The Self at Work: Fundamental Theory and Research

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D. Lance Ferris and Constantine Sedikides

The question of what motivates humans has been a central preoccupation of philosophers and psychologists, with numerous explanations given over the centuries (Sedikides & Gregg, 2008; Sedikides & Strube, 1997). Yet one of the most generative and intriguing explanations is also one of the simplest: people are motivated to feel positively about themselves and to have others view them positively. This is known as the self-enhancement motive. In both social and industrial-organizational/organizational behavior (IO/OB) research, this motive has provided a basis for many studies on, for example, why employees behave the way they do, rate others the way they do, react the way they do, and form attitudes the way they do. In fact, the self-enhancement motive, and its manifestations or strategies, have been argued to be so dominant within IO/OB that they have been proffered as a paradigm for the field (Pfeffer & Fong, 2005).

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the self-enhancement motive, noting some of the many phenomena to which it has been linked as well as touching on the debate over whether self-enhancement is “good” or “bad.” We next discuss how self-enhancement has been used (and, at times, misused) in IO/OB research, including how it has typically been assessed, and we note contributions of IO/OB research to the self-enhancement literature. Finally, we consider future research directions for self-enhancement in IO/OB research.

Self-Enhancement: An Overview

Self-enhancement is the principle that people desire to view the self, and to have others view the self, in the most positive light possible. This principle manifests itself in a bifurcated motive: to increase the positivity with which the self is viewed and to protect the self from threat. These motives are typically referred to as self-enhancement and self-protection, respectively, but ultimately serve the broader goal of viewing the self (and being viewed by others) positively. The “self” that is enhanced or protected by these motives is the self-concept, the “knowledge about personality traits, abilities, values, beliefs, expectations, motives, life events, relationships with significant others, possessions, and appearance” (Sedikides & Strube, 1997, p. 212), or, more broadly “the totality of interrelated yet distinct psychological phenomena that either underlie, causally interact with, or depend upon reflexive consciousness” (Sedikides & Gregg, 2003, p. 110). The elements of the self-concept that are particularly enhanced or protected are central (important or defining) rather than peripheral to the individual (James, 1907; see also: Ferris, Brown, Lian, & Keeping, 2009; Gebauer, Wagner, Sedikides, & Neberich, 2013; Rosenberg, 1965). We will make this “centrality” assumption throughout this chapter.

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The bifurcated motive is perhaps best conceptualized as the manifestation of hedonistic desires to approach pleasure (i.e., self-enhancement motive) and to avoid pain (i.e., self-protection motive) in the self-evaluation domain (Alicke & Sedikides, 2009; Gregg & Sedikides, in press; Sedikides, 2012). The motive is used to inform other theories; indeed, it forms the bedrock for theories such as terror management theory (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004), self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988), cognitive dissonance theory (Stone & Cooper, 2001), symbolic self-completion theory (Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1982), social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; see also Van Knippenberg & Hogg, this volume), the self-evaluation maintenance model (Tesser, 1988), self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1997; see also Vancouver, Alicke, & Halper, this volume), self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987), and contingencies of self-worth model (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001). Yet, the motive does not constitute a theory per se. This may be difficult to reconcile with IO/OB researchers’ preference for explicit and quantifiable theories (Hambrick, 2007; Lian, Yam, Ferris, & Brown, 2017), as there is not a single boxes-and-arrows model illustrating what the motive predicts, although such models can be derived for separate phenomena (and inductive models exist, as we note later).

Despite this lack of a formal theoretical framework, self-enhancement research has been broad and unfettered. As Sedikides and Strube (1997, p. 214) put it:

Empirical tests of the self-enhancement perspective are characterized by remarkable diversity in the choice of independent variables, dependent variables, and experimental designs. This diversity stems from the lack of a single guiding theoretical proposition or a single primary moderator that would dictate a common methodology. Instead, a general assumption that humans are self-bolstering or self-protective underlies the research.

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A wide variety of phenomena, then, has been linked to the self-enhancement and self-protection motives. This variety has been labeled as a “self-zoo,” with each phenomenon symbolizing a different specimen (Tesser, Crepaz, Beach, Cornell, & Collins, 2000) but all representing examples of what is known as the strategies that individuals implement to view or present the self in the best possible light. These strategies are cognitive (e.g., remembering only positive things about oneself) and behavioral (e.g., directly asking for positive feedback).

Self-Enhancement Strategies: Defensiveness, Positivity Embracement, Favorable Construals, and Self-Affirming Reflections

Research has suggested different taxonomies to provide some semblance of order to self-enhancement strategies that comprise the “self-zoo” (Alicke, Zell, & Guenther, 2013; Sedikides & Gregg, 2008; Taylor & Brown, 1988). In this chapter, we follow the taxonomy developed by Hepper, Gramzow, and Sedikides (2010; see also Hepper, Sedikides, & Cai, 2013, for cross-cultural evidence). Their taxonomy was the first to use factor analysis to deduce which strategies co-occur, and hence which strategies may be fruitfully grouped together into superordinate self-enhancement strategy categories. Specifically, their analysis suggests four strategy categories: defensiveness, positivity embracement, favorable construals, and self-affirming reflections (Table 5.1). Although this taxonomy is not perfect (as indicated by a relatively poor fit for their confirmatory factor model), it provides some empirical basis for distinguishing among the various self-enhancement and self-protection strategies.

