Constantine Sedikides, PhD University of Southampton, UK
Keynote Lecture: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Wonderful Thursday, April 5th | 15:00-16:00 | University of Warsaw Library
What do people want to know about themselves? What kind of information do they solicit from others? What sort of feedback do they remember? These questions are addressed by self-evaluation motives and, in particular, self-enhancement/self-protection, self-assessment, and self-verification. The self-enhancement and self-protection motives refer to the pursuit of positive feedback and the avoidance of negative feedback. Self-assessment motivation refers to the pursuit of accurate feedback (be it positive or negative), whereas self-verification refers to the pursuit of feedback consistent with pre-existing self-beliefs (positive or negative). Adopting a comparative-testing framework, self-enhancement and self-protection motives are pit against self-assessment and self-verification motives in information-gathering settings and feedback situations. It is concluded the self-enhancement and self-protection are the predominant self-evaluation motivations. Support from this view is obtained from a cross-cultural perspective. Individual differences in self-enhancement will be considered. The talk will conclude with a consideration of the origins—societal, individual, evolutionary—of self-enhancement and self-protection motives.
