Have a personal or library account? Click to login
Moral vs Agentic Self-Superiority and Self-Esteem: The Role of Trait Properties Cover

Moral vs Agentic Self-Superiority and Self-Esteem: The Role of Trait Properties

Open Access
|Apr 2024

References

  1. Abele, A. E., & Brack, S. (2013). Preference for other persons’ traits is dependent on the kind of social relationship. Social Psychology, 44(2), 8494. DOI: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000138
  2. Abele, A. E., Ellemers, N., Fiske, S. T., Koch, A., & Yzerbyt, V. (2021). Navigating the social world: Toward an integrated framework for evaluating self, individuals, and groups. Psychological Review, 128(2), 290314. DOI: 10.1037/rev0000262
  3. Abele, A. E., & Hauke, N. (2020). Comparing the facets of the big two in global evaluation of self versus other people. European Journal of Social Psychology, 50(5), 969982. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2639
  4. Abele, A. E., Hauke, N., Peters, K., Louvet, E., Szymkow, A., & Duan, Y. (2016). Facets of the fundamental content dimensions: Agency with competence and assertiveness—Communion with warmth and morality. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1810. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01810
  5. Abele, A. E., Uchronski, M., Suitner, C., & Wojciszke, B. (2008). Towards an operationalization of the fundamental dimensions of agency and communion: Trait content ratings in five countries considering valence and frequency of word occurrence. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38(7), 12021217. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.575
  6. Alicke, M. D. (1985). Global self-evaluation as determined by the desirability and controllability of trait adjectives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(6), 16211630. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.49.6.1621
  7. Alicke, M. D., Klotz, M. L., Breitenbecher, D. L., Yurak, T. J., & Vredenburg, D. S. (1995). Personal contact, individuation, and the better-than-average effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(5), 804825. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.68.5.804
  8. Allison, S. T., Messick, D. M., & Goethals, G. R. (1989). On being better but not smarter than others: The Muhammad Ali Effect. Social Cognition, 7(3), 275295. DOI: 10.1521/soco.1989.7.3.275
  9. Brambilla, M., & Leach, C. W. (2014). On the importance of being moral: The distinctive role of morality in social judgment. Social Cognition, 32(4), 397408. DOI: 10.1521/soco.2014.32.4.397
  10. Brambilla, M., Rusconi, P., Sacchi, S., & Cherubini, P. (2011). Looking for honesty: The primary role of morality (vs. sociability and competence) in information gathering. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41(2), 135143. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.744
  11. Brown, J. D. (1986). Evaluations of self and others: Self-enhancement biases in social judgments. Social Cognition, 4(4), 353376. DOI: 10.1521/soco.1986.4.4.353
  12. Brown, J. D. (2012). Understanding the Better Than Average Effect: Motives (still) matter. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(2), 209219. DOI: 10.1177/0146167211432763
  13. Brown, J. D., & Cai, H. (2010). Self-esteem and trait importance moderate cultural differences in self-evaluations. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41(1), 116123. DOI: 10.1177/0022022109349509
  14. Christian, C., Lee, I., & Hodges, S. D. (2014). From East to West: Accessibility and bias in self-other comparative judgments. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 13911405. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672145493. DOI: 10.1177/0146167214549318
  15. Codol, J. (1975). On the so-called ‘superior conformity of the self’ behavior: Twenty experimental investigations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 5(4), 457501. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2420050404
  16. Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65(1), 333371. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115137
  17. Critcher, C. R., Helzer, E. G., & Dunning, D. (2011). Self-enhancement via redefinition: Defining social concepts to ensure positive views of the self. In M. D. Alicke & C. Sedikides (Eds.), Handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection (pp. 6991). Guilford.