Defensiveness represents cognitive and behavioral strategies that protect the self from threats (either real or anticipated), and thus primarily represents strategies that serve the self-protection motive. For example, individuals engage in self-handicapping whereby they set up obstacles to performing well (e.g., drinking before an exam) so as to have something to blame in the case of failure (Jones & Berglas, 1978) or engage in defensive pessimism whereby they try to lower expectations of their performance (Norem & Cantor, 1986) so that they reduce disappointment in the case of bad news. Individuals also choose their friends with care, ensuring that their friends are competent – so that they can “bask in the reflected glory” of their friends – but not so competent that the friends outperform the individual himself or herself on domains central to the individual’s self-concept (Tesser et al., 2000; see also Pemberton & Sedikides, 2001). Finally, when confronted with failure, individuals engage in self-serving attributions such that they blame failure on external factors or chance, and not on internal or intrapersonal factors (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999; Zuckerman, 1979). Other defensive reactions to failure include de-emphasizing the importance of the domain in which one has failed (Hill, Smith, & Lewicki, 1989), attacking the credibility of the failure feedback (Ditto & Lopez, 1992), portraying one’s competitor as a genius (Alicke, LoSchiavo, Zerbst, & Zhang, 1997), or derogating outgroups (Crocker, Thompson, McGraw, & Ingerman, 1987).

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TABLE 5.1 Self-Enhancement Strategies

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Positivity embracement represents a set of cognitive and behavioral strategies serving the self-enhancement motive that deal with the solicitation and interpretation of positive feedback. For example, individuals expect positive feedback in social interactions (Hepper, Hart, Gregg, & Sedikides, 2011), directly solicit positive feedback (Sedikides, 1993) and surround themselves with others who are likely to view them positively (Sanitioso & Wlodarski, 2004). Individuals are also more likely to remember positive than negative feedback, when it refers to their central attributes (e.g., trustworthiness, kindness) than their peripheral attributes (e.g., predictability, agreeableness; Sedikides, Green, Saunders, Skowronski, & Zengel, 2016). Moreover, when interacting with others, individuals engage in impression management tactics to over-present their positive qualities for others to evaluate or comment on (see also the Leary & Bolino chapter in this volume). Finally, as with attributions for failure, individuals (across cultures) engage in self-serving attributions for their successes, such that they credit successes to their own enduring internal characteristics rather than to external or chance factors (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004).

Favorable construals represent a set of cognitive strategies serving the self-enhancement motive through which positive self-views are maintained via flattering construals of the external world or the self. For example, individuals are unrealistically optimistic about the likelihood of positive outcomes of their actions (Regan, Snyder, & Kassin, 1995). Moreover, they interpret ambiguous feedback advantageously, emphasizing positive elements over negative ones (Audia & Brion, 2007). Furthermore, they manifest the “better than average” effect (Alicke, 1985), whereby they evaluate their own skills, abilities, and prospects as superior in comparison to peers (leading to statistical head-scratchers, such as 25 percent of people believing they are among the top 1 percent of leaders; Alicke & Govorun, 2005). More generally, individuals perceive themselves more positively than they are perceived by others (Judge, LePine, & Rich, 2006), even when they not asked explicitly to compare themselves to the average peer.

Finally, self-affirming reflections represent cognitive strategies primarily serving the self-enhancement motive that typically involve invoking positive elements of the self in reaction to threatening situations. For example, when confronted with failure, individuals can selectively engage in favorable temporal comparisons that suggest they are at least improving over time or improving at a faster rate than others, even when the evidence for such improvement is dubious (Wilson & Ross, 2001, 2003). Individuals also engage in downward counterfactual thinking where they imagine an even worse situation (i.e., thinking “it could be worse”) so as to feel better about themselves currently (Roese, 1994), or call to mind their positive qualities in the face of information that threatens the self (i.e., they self-affirm; Sherman & Cohen, 2006). Finally, individuals genuinely believe they are better than average, and they are willing to bet money on it (Williams & Gilovich, 2008).

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Is Self-Enhancement Good or Bad?

Taken together, these four categories of self-enhancement strategies provide a hint of the wide variety of phenomena to which self-enhancement has been applied (for more comprehensive reviews, see: Brown, 2010; Pfeffer & Fong, 2005; Sedikides, Gaertner, & Cai, 2015). However, these strategies can also be viewed as painting a picture of self-enhancing individuals as dangerously removed from reality, ignoring very real threats in order to feel good about themselves.

Indeed, a long-standing controversy in the social psychology literature (and not only) is whether using self-enhancement strategies is beneficial or harmful. It has been argued that “positive illusions,” such as thinking that one is better than one truly is, can have beneficial intrapersonal consequences, such as promoting psychological well-being, fostering creativity, and facilitating task performance (O’Mara & Gaertner, in press; O’Mara, Gaertner, Sedikides, Zhou, & Liu, 2012; Taylor, Lerner, Sherman, Sage, & McDowell, 2003). Along these lines, studies show that individuals self-enhance by devoting considerable time and effort towards those domains that they view as central to who they are (e.g., being an athlete, a hard worker, or sociable; Crocker, Karpinski, Quinn, & Chase, 2003), and such effort may be fueled by the positive illusions (e.g., perceptions of competence; Bandura, 1991) that individuals harbor about themselves in these domains.

Yet even if self-enhancement has intrapersonal benefits, its interpersonal consequences may be questionable. That is, believing that one is better than one really is allows one to tackle challenging tasks, but may also make one come across as conceited or arrogant (Sedikides, Hoorens, & Dufner, 2015). For example, in a study where observers rated peer interactions, Colvin, Block, and Funder (1995) reported that those individuals who self-enhanced were rated as more likely to brag, interrupt, and behave aggressively and irritably.

