Research on the relation between the structure of the self-concept and psychological adjustment has produced seemingly inconsistent findings. Some research suggests that greater pluralism in self-concept structure enhances adjustment, whereas other research suggests that greater unity in the structure enhances adjustment. Four studies examined the relations among measures of self-concept structure and their relations with adjustment. The measures of self-concept structure included two that we viewed as reflecting self-concept pluralism (self-complexity and self-concept compartmentalization) and four that we viewed as reflecting self-concept unity (self-concept differentiation, self-concept clarity, self-discrepancies, and the average correlation among participants' self-aspects). The measures of self-concept pluralism were unrelated to one another, were unrelated to the measures of self-concept unity, and were unrelated to the measures of adjustment. The measures of self-concept unity were moderately related to one another and were moderately related to the measures of adjustment.
In 2 studies, the authors examined self-esteem, persistence, and rumination in the face of failure. Study 1 manipulated degree of failure and availability of goal alternatives. When an alternative was available, high self-esteem (HSE) participants persisted more than low self-esteem (LSE) participants after a single failure, but less after repeated failure. When no alternative was available, no self-esteem differences in persistence emerged. LSE participants ruminated more than HSE participants. Study 2 examined persistence and rumination for 10 personal goals across an academic year. HSE participants were better calibrated (higher within-subject correlations between perceived progress and persistence across goals), had higher overall levels of persistence, higher grade point averages, and lower levels of rumination than LSE participants. Although traditional views that emphasize the tenacious persistence of HSE individuals need revision, HSE people appear more effective in self-regulating goal-directed behavior.
The authors of this chapter view perfectionism as a constellation of selfbeliefs that reside in the self-concept. Those self-beliefs are important to other components of the self-concept, motivation, and goal pursuit. Theories involving the self-concept have changed dramatically during the past 20 years or so (Markus & Wurf, 1987). Whereas early theorists tended to view the self-concept as a unitary, monolithic entity and typically focused their research on a single aspect of the self-concept (e.g., self-esteem), present-day theorists rely on a multifaceted construal that generally equates the self-concept with a cognitive schema. In the contemporary literature on the self, the self-concept is conceptualized as a dynamic, extensive, organized knowledge structure that contains beliefs, evaluations, and memories about the self and controls the processing of information relevant to the self (e.g., Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984;Kihlstrom et al., 1988).The current conceptualization of the self-concept allows one to distinguish the contents of this schema from its structural aspects. The contents are vast and include, for example, beliefs about one's specific attributes (e.g., personality traits, physical characteristics, and abilities) as well as one's roles, values, motives, standards, and personal goals. Also resident in the contents are beliefs that involve evaluation of the self, such as the perceived positivity of one's specific attributes and self-esteem, which is a global self-evaluation that is the product of viewing the self as an attitude object.Structural characteristics of the self-concept generally focus on how the contents are organized. Examples include the number of independent dimensions underlying the organization (Linville, 1985(Linville, , 1987; the extent to which the dimensions are psychologically integrated (Donahue, Robins, Roberts, & John, 1993); the extent to which positive and negative selfaspects reside in different dimensions (Showers, 1992); and the extent t o which the contents are clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and temporally stable (Campbell, 1990).In this chapter, we first articulate a set of self-beliefs that define per-181
Psychologists' view of the self-concept has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past two decades (Markus & Wurf, 1987). Early researchers treated the self-concept as a unitary, monolithic entity and typically focused their research efforts on a single aspect: self-esteem (Wylie, 1979). In contrast, contemporary theorists rely on a multifaceted, dynamic construal in which the self-concept is defined as a cognitive schema-that is, as an organized knowledge structure that contains beliefs about one's attributes as well as episodic and semantic memories about the self and that controls the processing of self-relevant information (e.g., Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984;Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984). This conceptualization allows for a distinction between the contents of the self-concept and its structural features.The contents of the self-concept generally refer to an individual's beliefs about the self. These include beliefs about one's attributes (e.g., personality traits, abilities, physical features, values, goals, and roles), how an 67
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