Escaping the Self: The Moderating Effect of Self-Complexity

Abstract

The present experiment measured the speed with which people escaped from a highly self-focusing situation after an initial failure or success. Consistent with predictions, the fastest escapes were found among people who were low in self-complexity and who experienced initial failure. These results support the notion that high self-complexity serves as a buffer against the threatening implications of failure, presumably because many aspects of the self-concept remain untouched by the failure. Additional findings showed that failure impaired the subsequent performance (in writing an essay about the self of people with low self-complexity, but it actually improved the performance of people with high self-complexity. These results suggest that an identical failure may have different levels of global aversiveness and may elicit different coping styles as a function of self-complexity.

Entrepreneurial Identity

“…More specifically, people may try to get away from the disconnect between their present and future work identities by decreasing their self-awareness and meaningful thought-that is, they can put themselves in a numb state (Dixon and Baumeister 1991). Similarly, cognitive deconstruction after hitting rock bottom is a state with no emotions (Pennebaker 1989;Twenge et al 2003) because people actively evade their emotions (Baumeister 1990;Stillman et al 2009), and it removes meaning from awareness as well as "blots out threatening implications .…”

Effort or Escape: Self-concept Structure Determines Self-regulatory Behavior

“…The role of self-complexity in self-regulation was explored by Dixon and Baumeister (1991). In their study, participants who had received either success or failure feedback were told to write an essay in a room with a large mirror, which either faced them (high self-focus) or was turned away from them (low self-focus).…”

“…Dixon and Baumeister's (1991) interpretation of the behavior of those lower in self-complexity was that they chose to escape self-awareness more quickly because a greater proportion of their selfconcept was affected by the failure. However, if an opportunity to reduce the discrepancy was available, might those lower in self-complexity have exerted effort rather than escaping?…”

“…The participants in Dixon and Baumeister's (1991) study did not have the opportunity to work toward their goal following failure, which meant individuals with lower self-complexity, who have greater difficulty mentally escaping thoughts about failure (Renaud & McConnell, 2002), could only reduce the saliency of the self-discrepancy by escaping self-awareness. However, if an alternative course of action was available that permitted improving their current state in the wake of negative feedback, it is possible that people with lower self-complexity could have responded by exerting effort through practice rather than escaping self-awareness.…”

Wielość ról a poczucie tożsamości u kobiet we wczesnym i późniejszym okresie dorosłości

“…Kwestia adaptacyjności złożoności Ja była przedmiotem intensywnych badań, lecz nie doczekała się rozstrzygnięcia. Część rezultatów wskazuje na pozytywny związek złożo-ności Ja z przystosowaniem (Cohen, Pane i Smith, 1997;Dixon i Baumeister, 1991;Niedenthal, Setterlund i Wherry, 1992), część sugeruje negatywną zależ-ność (Brown i Rafaeli, 2007;Jordan i Cole, 1996), a inne implikują brak związku (Campbell, Assanand i Di Paula, 2003;Gramzow, Sedikides, Panter i Insko, 2000). Tak znaczna rozbieżność wyników badań skłoniła badaczy (Locke, 2003;Pilarska i Suchańska, 2013, 2015Rafaeli-Mor, Gotlib i Revelle, 1999;Woolfolk i in., 1995) do poddania w wątpliwość miary Linville i zainicjowała badania regulacyjnych funkcji składowych złożoności Ja, tj.…”