A recent meta-analysis by Dufner, Gebauer, Sedikides, and Denissen (2017) regarding the effects of self-enhancement strategies on intrapersonal adjustment (e.g., life satisfaction, depression, and positive affect) and interpersonal adjustment (e.g., other-rated social approval and status) can help inform the debate. Across almost 300 samples and over 125,000 participants, these authors found that self-enhancement was positively related to intrapersonal adjustment, and typically was positively related to interpersonal adjustment as well (with the exception of observer ratings of the focal participant’s communality). Notably, over time such positive effects for interpersonal adjustment weakened; that is, although self-enhancement tactics led to a positive initial impression, over time they had neither a positive nor a negative influence on impressions. These findings for intrapersonal adjustment mirror those seen by Kennedy, Anderson and Moore (2013): overconfident individuals were perceived by observers as having high status, and these perceptions lingered even after it was revealed that the observed individuals were, in fact, incorrectly overconfident.

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Taken together, the weight of the evidence suggests that self-enhancement is beneficial intrapersonally and neutral interpersonally. This may seem at odds with the aforementioned possibility that self-enhancement strategies sever the individual from reality. However, the Dufner et al. (2017) meta-analytic findings point to a reason that may also account for the primarily beneficial effects of self-enhancement strategies: individuals do not engage in self-enhancement strategies willy-nilly and without regard to reality. Rather, they deploy such strategies only when appropriate or feasible (Gregg, Sedikides, & Gebauer, 2011). Indeed, numerous studies have examined boundary conditions outlining when individuals do and do not engage in self-enhancement strategies. These findings have been summarized in what is known as the SCENT model (Sedikides & Strube, 1997; see also Sedikides, Gaertner, & Cai, 2015).

The SCENT Model

The Self-Concept Enhancing Tactician (or SCENT) model was developed in 1997 by Sedikides and Strube as an inductive attempt to outline the circumstances under which individuals engage in self-enhancement. The model focuses on when and how individuals are likely to be motivated by self-enhancement versus other self-evaluative motives, including self-verification (i.e., the motive to maintain consistent self-perceptions as a way of elevating one’s sense of control and predictability), self-assessment (i.e., the motive to obtain accurate information about the self as a way of reducing uncertainty), and self-improvement (i.e., the motive to improve the self as a way of creating a sense of progress). The model assumes that each of the four self-evaluation motives is adaptive and pragmatic from the individual’s point of view, and that they do not operate independently of each other. This latter point – that the motives do not operate independently of each other – leads to one of the model’s more controversial postulates: that motives for self-verification, self-assessment, and self-improvement are ultimately in service of the motive to self-enhance.

According to SCENT, the sense of control/predictability, certainty, and progress fostered by engaging in self-verification, self-assessment, and self-improvement (respectively) are not ends unto themselves, but rather set the stage for long-term self-enhancement. This is perhaps most apparent in the motive for self-improvement, whose aim is to develop (over time) a more positive self, but can also be seen in motives for self-verification and self-assessment: The sense of predictability and certainty these motives engender allows the development of a coherent sense of self that, in the long run, can be enhanced. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how elements of the self could be enhanced or protected, if one is uncertain about what the elements that comprise the self actually are.

In arguing that self-verification, self-assessment, and self-improvement ultimately serve self-enhancement in the long run, the SCENT model distinguishes between candid self-enhancement – or the explicit, unrestrained attempts to view the self positively or defend it against negative feedback associated with self-enhancement strategies – and tactical self-enhancement – or the indirect attempts to self-enhance via self-verification, self-assessment, and self-improvement. This distinction also recognizes that individuals do not self-enhance recklessly in disregard of possible risks or plausibility. Instead, they scrutinize the situation and judge whether, in light of inherent risks, candid self-enhancement efforts can be completed successfully; if not, candid self-enhancement is curtailed and tactical self-enhancement emerges as more likely. Individuals may also choose to appraise objectively those traits at which they may be deficient but consider central to their self-definition, allowing short-term (self-)pain for long-term (self-)gain.

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What, then, determines when individuals do or do not engage in candid self-enhancement? Drawing on past research, Sedikides and Strube (1997) argued in favor of various classes of moderators. Individual differences represent one such class, as people differ in the extent to which they seek self-enhancement. For example, narcissism can be regarded as a strong disposition towards self-enhancement (Chen et al., 2013); indeed, narcissists are likely what most people picture when imagining the prototypical candid self-enhancer. On the other hand, those with a strong epistemic motivation – that is, a desire for concrete information – may prefer accurate information over enhancing information. A second class of moderators represents the availability of resources. For example, people are more likely to engage in self-enhancement in an automatic manner, meaning factors that diminish cognitive resources increase self-enhancement tendencies (Swann, Hixon, Stein-Seroussi, & Gilbert, 1990).

A third class of moderators addresses what people are actually self-enhancing. As we have stated, people seek to self-enhance on aspects (e.g., traits, characteristics, skills) that are relatively central to their self-definition (Ferris et al., 2009; Ferris, Lian, Brown, & Morrison, 2015; Ferris, Lian, Brown, Pang, & Keeping, 2010). People are also more likely to self-enhance on aspects of the self that are relatively stable (vs. malleable), as being deficient on a stable aspect of the self implies that one cannot ever become proficient (Dauenheimer, Stahlberg, Spreeman, & Sedikides, 2002; Dunning, 1995). However, individuals do not self-enhance on all stable, important aspects of the self. An adult male’s height is stable (and, for many, important), but an objectively short male will still be an objectively short male. This points to another key parameter of self-enhancement: the extent to which ambiguity about an attribute exists influences the plausibility of self-enhancement (Brown, 1986; Dunning, Meyerowitz, & Holzberg, 1989). That is, it is easier to exaggerate one’s vaguely defined leadership abilities than it is to exaggerate one’s objectively obvious height. Somewhat similarly, self-enhancement is also likely to emerge when the temporal context of what is being self-enhanced is long-term (and hence more ambiguous): it is easier to say one’s sales performance will be excellent next month than it is to say one’s sales performance was excellent this past month, if it objectively was not (Heller, Stephan, Kifer, & Sedikides, 2011; Stephan, Sedikides, Heller, & Shidlovski, 2015).

