From chump to champ: People's appraisals of their earlier and present selves.

Abstract

The authors present and test a theory of temporal self-appraisal. According to the theory, people can maintain their typically favorable self-regard by disparaging their distant and complimenting their recent past selves. This pattern of appraisals should be stronger for more important attributes because of their greater impact on self-regard and stronger for self-ratings than for ratings of other people. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that participants are more critical of distant past selves than of current selves, and Study 3 showed that this effect is obtained even when concurrent evaluations indicate no actual improvement. Studies 4 and 5 revealed that people perceived greater improvement for self than for acquaintances and siblings over the same time period. Study 6 provided support for the predicted effects of temporal distance and attribute importance on people's evaluation of past selves.

Phenomenal characteristics associated with projecting oneself back into the past and forward into the future: Influence of valence and temporal distance

“…In contrast, Newby-Clark and Ross (2003) reported that negative past events were not generated more slowly than positive past events; however, it is not clear whether the past experiences generated in that study belonged to the recent or distant past. People may attach more importance to positive aspects of their recent past self-concepts than to those of their more distant past self-concepts (Wilson & Ross, 2001), making them more motivated to think of positive rather than negative recent events. In the present study, positive past experiences were indeed rated as being more important for the current self-view than negative past experiences, but only when these experiences were recent.…”

“…Distant past events typically have fewer implications than recent past events for current well-being (Suh, Diener, & Fujita, 1996), so people may view negative aspects of their remote past more dispassionately. Furthermore, there is evidence indicating that people tend to flatter recent and deprecate distant former selves in order to enhance their current selfregard (Wilson & Ross, 2001). Accordingly, we predicted that constructing memories of positive experiences would be take less time than constructing memories of negative experiences, but only for the recent past.…”

Predictors of Posttraumatic Growth Following Bone Marrow Transplantation for Cancer.

“…Research has shown that the tendency to recall past attributes or performance in a negatively biased manner is relatively common (Wilson & Ross, 2001). Temporal comparison theory (Albert, 1977) posits that denigrating one's past attributes is common because it facilitates a basic desire to perceive progressive improvement in oneself over time in order to maintain or enhance self-esteem.…”

“…In addition, the current study sought to explore whether posttraumatic growth was differentially related to actual versus perceived changes in psychological distress over time. This last aim was guided by temporal comparison theory (Albert, 1977) and research suggesting that certain aspects of perceived growth are illusory and attributable to negatively biased recall (i.e., derogation) of past attributes or performance (McFarland & Alvaro, 2000;Wilson & Ross, 2001). …”

Looking back and looking ahead: Adult age differences in consistency of diachronous ratings of subjective well-being.

“…We conclude from our reading of the literature that research on diachronous selfevaluations, to date, is characterized by three emphases. First, most studies have been conducted in the field of self and personality characteristics (e.g., Fleeson & Baltes, 1998;Fleeson & Heckhausen, 1997;Ryff, 1991;Ryff & Heincke, 1983;Wilson & Ross, 2001).…”