Malle & Horowitz (1995)

Where does the tightness of negative self-views come from? At least two hypotheses were considered: (a) Traits are self-discovered, lead to behavior that confirms self-views; (b) Social feedback, focusing on the negative (perfectionism), points attention to negative behaviors and builds up negative affect with respect to self-views.

The influence of culture: We distinguished process (schema formation, tightness) from content (which trait -- e.g., shyness vs. extraversion -- counts as socially desirable) and found that cultures may very much differ in content but less so in process. We also found that "cohesive" cultures (living in confined spaces, having long history, high collectivism) probably exert more influence on the individual and may create even more tightness of negative self-views.

We touched briefly on body images, a case in which the majority of people have a negative self-views (in contrast to the personality domain where the majority, at least in Western cultures, has a positive view). Here too, negative self-views may be tighter but not because one stands out as a minority of sorts but stil because of the perfectionism to reach a certain standard (reinforced daily by media).

Alicke et al. (1997)

We identified the conditions under which the "genius effects" is most likely, discussed different populations (e.g., middle-aged adults), different domains (e.g., job skills) and were persuaded that the effect should still hold. A limiting condition is the past performance of the "other" -- if that person has usually done very poorly (example of a 1-7 football time), losing against them cannot be regulated by claiming they are a genius (Super Bowl bound). We also wondered whether the effect would last, say, after 2 hours, and if there might be a "rebound" (e.g., if the other, or anybody, does something stupid, would be rag on him or her?)

We distinguished exalting the other from basking in the other's reflected glory (BRIGing). BIRGing brings one closer to the other, whereas exalting distances oneself from the other. Also, BIRGing can add positive feelings to the baseline, whereas exalting the other is used to regulated a short-term dip in self-worth.

On Thursday we will start out with a brief discussion of the Bushman & Baumeister article.