  18. Cypryańska, M., Nezlek, J. B., Jaskółowska, A., & Formanowicz, M. M. (2017). Reconsidering research on self-humanizing: The importance of mean comparative judgments. The Journal of Social Psychology, 157(2), 129142. DOI: 10.1080/00224545.2017.1282849
  19. Daoud, J. I. (2017). Multicollinearity and regression analysis. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 949, 012009. DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/949/1/012009
  20. Diehl, M., Owen, S. K., & Youngblade, L. M. (2004). Agency and communion attributes in adults’ spontaneous self-representations. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 28(1), 115. DOI: 10.1080/01650250344000226
  21. Dunning, D., & Cohen, G. L. (1992). Egocentric definitions of traits and abilities in social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(3), 341355. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.63.3.341
  22. Dunning, D., & Hayes, A. F. (1996). Evidence for egocentric comparison in social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(2), 213229. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.213
  23. Dunning, D., Meyerowitz, J. A., & Holzberg, A. D. (1989). Ambiguity and self-evaluation: The role of idiosyncratic trait definitions in self-serving assessments of ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 10821090. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1082
  24. Emanuel, A. S., Howell, J. L., Taber, J. M., Ferrer, R. A., Klein, W. M., & Harris, P. R. (2018). Spontaneous self-affirmation is associated with psychological well-being: Evidence from a US national adult survey sample. Journal of Health Psychology, 23(1), 95102. DOI: 10.1177/1359105316643595
  25. Epley, N., & Dunning, D. (2000). Feeling “holier than thou”: Are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self- or social prediction? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 861875. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.861
  26. Felson, R. B. (1981). Ambiguity and bias in the self-concept. Social Psychology Quarterly, 44(1), 64. DOI: 10.2307/3033866
  27. Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117140. DOI: 10.1177/001872675400700202
  28. Fiedler, K., Harris, C., & Schott, M. (2018). Unwarranted inferences from statistical mediation tests – An analysis of articles published in 2015. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 95102. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2017.11.008
  29. Franck, E., De Raedt, R., Barbez, C., & Rosseel, Y. (2008). Psychometric properties of the Dutch Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Psychologica Belgica, 48(1), 2535. DOI: 10.5334/pb-48-1-25
  30. Gebauer, J. E., Riketta, M., Broemer, P., & Maio, G. R. (2008). “How much do you like your name?” An implicit measure of global self-esteem. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(5), 13461354. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2008.03.016
  31. Gebauer, J. E., Wagner, J., Sedikides, C., & Neberich, W. (2013). Agency-communion and self-esteem relations are moderated by culture, religiosity, age, and sex: Evidence for the “self-centrality breeds self-enhancement” principle. Journal of Personality, 81(3), 261275. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2012.00807.x
  32. Gigerenzer, G. (2021). Axiomatic rationality and ecological rationality. Synthese, 198(4), 35473564. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-019-02296-5
  33. Gigerenzer, G. (2023, 3 November). Rationality for mortals. Paper presented at the Collogium “Inductive reasoning in social contexts: Festschrift for Joachim I. Krueger”, Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland, 3–5 November 2023.
  34. Goodwin, G. P., Piazza, J., & Rozin, P. (2014). Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(1), 148168. DOI: 10.1037/a0034726
  35. Hampson, S. E., John, O. P., & Goldberg, L. R. (1986). Category breadth and hierarchical structure in personality: Studies of asymmetries in judgments of trait implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(1), 3754. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.51.1.37
  36. Harris, M. A., Donnellan, M. B., & Trzesniewski, K. H. (2018). The Lifespan Self-Esteem Scale: Initial validation of a new measure of global self-esteem. Journal of Personality Assessment, 100(1), 8495. DOI: 10.1080/00223891.2016.1278380
  37. Haslam, N., Bain, P., Douge, L., Lee, M., & Bastian, B. (2005). More human than you: Attributing humanness to self and others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(6), 937950. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.937
  38. Haslam, N., Bastian, B., Laham, S., & Loughnan, S. (2012). Humanness, dehumanization, and moral psychology. In M. Mikulincer & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), The social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil. (pp. 203218). APA. DOI: 10.1037/13091-011
  39. Hauke, N. (2017). “I want to be assertive and to appear moral”-the relative centrality of agency versus communion in self-concept [Doctoral thesis]. Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.