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A fourth class of moderators is the social context within which self-enhancement takes place. When individuals are accountable for the responses they give, they are less likely to self-enhance (Sedikides & Herbst, 2002; Sedikides, Herbst, Harbin, & Dardis, 2002). Similarly, individuals are less likely to self-enhance candidly with friends (Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, & Elliot, 1998; Tice, Butler, Muraven, & Stillwell, 1995), who may (as noted previously) already be selected on the basis of providing positive feedback to the individual, thus reducing the need for more bald-faced attempts at self-enhancement. Alternately, close friends may know an individual well, meaning they hold relatively unambiguous perceptions of him or her, and can call the individual on obvious exaggerations of their abilities.

The cultural context represents a last class of moderators that influences manifestations of candid self-enhancement. Sedikides, Gaertner, and Cai (2015) recently updated the SCENT model to address questions regarding the cross-cultural nature of self-enhancement in light of arguments that self-enhancement is not prevalent, if it exists at all, in Eastern cultures (e.g., Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999). Sedikides et al. (2015) argued that this may reflect cultural norms of modesty and the prevalence of cooperative-oriented situations in Eastern cultures (vs. competition-oriented situations in Western cultures), or Eastern preferences for the use of other-mediated self-enhancement (e.g., saying that one is not good at something while expecting someone else to testify to how good you actually are). Supporting this argument, self-enhancement strategies do emerge when cultural norms of modesty are accounted for, when Easterners are placed in competitive situations, and when other-mediated self-enhancement serves the same purpose as candid self-enhancement does for Westerners. Moreover, Easterners and Westerners both self-enhance, but on different dimensions (depending on centrality to their self-definition): Westerners self-enhance on independent self-attributes (e.g., unique, free, original), whereas Easterners self-enhance on interdependent self-attributes (e.g., cooperative, loyal, patient) (Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003; see also: Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea, 2005).

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How Self-Enhancement Has Been Used in IO/OB Research

We begin with a caveat: self-enhancement has not always been used correctly in IO/OB research. In particular, self-enhancement has occasionally been incorrectly defined or operationalized. An oft-referenced definition of self-enhancement (Liu, Lee, Hui, Kwan, & Wu, 2013; Pierce & Gardner, 2004) is Korman’s (2001, p. 122): “the motivation to attain outcomes that signify personal growth on the part of the individual and/or the approval of others for attaining socially desirable goals.” Although it is correct that self-enhancement involves seeking the approval of others, being motivated by personal growth outcomes is better viewed as self-improvement. This motive may serve self-enhancing functions, as noted above, but it is not self-enhancement per se. Also, self-enhancement definitions should not be limited to those that involve personal growth.

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In addition, self-esteem is often used incorrectly as an operationalization of self-enhancement, particularly in the feedback literature (Ashford, Blatt, & VandeWalle, 2003). Self-esteem, however, does not equal the presence of self-enhancement, but rather its purpose: People strive to view themselves positively, but not viewing themselves positively does not mean that they have terminated their efforts to self-enhance. Conflating self-esteem level with self-enhancement has led to erroneous statements that constructs which affect self-esteem level also affect one’s motive to self-enhance. For example, in discussing the effects of being granted special treatment at work, Liu et al. (2013, p. 33) argued that such treatment “would lead to the development of self-enhancement, represented by [self-esteem level].” Although such constructs may affect self-esteem level, they are unlikely to influence the self-enhancement motive. Put differently, receiving or not receiving special treatment at work is not going to affect whether individuals ultimately want to view themselves in a positive light. Thus, individuals with low self-esteem should not be viewed as lacking the self-enhancement motive. Such individuals may go about satisfying this motive using different strategies than their high self-esteem counterparts; for example, low self-esteem individuals favor self-protection strategies, whereas high self-esteem individuals favor self-enhancement strategies (Tice, 1991).

Measurement of Self-Enhancement in IO/OB

How should self-enhancement be measured, in the absence of self-esteem? The assessment of the self-enhancement motive (both in IO/OB and other literatures) can be complex: its existence is typically inferred from patterns of outcomes, and not measured itself. That is, its existence is assumed based on the pattern of results across many studies, which are best explained by inferring that humans have a desire to view themselves positively (and not view themselves negatively). In this sense it is like gravity: it is not measured directly, but its existence is inferred by examining a pattern of results (i.e., the speed at which objects fall to the ground in a vacuum) and invoking the construct (i.e., gravity) as an explanation.¹ Along these lines, IO/OB studies often invoke self-enhancement without directly assessing the motive. This is not meant as a criticism. Indeed, this approach is fairly common in social psychological research, and reflects difficulties in measuring the motive itself versus manifestations of it (e.g., its effects on cognition, affect, and behavior).

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Rather than directly assessing the presence of the self-enhancement motive, a more common (and more laudable) approach in IO/OB is to presume its existence but measure individual differences in self-enhancement strategies. That is, while self-enhancement is thought to be a universal motive, individuals can differ in (a) the type of self-enhancement strategies they use, (b) the domains in which they self-enhance, and (c) the strength of the motive itself. The types of strategies used receive the most attention in the impression management literature (Bolino & Turnley, 1999; see also Leary & Bolino, this volume), and they are numerous (Table 5.1). The specific domains in which individuals self-enhance can also be assessed. Mirroring the empirical fact that people are most likely to enhance on aspects or domains that are central to their self-definition (Gebauer et al., 2013; Ferris et al., 2009; Sedikides et al., 2016), measures of contingencies of self-worth have been used. Such measures assess the extent to which one bases their self-esteem on success and failure, in particular life domains (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001). The domain of interest has been the workplace (Ferris et al., 2010, 2015; for a review, see Ferris, 2014).

