning. The authors applied findings from the self-enhancement literature to understand this paradox. Eighty college students received class credit for their participation, in which they read a scenario that asked them to imagine that they, or a target other, had won a lottery. Participants' responses to a 34-item questionnaire displayed a self-serving bias, such that changes to the self were expected to be more positive than changes to the other. For several items, this effect was moderated by the participant's gender. The present research indicates that the pervasive tendency to display self-serving biases can apply to future-oriented processing, an under-researched topic.
Identity through time: Constructing personal pasts and futures
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DOI: 10.1002/ejsp Better than average and improvement with time 353
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Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 343–353 (2008) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp Better than average and improvement with time 353
This principle may be applied to temporal comparisons as well. Recall is a reconstructive process, and insofar as people benefit from derogating past selves, such selves should be easier to reconstruct as the memories fade and become more ambiguous. As distant Copyright # Temporal comparison theory
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