  40. Hayes, A. F. (2018). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. Guilford.
  41. Heck, P. R., & Krueger, J. I. (2015). Self-enhancement diminished. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(5), 10031020. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000105
  42. Heck, P. R., & Krueger, J. I. (2016). Social perception of self-enhancement bias and error. Social Psychology, 47(6), 327339. DOI: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000287
  43. Hoorens, V. (1996). Self-favoring biases for positive and negative characteristics: Independent phenomena? Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 15(1), 5367. DOI: 10.1521/jscp.1996.15.1.53
  44. Hoorens, V. (2014). What’s really in a Name-Letter Effect? Name-letter preferences as indirect measures of self-esteem. European Review of Social Psychology, 25(1), 228262. DOI: 10.1080/10463283.2014.980085
  45. Hoorens, V., Dekkers, G., & Deschrijver, E. (2021). Gender bias in student evaluations of teaching: Students’ self-affirmation reduces the bias by lowering evaluations of male professors. Sex Roles, 84(1–2), 3448. DOI: 10.1007/s11199-020-01148-8
  46. Hoorens, V., Scambler, S., Deschrijver, E., Coulson, N. S., Speed, E., & Asimakopoulou, K. (2022). Comparative optimism, self-superiority, egocentric impact perception and health information seeking: A COVID-19 study. Psychologica Belgica, 62(1), 152167. DOI: 10.5334/pb.1139
  47. Hoorens, V., Van Damme, C., & Sedikides, C. (2019). The hubris hypothesis: People particularly dislike explicitly comparative braggers from their ingroup. Social Cognition, 37(4), 405424. DOI: 10.1521/soco.2019.37.4.405
  48. Jessop, D. C., Harris, P. R., & Gibbons, T. (2023). Individual differences in spontaneous self-affirmation predict well-being. Self and Identity, 22(2), 247275. DOI: 10.1080/15298868.2022.2079711
  49. Johnson, P. O., & Fay, L. C. (1950). The Johnson-Neyman technique, its theory and application. Psychometrika, 15(4), 349367. DOI: 10.1007/bf02288864
  50. Klar, Y., & Giladi, E. E. (1999). Are most people happier than their peers, or are they just happy? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(5), 586595. DOI: 10.1177/0146167299025005004
  51. Krueger, J. I. (2003). Return of the ego—Self-referent information as a filter for social prediction: Comment on Karniol (2003). Psychological Review, 110(3), 585590. DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.110.3.585
  52. Krueger, J. I., Freestone, D., & MacInnis, M. L. M. (2013). Comparisons in research and reasoning: Toward an integrative theory of social induction. New Ideas in Psychology, 31(2), 7386. DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2012.11.002
  53. Krueger, J. I., & Funder, D. C. (2004). Towards a balanced social psychology: Causes, consequences, and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(3), 313327. DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X04000081
  54. Krueger, J. I., Heck, P. R., & Asendorpf, J. B. (2017). Self-enhancement: Conceptualization and Assessment. Collabra: Psychology, 3(1), 28. DOI: 10.1525/collabra.91
  55. Krueger, J., & Mueller, R. A. (2002). Unskilled, unaware, or both? The better-than-average heuristic and statistical regression predict errors in estimates of own performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(2), 180188. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.82.2.180
  56. Krueger, J. I., & Wright, J. C. (2011). Measurement of self-enhancement (and self-protection). In M. D. Alicke & C. Sedikides (Eds.), Handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection (pp. 472494). Guilford.
  57. Kruger, J. (1999). Lake Wobegon be gone! The “below-average effect” and the egocentric nature of comparative ability judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(2), 221232. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.77.2.221
  58. McFarland, C., & Miller, D. T. (1990). Judgments of self-other similarity: Just like other people, only more so. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16(3), 475484. DOI: 10.1177/0146167290163006
  59. Melnikoff, D. E., & Bailey, A. H. (2018). Preferences for moral vs. immoral traits in others are conditional. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(4), E592E600. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1714945115
  60. Montoya, A. K., & Hayes, A. F. (2017). Two-condition within-participant statistical mediation analysis: A path-analytic framework. Psychological Methods, 22(1), 627. DOI: 10.1037/met0000086
  61. Mussweiler, T. (2003). Comparison processes in social judgment: Mechanisms and consequences. Psychological Review, 110(3), 472489. DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.110.3.472
  62. Newman, G. E., Bloom, P., & Knobe, J. (2014). Value judgments and the true self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(2), 203216. DOI: 10.1177/0146167213508791
  63. Pahl, S., & Eiser, J. R. (2005). Valence, comparison focus and self-positivity biases: Does it matter whether people judge positive or negative traits? Experimental Psychology, 52(4), 303309. DOI: 10.1027/1618-3169.52.4.303