With respect to individual differences in strength of the self-enhancement motive, Yun, Takeuchi, and Liu (2007) developed a six-item measure, whereas Audia and Brion (2007) used a 42-item measure proposed by Taylor and colleagues (2003). However, one of the more common ways of assessing the self-enhancement motive is via scales of dispositional narcissism. Narcissists seek exceedingly positive self-perceptions and desire to be perceived very favorably by others (Judge, LePine, & Rich, 2006; Thomaes, Brummelman, & Sedikides, in press). Consequently, they use many of the self-enhancement and self-protection strategies outlined previously, often without heed to some of the more traditional barriers to candid self-enhancement. As such, narcissism has been characterized as “an unchecked desire for self-enhancement” (Chen et al., 2013, p. 1203) and has been labeled “the self-enhancer personality” (Morf, Horvath, & Torchetti, 2011, p. 399). In assessing narcissism, IO/OB researchers typically use measures like the Narcissistic Personality Inventory or its derivations (Ames, Rose, & Anderson, 2006; Emmons, 1987). Interestingly, Chatterjee and Hambrick (2007, 2011) developed an unobtrusive measure to assess narcissism in chief executive officers. Their index of CEO narcissism relies on the prominence accorded to the CEO in both photographs in the company’s annual report and in company press releases, the CEO’s use of first-person singular pronouns when interviewed, and the CEO’s cash and non-cash compensation relative to the second-highest paid executive in the company.

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Illustrative Examples of Self-Enhancement Research in IO/OB

Finally, one of the more complex methods of assessing individual differences in the self-enhancement motive involves the use of round-robin social network data to distinguish statistically between tendencies to view the self positively (i.e., to self-enhance) from tendencies to view others positively and to be viewed positively by others (for more details, see: Kwan, John, Kenny, Bond, & Robins, 2004; Kwan, John, Robins, & Kuang, 2008; for an organizational illustration of this technique, see: Van der Kam, Janssen, Van der Vegt, & Stoker, 2014). It is important to account for these latter two tendencies, in order to ensure that viewing the self positively is not simply a reflection of the tendency to view everyone positively or a reflection of reality when one is indeed being viewed positively by others. Although this method represents a useful way to assess individual differences in self-enhancement motive strength, its reliance on time- and effort-intensive round-robin social network data likely limits its utility for most IO/OB research. Moreover, whether it produces results different from other measures of individual differences in self-enhancement motive strength that are easier to collect (e.g., measures of narcissism) is unknown.

Besides the Yun et al. (2007) six-item measure, the Taylor and colleagues (2003) 42-item measure, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Emmons, 1987), and round-robin designs (Van der Kam et al., 2014), researchers could consider assessing directly the self-enhancement motive with a two-time scale that Gregg, Hepper, and Sedikides (2011) developed. The items are: “In general, I would like to hear that I am a great person” and “In general, I would like to hear that have excellent qualities.” The scale has both face and construct validity, as well as high discriminant validity: it differentiates from equivalent two-item assessments of the self-verification, self-assessment, and self-improvement motives. Nevertheless, the short two-item nature of the scale presents both pros (i.e., easy to administer in field studies) and cons (i.e., reviewers may be unsympathetic towards any potential low reliability associated with shorter scales) for IO/OB researchers.

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Defensiveness. A study by Park, Westphal, and Stern (2011) on CEOs and members of the board of directors provides a pointed demonstration of defensiveness strategies. These authors found that CEOs of high social status (assessed by corporate and nonprofit board appointments, elite education, membership in elite social clubs, and stock ratings of firms for which the CEO acted as an outside director) were more likely to be targets of flattery by the other board members. This showcases elements of the strategies for selective friendships and basking in reflected glory on the part of the board members. Yet likely prompted by such flattery, CEOs manifested self-enhancing perceptions of their judgment and leadership capabilities as operationalized by differences between self- and other-rated measures of these capabilities. CEOs subsequently were less likely to change the strategic direction of their firm (e.g., by altering resource allocations among advertising, research, and development) in the face of poor performance, thus manifesting discounting of negative feedback and displacing failures on others rather than their own choices. Ironically, the high-status CEOs who were the target of the flattery eventually were more likely to be ultimately dismissed from their positions, because they failed to alter the strategic direction of their firms (see also the Energy Clash Model of narcissism in organizations; Sedikides & Campbell, in press).

Jordan and Audia (2012) argued in a theoretical article that organizational decision-makers facing poor organizational performance would engage in activities that amount to altering their (organization’s) self-image. In particular, they maintained that decision-makers would change the direction of the organization away from goals on which they perform poorly (e.g., client satisfaction) towards goals on which they perform well (e.g., number of clients served), or would increase the abstractness of the relevant goal to allow more positive evaluations (e.g., considering number of clients served as part of client satisfaction). Moving beyond goals but still in line with altering self-images, other studies have suggested that organizational members disengage their sense of self from their work when self-enhancement strategies are thwarted. Specifically, Woo, Sims, Rupp, and Gibbons (2008) found that participants in an assessment center program were less engaged when they received feedback from others that was inconsistent with their own positive self-ratings. Sitzmann and Johnson (2012) similarly found that participants in an online training program were more likely to quit the training in the face of discrepant performance feedback. Finally, Chen and colleagues (2013) found that, when subject to uncivil treatment (e.g., being insulted or slighted) that presumably thwarted their desire for self-enhancement, individuals disengaged from their workplace and became poorer performers. This was particularly the case for narcissists, who have a stronger motive for self-enhancement.

