Most people feel that self-esteem is important. It is difficult, if not impossible, for people to remain indifferent to information that bears on their own self-esteem, such as being told that they are incompetent, attractive, untrustworthy, or lovable. Increases and decreases in self-esteem generally bring strong emotional reactions. Moreover, these fluctuations are often coincident with major successes and failures in life. Subjective

Self-concept clarity (SCC) references a structural aspect oftbe self-concept: the extent to which selfbeliefs are clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and stable. This article reports the SCC Scale and examines (a) its correlations with self-esteem (SE), the Big Five dimensions, and self-focused attention (Study l); (b) its criterion validity (Study 2); and (c) its cultural boundaries (Study 3). Low SCC was independently associated with high Neuroticism, low SE, low Conscientiousness, low Agreeableness, chronic self-analysis, low internal state awareness, and a ruminative form of self-focused attention. The SCC Scale predicted unique variance in 2 external criteria: the stability and consistency of self-descriptions. Consistent with theory on Eastern and Western selfconstruals, Japanese participants exhibited lower levels of SCC and lower correlations between SCC and SE than did Canadian participants. Within the last couple of decades, psychologists' view of the self-concept has undergone a dramatic transformation (Markus & Wurf, 1987). Early researchers treated the self-concept as a unitary, monolithic entity-a stable, generalized view of the self-and typically focused their research efforts on a single aspect of the self-concept, self-esteem. Contemporary researchers, in contrast, rely on a multifaceted, dynamic construal in which the self-concept is defined as a cognitive schema-an organized knowledge structure that contains traits, values, episodic and semantic memories about the self and controls the processing of self-relevant information (e.g.,

A distinction between ruminative and reflective types of private self-attentiveness is introduced and evaluated with respect to L. R. Goldberg's (1982) list of 1,710 English trait adjectives (Study 1), the five-factor model of personality (FFM) and A. Fenigstein, M. F. Scheier, and A. Buss's (1975) Self-Consciousness Scales (Study 2), and previously reported correlates and effects of private selfconsciousness (PrSC; Studies 3 and 4). Results suggest that the PrSC scale confounds two unrelated, motivationally distinct dispositions-rumination and reflection-and that this confounding may account for the "self-absorption paradox" implicit in PrSC research findings: Higher PrSC scores are associated with more accurate and extensive self-knowledge yet higher levels of psychological distress. The potential of the FFM to provide a comprehensive framework for conceptualizing self-attentive dispositions, and to order and integrate research findings within this domain, is discussed.

This article examines the association between evaluative and knowledge components of the self. Four studies tested the hypothesis that the self-concepts of low-self-esteem (LSE) people are characterized by less clarity or certainty than those of high-self-esteem (HSE) people, LSE SS exhibited less extremity and self-reported confidence when rating themselves on bipolar trait adjectives (Study 1), less temporal stability in their trait ratings over a 2-month interval (Study 2), less congruence between their self-concepts and their subsequent perceptions of situation-specific behavior and memory for prior behavior (Study 3), and less internal consistency, lower self-rated confidence, and longer reaction times when making me/not me responses to pairs of opposite traits (Study 4). Alternative accounts of the results and the implications of self-concept clarity for understanding the pervasive impact of self-esteem on behavior are discussed.Research on individual differences in self-esteem has a long, prolific history in psychology. Empirical studies now number in the thousands, and the number continues to expand at a remarkable rate. Although several reasons could be cited for the topic's popularity, perhaps the most important is that self-esteem has been shown to have a pervasive impact on human behavior. Research has demonstrated, for example, that individual differences in self-esteem affect behavior in such diverse content areas as competition, conformity, attraction, causal attribution, achievement, and helping (see Wells & Marwell, 1976;Wylie, 1974Wylie, ,1979.One area in which self-esteem appears to exert especially powerful effects is with respect to people's reactions to self-relevant feedback or information (e.&, Jones, 1973). Affective reactions to such feedback adhere to a self-enhancement formulation; because people lower in self-esteem have greater enhancement needs, they experience more pain in response to negative feedback and more pleasure in response to positive feedback. However, cognitive reactions-acceptance or rejection of the feedback as a veridical reflection of the self-generally conform to a consistency formulation (Shrauger, 1975;Swann, Griffin, Predmore, & Gaines, 1987). When measures such as perceived accuracy, attributions, or diagnosticity are examined, the data typically yield a main effect for feedback (positive feedback is generally more accepted than negative feedback) and a Self-Esteem X Feedback interaction; low self-esteem (LSE)

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.