  64. Phalet, K., & Poppe, E. (1997). Competence and morality dimensions of national and ethnic stereotypes: A study in six eastern-European countries. European Journal of Social Psychology, 27(6), 703723. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199711/12)27:6<;703::AID-EJSP841>3.0.CO;2-K
  65. Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183pjjh. DOI: 10.1515/9781400876136
  66. Sedikides, C. (2021). Self-construction, self-protection, and self-enhancement: A homeostatic model of identity protection. Psychological Inquiry, 32(4), 197221. DOI: 10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004812
  67. Sedikides, C., & Alicke, M. D. (2012). Self-enhancement and self-protection motives. In R. M. Ryan (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of human motivation (pp. 303322). Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399820.013.0017
  68. Sedikides, C., Alicke, M. D., & Skowronski, J. J. (2021). On the utility of the self in social perception: An egocentric tactician model. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 63, (pp. 247298). Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/bs.aesp.2020.11.005
  69. Sedikides, C., & Strube, M. J. (1997). Self-evaluation: To thine own self be good, to thine own self be sure, to thine own self be true, and to thine own self be better. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 29, 209269. DOI: 10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60018-0
  70. Strohminger, N., Knobe, J., & Newman, G. (2017). The true self: A psychological concept distinct from the self. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(4), 551560. DOI: 10.1177/1745691616689495
  71. Strohminger, N., & Nichols, S. (2014). The essential moral self. Cognition, 131(1), 159171. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.12.005
  72. Tappin, B. M., & McKay, R. T. (2017). The illusion of moral superiority. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(6), 623631. DOI: 10.1177/1948550616673878
  73. Thielmann, I., Hilbig, B. E., & Zettler, I. (2020). Seeing me, seeing you: Testing competing accounts of assumed similarity in personality judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(1), 172198. DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000222
  74. Unkelbach, C., Alves, H., Baldwin, M., Crusius, J., Diel, K., Galinsky, A. D., … & Mussweiler, T. (2023). Relativity in social cognition: Basic processes and novel applications of social comparisons. European Review of Social Psychology, online ahead of print. DOI: 10.1080/10463283.2022.2161043
  75. Van Damme, C., Deschrijver, E., Van Geert, E., & Hoorens, V. (2017). When praising yourself insults others: Self-superiority claims provoke aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(7), 10081019. DOI: 10.1177/0146167217703951
  76. Van Damme, C., Hoorens, V., & Sedikides, C. (2016). Why self-enhancement provokes dislike: The Hubris Hypothesis and the aversiveness of explicit self-superiority claims. Self and Identity, 15(2), 173190. DOI: 10.1080/15298868.2015.1095232
  77. Van Lange, P. A. M., & Sedikides, C. (1998). Being more honest but not necessarily more intelligent than others: Generality and explanations for the Muhammad Ali effect. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28(4), 675680. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199807/08)28:4<;675::AID-EJSP883>3.0.CO;2-5
  78. Wojciszke, B. (2005). Morality and competence in person- and self-perception. European Review of Social Psychology, 16(1), 155188. DOI: 10.1080/10463280500229619
  79. Wojciszke, B., & Abele, A. E. (2008). The primacy of communion over agency and its reversals in evaluations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38(7), 11391147. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.549
  80. Wojciszke, B., Dowhyluk, M., & Jaworski, M. (1998). Moral competence-related traits: How do they differ? Polish Psychological Bulletin, 29(4), 283294.
  81. Xiao, Y., Wong, K., Cheng, Q., & Yip, P. S. F. (2021). Understanding the better than average effect on altruism. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 562846. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.562846
  82. Ybarra, O., Park, H., Stanik, C., & Lee, D. S. (2012). Self-judgment and reputation monitoring as a function of the fundamental dimensions, temporal perspective, and culture: Self-judgment, communion, & agency. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(2), 200209. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.854
  83. Zell, E., Strickhouser, J. E., Sedikides, C., & Alicke, M. D. (2020). The better-than-average effect in comparative self-evaluation: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146(2), 118149. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000218
  84. Ziano, I., Mok, P. Y. (Cora), & Feldman, G. (2021). Replication and extension of Alicke (1985) Better-Than-Average Effect for desirable and controllable traits. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(6), 10051017. DOI: 10.1177/1948550620948973
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/spo.72 | Journal eISSN: 2752-5341
Language: English
Submitted on: Dec 1, 2023
|
Accepted on: Mar 25, 2024
|
Published on: Apr 17, 2024
Published by: Ubiquity Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2024 Yujing Liang, Aisha Dondeyne, Sara Hodges, Vera Hoorens, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.