In line with the notion that individuals defensively strike out when receiving negative feedback, organizational research has shown that those who are mistreated at work react with deviant behavior. For example, Tepper, Mitchell, Haggard, Kwan, and Park (2015) found that mistreated employees engaged in retaliatory hostile acts to avoid viewing themselves as a victim, whereas Ferris, Spence, Brown, and Heller (2012) demonstrated in a diary study that employees treated unfairly were more likely to engage in deviant behavior, especially those with high self-esteem (Sedikides & Gregg, 2003).

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Finally, evidence indicates that individuals discount negative feedback. For example, Baer and Brown (2012) found that individuals would be less likely to adopt a suggestion for a project in which they were involved, if the suggestion involved parts of the project that should be eliminated (i.e., negative feedback about the project), such as dropping items from a proposed new restaurant menu or dropping a “buy one, get one free” deal from a proposed sales initiative. However, individuals were more likely to adopt such suggestions if they were not personally involved with the project, illustrating the notion that they were particularly resistant to negative feedback about something associated with the self.

Positivity embracement. Much research on organization-based self-esteem – that is, self-esteem levels within the organizational domain – has drawn upon the notion of positivity embracement, with authors arguing that organizational actions are interpreted as positive feedback from an organization that satisfies the employees’ self-enhancement motive (Pierce & Gardner, 2004; see also Brown & Zeigler-Hill, this volume). For example, Liu and colleagues (2013) proposed that employees who receive idiosyncratic deals – that is, customized deals that are better than the ones coworkers receive – interpreted them as signals that they are “valuable and special to the employer, in that the employer is willing to make special provisions for their work” (p. 834). Similarly, Gardner, Huang, Niu, Pierce, and Lee (2015) proposed that relational psychological contracts (i.e., contracts that provide training and development, fair treatment, and otherwise consider the well-being of the employee) are a form of “positive feedback” to the employee that confirms the employee is valued (p. 937). Consistent with proposals, results from both studies indicated that these organizational signals increased organization-based self-esteem.

Other research on reactions to feedback also draws on the notion of positivity embracement. For example, Anseel and Lievens (2006; see also Anseel, Strauss, & Lievens, this volume) reported that employees were more satisfied with positive feedback, and Baer and Brown (2012) reported that employees would be more likely to adopt a suggestion for a project if the suggestion (i.e., feedback) entailed improvement (cf. Gaertner, Sedikides, & Cai, 2012). However, they were more likely to embrace such a suggestion when they were personally involved with the project. Taken together with their findings described under the prior Defensiveness section, the Baer and Brown study shows that employees reject negative suggestions and embrace positive ones, but only when they are personally involved in the relevant project or view it as an extension of themselves (Belk, 1988; Gebauer et al., 2013).

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Consistent with the notion that individuals desire positive feedback about themselves, Stevens, Mitchell, and Tripp (1990) hypothesized that recruiters who told applicants that the organization viewed them positively would be liked better than recruiters who emphasized the fit of their organization for the candidate, but obtained mixed results. Finally, Chatterjee and Hambrick (2011) found that social rewards (i.e., media praise and awards) had a stronger relation with risky CEO actions (e.g., paying higher premiums during acquisitions) for narcissistic CEOs, suggesting that narcissistic CEOs were particularly attuned and responsive to positive feedback.

Favorable construals. Via an experimental and archival study, Audia and Brion (2007) illustrated how ambiguous feedback is interpreted favorably. They proposed that decision-makers (undergraduate students in the experimental study, and CEOs in the archival study) frequently encounter multiple performance indicators (e.g., stock prices, revenue growth, international expansion) that may provide ambiguous performance feedback regarding the company’s performance, where one indicator suggests the company is doing well while another indicator suggests otherwise. Moreover, some indicators (e.g., stock prices) may be considered more valid than others (e.g., international expansion). When confronted with such ambiguous input, decision-makers were less likely to make changes to the organization’s strategy (e.g., introduce new products) so long as at least one of the indicators signaled that the company was performing well – even when decision-makers were explicitly told the indicator was less valid. Moreover, when only the less valid indicator signaled that the company was performing well, decision-makers were more likely to rate that less valid indicator as more important than the more valid one.

Researchers have also been concerned with the extent to which employees perceive themselves more positively than others, such as in 360-degree performance rating contexts that include self-ratings as well as ratings by peers, subordinates, and supervisors (e.g., Brett & Atwater, 2001; Smither, London, & Reilly, 2005). For example, Van der Kam and colleagues (2014) found that leaders who perceived themselves as more transformational than subordinates were more likely to experience task and relationship conflict with subordinates at work; task conflict in particular mediated the negative effect of these excessively positive self-perceptions on ratings of the leader’s performance. Examining the source of such differences, Judge and colleagues (2006) reported that high levels of narcissism among managers were associated with greater differences between self-ratings and other-ratings of leadership ability.

Finally, in a conceptual replication of the better-than-average effect, Menon and Thompson (2007) found that team members perceived their performance and qualifications as posing more of a threat to other team members than the performance and qualifications of other team members posed a threat to themselves. In other words, members thought they were a threat to others, but that they were relatively immune to the threat others posed to them. Menon and Thompson also demonstrated that these “more threatening than average” perceptions had implications for interpersonal interactions in teams: outside individuals were less satisfied when interacting with those who thought they were more threatening than average.

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Also relevant to the better-than-average effect are numerous studies showing people believe that anything with which they associate is made better, as a result. For example, Schoorman (1998) found that supervisors were more likely to rate positively an employee when they participated in (and agreed with) the decision to hire the employee than when they did not participate in the hiring decision; when supervisors participated in but did not agree with the hiring decision, they were more likely to rate negatively the employee than when they both participated in the hiring decision and agreed to the hire. Hideg, Michela, and Ferris (2011) similarly reported that undergraduates were more likely to support affirmative action policies when they had participated in the creation of the policy than when not (see also Pfeffer, Cialdini, Hanna, & Knopoff, 1998), while Hsu and Elsbach (2013) reported that MBA students, faculty, and staff were more likely to view their school as having favorable attributes when they considered it an extension of the self.

