The Self-Enhancement and Self-Consistency Theories

self-- 30 self--

concept, in his view, is unconditional positive regard; -a deep and genuine caring by others, uncontaminated by judgements or evaluations of our thoughts, feelings, or behaviours (Rogers & Sanford, 1984, p.1379). With unconditional positive regard, the self-concept carries no conditions of worth and in this position there is congruence between self and experience, and the person is psychologically healthy. So he saw the congruence as being equal to psychological adjustment or psychological health (Frick, 1971, p. 91).

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degree of personal satisfaction or frustration the individual experiences in a particular situation or period of time. According to the theory, this need also varies across individuals.

2.2.5.2 Self-Consistency Theory

Self-consistency theory claims that an individual’s actions, attitudes, and his receptivity to information from other people are strongly affected by his tendency to maintain a consistency state on self-evaluation (Jones, 1973). The idea for this theory came from Lecky (1945). The theory claims that the individual strives constantly to maintain consistency with his own self-esteem and several writers have agreed that this is pervasive of our behaviour (Rogers, 1951; Festinger, 1957; Argyle, 1967). According to the theory, the individuals with high self-esteem will react more favourably to approval than disapproval, however, individuals with low self-esteem will react more favourably to disapproval than approval. Briefly, self-consistency theory argues that the individual adjusts his cognitions and orients his relations with others, so as to maintain similarity between his or her evaluations of himself and those he receives from others. The theory predicts that we will accept the evaluations of others only when they are in accord with our existing self-evaluations, regardless of whether these evaluations are favourable or unfavourable.

Comparing the self-consistency theory with the self-enhancement theory, Shrauger &

Lund (1975) supported the consistency theory by evaluating findings of studies. On the other hand, Wylie (1979) found that the results generally support self-enhancement rather than self-consistency theory. However, a number of studies have found support for both of the two opposing theories (Fitch, 1970; Jones, 1973). It still seems that there is little resolution of the self-enhancement versus self-consistency controversy, some results favour one theory while other results support its rival. Both theories, however, do provide an explanation for evaluations of individuals.

- 32 - 2.2.6 Specific Self-Esteem Theories

The theories briefly outlined above all contributed to the concept of self or self-esteem at different levels. However, the work of Rosenberg (1965) and Coopersmith (1967) probably contributed the most to theoretical and empirical research on self-esteem.

Therefore in this section the theories of Rosenberg and Coopersmith will be outlined.

2.2.6.1 Morris Rosenberg

One of the major empirical studies of the antecedents of self-esteem is the work of Morris Rosenberg, a sociologist. His investigation represents an important movement in explicating many of the social conditions associated with enhanced and diminished self-esteem. Information on these conditions and the subjective experience of esteem was obtained from an attitude survey administered to over five thousand high school students. Rosenberg (1965) assumes that all individuals have attitudes towards all sorts of objects, and self is just one of these objects. Though he claims there is no qualitative difference in the characteristics of attitudes toward the self and attitudes toward the other things, he underlines that there are quantitative differences between attitudes about self-attitudes and about other things (p.5-6). Rosenberg (1979) has described global self-esteem as the overall negative or positive attitude toward the self. His definition of self-esteem, like “self-acceptance, self-respect, feelings of self-worth” (p.

31) has been used in the majority of American studies. Rosenberg saw self-image as a global property of personality. According to Rosenberg, all self-attitudes have an evaluative dimension which produces “estimation”. He used the term of self-estimation “to indicate how the individual actually rates himself with regard to a particular characteristic” (1965, p. 246). Every individual has many self-estimates which are not equally important for him/her. The criteria here are the self-value of the attitude. The term, self-value, means “to indicate how much he cares about the quality”

(1965, p. 246). Each self-estimate is weighted by its corresponding self-value and the

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overall self-esteem of the individual represents some kind of psychological summation of these specific weighted self-evaluations. For Rosenberg, self-esteem is the total of the individual’s thoughts and feelings with reference to himself as an object (1979).