Self-affirming reflections. Fewer studies have examined self-affirming reflections to threats, although Jordan and Audia (2012) contended in a theoretical article that organizational decision-makers are likely to invoke downward comparisons as counterfactuals in the face of poor organizational performance; for example, decision-makers might claim that company stock prices would be even lower if the company had not introduced a new product that was a poor seller. Yet, although studies have not examined whether employees spontaneously engaged in self-affirming reflections following a threat to the self, some research has demonstrated implications of self-affirmations for organizational phenomena. For example, Hideg and Ferris (2014) found that affirmative action policies for women that address discrimination in the workplace would not be supported by either women or men, because such policies threaten an individual’s sense of competence. For men, such policies suggest that they have prospered at work due to unfair systematic advantages, and not because they are competent; for women, such policies remove a potential face-saving handicap, meaning failing to get a job can only be attributed to lack of competence and not to systematic disadvantage given to women. However, when both women and men were offered a chance to affirm values that they personally held, this mitigated the threat affirmative action policies posed; in this case, they were more likely to support the policies. Kinias and Sim (2016) also demonstrated that individuals who affirmed their personal values experienced less threat to the self and performed better than individuals who affirmed organizational values.

Although the self-affirming reflection strategies outlined by Hepper and colleagues (2010, 2013) primarily reflect cognitive reactions, a behavioral reaction that affirms the sense of self may be possible as well. Along these lines, Ferris and colleagues have argued that employees whose sense of self is contingent on their workplace performance are more likely to maintain high levels of performance in reaction to threats such as workplace ostracism (Ferris et al., 2015) or ambiguity and conflict in the workplace (Ferris et al., 2009, 2010). Employees indeed maintained a higher performance level in terms of reducing deviant behaviors (Ferris et al., 2009, 2015), increasing in-role performance (Ferris et al., 2010, 2015), and increasing citizenship behaviors (Ferris et al., 2015). By maintaining high levels of job performance, employees may have behaviorally reaffirmed central aspects of the self.

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Contributions of IO/OB Research to the Self-Enhancement Literature

As the above review indicates, much of the IO/OB research on self-enhancement applies concepts and strategies from the self-enhancement literature in social/personality psychology to organizational phenomena. At the same time, however, at least two areas of organizational research have contributed to the broader self-enhancement literature. The first area is feedback. Feedback is a critical component of performance appraisal systems within organizations, based on the idea that receiving feedback leads to improved employee performance. However, employee reactions to feedback are highly variable, with one meta-analysis suggesting that feedback interventions led to decreased performance in over a third of the 131 studies examined (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). From a self-enhancement perspective, this finding makes sense. Employees prefer receiving self-enhancing feedback, and so the effectiveness of received feedback should be reduced if it threatens the self. This statement has received empirical backing by Kluger and DeNisi, who found that feedback interventions that focus attention narrowly on the task itself or learning processes tend to be more effective than feedback interventions that focus attention more broadly on the self.

As few employees are perfect, receiving threatening feedback is part and parcel of most performance evaluation systems. To improve reactions to such feedback, organizational research has focused extensively on factors that help to mitigate the threatening nature of it. Some of this work has shown that employee reactions to threatening feedback are ameliorated by the consistency of feedback over time (Stone & Stone, 1985) or when positive feedback precedes negative feedback (Stone, Gueutal, & McIntosh, 1984), whereas other work has focused on the context within which the feedback occurs (e.g., the organizational culture, economic conditions, or competitive environment; Levy & Williams, 2004). Moreover, reactions to feedback are improved to the extent that feedback is timely, specific, and private (Farr, Baytalskaya, & Johnson, 2012). That is, by focusing on specific behaviors (and not the individual himself or herself) with enough lead time to allow the individual to improve before performance evaluations, and doing so in a private manner which reduces concerns about others’ perceptions of the feedback recipient’s competence, the threatening nature of feedback can be curtailed (London, 2003).

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The second area where organizational behavior research has made a contribution to the self-enhancement literature is methodological, addressing a long-standing controversy within the self-enhancement literature. In particular, researchers have debated whether individuals seek to self-enhance or to self-verify. From a self-enhancement perspective, an individual prefers to be viewed positively by others; from a self-verification perspective, an individual prefers that others’ views of the individual are congruent with the individual’s self-perceptions regardless of whether these are positive or negative (Kwang & Swann, 2010; Sedikides & Gregg, 2008). To compare these predictions, congruence (i.e., self-verification) effects have been empirically examined using either difference scores representing the magnitude of the difference between self-perceptions and other-perceptions, or interactions between self-perceptions and other-perceptions (Kwang & Swann, 2010).

However, neither a difference score nor an interaction approach is suitable for assessing congruence effects (space limitations preclude a detailed discussion of the reasons for this; for an explanation, see Edwards, 1994, 2001). Instead, congruence analyses require the use of polynomial regression – an analytical technique widely known in organizational research, but (to our knowledge) not used in social psychological research. A study by Anseel and Lievens (2006; see also Woo et al., 2008) examining reactions to feedback illustrated how the conclusions supporting self-enhancement or self-verification perspectives are influenced by whether or not congruence effects are properly operationalized and analyzed.