Rosenberg (1985) equated self-esteem with the feeling of being satisfied with oneself, believing that one is a person of worth. According to him, the individual with high self-esteem does not necessarily feel superior to others, does not necessarily have feelings of perfection, and does not necessarily reflect feelings of high competence or efficacy. The individual with high self-esteem simply respects himself and considers himself a worthy personality in his community. Low esteem, on the other hand, implies self-rejection, self dissatisfaction and self-contempt. The individual lacks respect for the self he observes. According to Rosenberg, self-esteem is a fairly unidimensional phenomenon -an attitude about a specific object- but for Coopersmith, it is more complex, involving self-evaluation, defensive reactions, and various manifestations of these processes. Rosenberg (1965), like Coopersmith, stressed the importance of positive identification with parental figures in the formation of high self-esteem.

However, Rosenberg, unlike Coopersmith, saw early self-definition as not necessarily advantageous, but as possibly leading to self-consciousness and the inability of the individual to accept himself as he is. Rosenberg maintained that, although the low self-esteem person is consistently seen as docile, yielding and submissive, he rejects being submissive as much as he rejects power and leadership. For Rosenberg, the main motivating forces behind low self-esteem are “fear of failure” and “fear of interpersonal criticism”, and these fears very often lead to failure and criticism. Rosenberg maintained that the child does not have any control over his environment and, since his self-image is largely unstructured, influence from parents and teachers will be strongly pervasive.

- 34 - 2.2.6.2 Stanley Coopersmith

Coopersmith (1967) was concerned with the antecedents of self-esteem in children. His self-esteem inventory (SEI) has been used in many studies all over the world. According to the review of Hansford & Hattie (1982) which was based on a total of 77 studies, the Coopersmith SEI was the one most commonly used (over 30%) and among 58 tests, relating to self was identified during their analysis. Coopersmith defined self-esteem as follows: “The evaluation which the individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to himself. It expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval and indicates the extent to which the individual believes himself to be capable, significant, successful and worthy. In short, self-esteem is a personal judgement of worthiness that is expressed in the attitudes the individual holds toward himself” (pp. 4-5). Coopersmith’s definition of self-esteem looks too general rather than specific. As Cassidy (1991) points out, “it is difficult to imagine how one might arrive at a precise operational definition of self-esteem” (p. 66). One of the dimensions of self which form the basis of self-esteem is evaluation and esteem involves evaluative attitudes about the self. He refers to self-evaluation as “a judgmental process in which the individual examines his performance, capacities, and attributes according to his personal standards and values, and arrives at a decision of his own worthiness” (pp. 6-7). He separated the observation of self-esteem into two parts, subjective expression and behavioural expression (1959, p.87).

Subjective expression includes the individual’s self-perception and self-description;

behavioural expression is based on the individual’s prior positive and negative experiences which are also observed and reported by others. According to Coopersmith, description of a person’s self-esteem involves a composite index, reflecting both aspects of self-evaluative behaviour (Coopersmith, 1959, p. 93). Coopersmith (1967) identifies four variables which determine the individual’s self-esteem: successes, values, aspirations, and defences. Coopersmith (1967) says “the process of self-judgement

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derives from a subjective judgement of success, with that appraisal weighted according to the value placed upon different areas of capacity and performance, measured against a person’s personal goals and standards and filtered through his capacity to defend himself against presumed or actual occurrences of failure” (p. 242). For the choice of values, Coopersmith (1967) argues that we cannot alter our values at will in order to match our various achievements. Our values are principally those of the community to which we belong and we are unlikely to use independently derived standards as a major criteria for judging our own worth. Although individuals are theoretically free to select their values, the social interactions generally lead to acceptance of group standards and values. According to him, the general social norms of an individual’s group become internalised as self-values, so that self-judgements are made in regard to them rather than in regard to more private and more independently derived standards (pp. 244-245).

The third variable, aspirations, determines the individual’s self-esteem and Coopersmith (1967) points out that “personal aspirations reflect personal expectations rather than more general standards or vague secret hopes” (p. 246). Defences is the fourth variable in Coopersmith’s (1967) formulation and determines the individual’s self-esteem.

According to him, individuals differ in their aspirations and values and they also differ in their ability to deal with failure and uncertainty. He suggests that individuals with high self-esteem are theoretically better able to defend themselves against inner and external sources of distress.