In the Anseel and Lievens (2006) study, prior to completing an in-basket task, participants provide self-ratings of their expected percentile (e.g., top 5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent) on various management-related competencies: information management, decisiveness, problem awareness, and coordinating ability. Next, participants received feedback on those competencies using the same scale, thus mimicking 360-degree feedback procedures where self-ratings and other-ratings are provided (Brett & Atwater, 2001). By using polynomial regression, Anseel and Lievens were able to separate out self-enhancement effects (represented by a significant main effect for higher feedback scores) from self-verification effects (represented by congruence between feedback scores and self-ratings), assessed by higher-order quadratic and interactive effects between self-ratings and feedback scores (Edwards, 1994). For comparison, these authors also eschewed a polynomial regression approach and instead used the typical difference scores approach.

Anseel and Lievens’ (2006) results revealed that self-enhancement effects were robustly supported: main effects for feedback valence emerged. On the other hand, self-verification effects only emerged when difference scores – i.e., the improper analytical technique – were used. When polynomial regression analyses were used, no congruence effects emerged. Although the additional studies are needed to supplement these findings, the Anseel and Lievens study provides an indication of how an organizational analytical approach can inform a long-standing issue in the self-enhancement and self-verification literatures.

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Future Research Directions and Conclusion

An interesting project for future research would be to consider rehabilitating somewhat the image of narcissists. As noted above, most organizational research on narcissism regards narcissism as an extreme form of self-enhancement, and typically perceive it as an undesirable trait (although this perception may be unwarranted; Grijalva, Harms, Newman, Gaddis, & Fraley, 2015). Indeed, narcissism is sometimes referred to as part of a “dark triad” of negative personality traits along with Machiavellianism and psychopathy (O’Boyle, Forsyth, Banks, & McDaniel, 2012). Recently, however, another type of narcissism has been proposed, that of communal narcissism. These are persons who self-enhance excessively not through agentic means (e.g., focusing on being the smartest person in the room) but rather through communal means (e.g., focusing on being the most helpful person in the room; Gebauer, Sedikides, Verplanken, & Maio, 2012; see also: Giacomin & Jordan, 2015; Luo, Cai, Sedikides, & Song, 2014). Communal narcissists view themselves as very caring and helpful, and as very competent at listening and adept at making friends. Although the grandiosity associated with (agentic) narcissism is still present, their desire for self-enhancement is accomplished by the belief that they improve the lives of others. Consequently, it is possible that communal narcissism is related to engaging in helping and prosocial behaviors for the group (in contrast, agentic narcissism is associated with engaging in deviant behaviors at work; O’Boyle et al., 2012). Despite being a relatively new concept, communal narcissism represents a natural fit for interdependent organizational settings.

Moving beyond specific research topics, we argue that researchers would do well to consider how the self-enhancement motive, and its related strategies, could apply to their own literatures. An article by Pfeffer and Fong (2005) is particularly instructive in this respect. These authors illustrated how organizational research on power can be viewed through a self-enhancement lens. They use the self-enhancement motive both to explain prior findings in the literature and show how it leads to new empirical questions. The approach would arguably work for virtually any research topic (Jordan & Audia, 2012).

The Pfeffer and Fong (2005) approach is notable because their broader proposal was that self-enhancement should be used as a paradigm for all of IO/OB. Although they used power as their specific example, they maintained that the self-enhancement motive and strategies are interwoven throughout many IO/OB topic areas. As a fundamental human motive, it should not be surprising to regard self-enhancement as relevant to much of what is researched in IO/OB. Yet, at the same time, there seems to be a lack of awareness of just how pervasive self-enhancement is in IO/OB. Indeed, one observation from our reviewing of the literature was that many studies that clearly address self-enhancement themes – such as narcissism (Judge et al., 2006), social comparison (Vidyarthi, Liden, Anand, Erdogan, & Ghosh, 2010), or self-affirmation (Kinias & Sim, 2016) – do not claim that that they investigate self-enhancement: these relevant articles do not include self-enhancement in their titles, abstracts, or keywords.

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Alicke, M. D. (1985). Global self-evaluation as determined by the desirability and controllability of trait adjectives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1621–1630.

Alicke, M. D., & Govorun, O. (2005). The better-than-average effect. In M. D. Alicke, D. A. Dunning, & J. I. Krueger (Eds.), The self in social judgment (pp. 85–106). New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Alicke, M. D., LoSchiavo, F. M., Zerbst, J., & Zhang, S. (1997). The person who outperforms me is a genius: Maintaining perceived competence in upward social comparison. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 781–789.

Alicke, M. D., & Sedikides, C. (2009). Self-enhancement and self-protection: What they are and what they do. European Review of Social Psychology, 20, 1–48.

Alicke, M. D., Zell, E., & Guenther, C. L. (2013). Social self-analysis: Constructing, protecting, and enhancing the self. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 173–234.

An optimistic interpretation of such studies is that they indicate the prevalence of the self-enhancement motive: they take it as a fact and as unnecessary of singling out. A pessimistic interpretation is that researchers do not appreciate the larger body of relevant literature, and thus perhaps miss out on the opportunity to rely on it for new insights. Failing to recognize the omnipresence of the self-enhancement motive and strategies may also obscure links among research areas. The motive connects research on affirmation action policies and mergers and acquisitions, on recruitment and creativity, as well as on feedback seeking and deviance. Like Pfeffer and Fong (2005), we advocate, in conclusion, that the self-enhancement motive and strategies are worthy of the status of a “paradigm” for the IO/OB literature. We encourage researchers to be aware of them, test them, apply them, and modify or qualify them, as it may be.

Note

1 This lack of measurement can give rise to clashes when different principles provide discrepant explanations for an observed relation. For example, this issue lies at the heart of debates over whether humans self-enhance or self-verify (Kwang & Swann, 2010; Sedikides & Gregg, 2008).

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