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Who Do You Think You Are? On the Link Between Self-Knowledge and Self-Esteem
Who am I? Being able to answer this question is widely assumed to be essential for healthy psychological functioning. A well-defined self-concept facilitates the processing of self-relevant information (Bargh, 1982), predicts life satisfaction (Jones, 2001) and psychological adjustment (Bigler, Neimeyer, & Brown, 2001; Campbell, Assenand, & Di Paula, 2003), leads to a sense of self-continuity (Gergen & Gergen, 1988), and is related to stability in evaluations of the self (Kernis & Waschull, 1995) and to high levels of self-esteem (e.g., Baumgardner, 1990; Campbell, 1990; Campbell, Trapnell, Heine, Katz, Lavallee, & Lehman, 1996).
The degree to which the self-concept is stable, consistent, clear, and confidently defined is referred to as self-concept clarity (Campbell, 1990; Campbell et al., 1996). It pertains to the knowledge components of the self: What traits do I possess? What are my physical characteristics? What are my roles and goals in life? The construct makes no assertion about the valence of the characteristics; the typical measure of self-concept clarity merely asks people about the extent to which self-conceptions are clear and confident.
Considerable amounts of research have particularly contributed to the notion that a clear self-concept is strongly related to positive evaluations of the self (e.g., Baumgardner, 1990; Campbell, 1990; Campbell et al., 1996). People who are high in self-esteem tend to describe themselves in a confident and well-articulated manner that is stable over time, whereas people with more negative self-evaluations typically use more uncertain self-descriptions that have a tendency to fluctuate (Campbell, 1990). Also, when their self-evaluations are stable over time, people generally show high levels of self-concept clarity (Kernis & Waschull, 1995).
Apparently, there is a strong connection between having a clear sense of who you are and liking yourself. This is not a new idea: For long the belief predominated that the mentally healthy person has a clear view on reality (for a review, see Jourard & Landsman, 1980). However, during the past two decades more and more evidence has come to light that well-adjusted and happy people do not have clear views on themselves at all (Taylor and Brown, 1988). On the contrary, those with normal, functional levels of self-regard typically engage in a wide range of behaviors that distort the processing of self-relevant information. For example, people judge positive traits to be far more characteristic of themselves than negative traits (Brown, 1986), overestimate the control they have over chance-determined events (see Crocker, 1982, for a review), more easily forget information related to their failures than their successes (Silverman, 1964), and see abilities that they are not good at as common, but abilities that they master as rare and distinctive (Marks, 1984). Most of these and other distortions do not seem to occur in the way moderately depressed or people low in self-esteem view themselves (e.g., Brown, 1986; Kuiper & MacDonald, 1982).
These findings suggest that distorted rather than clear self-perceptions are related to having positive feelings toward the self. This is a remarkable diagnosis considering that positive self-regard is also strongly correlated with self-concept clarity (e.g., Baumgardner, 1990; Campbell, 1990; Campbell et al., 1996). So on the one hand, research suggests that knowing who you are contributes to self-esteem, but on the other hand it seems that self-esteem is promoted by illusions about the self, i.e., by not knowing who you are. How can these two findings be reconciled?
To understand this, we must take a closer look at the construct of self-concept clarity. The building stones of self-concept clarity are the beliefs people have about themselves, about their traits, their appearances, their virtues and their flaws. The more confident, stable, and consistent these beliefs are, the clearer the self-concept is. Clarity of the self-concept, however, does not in any way imply accuracy of the self-concept (Campbell et al., 1996). A self-concept is clear to the extent that people have a clear idea of who they think they are. Theoretically, people who have a very confident and well-articulated theory about who they are and what defines them, could be totally inaccurate on the basis of other criteria, such as their behaviors or observations by others.
The notion that having a clear self-concept does not mean that one is aware of one’s actual assets and characteristics, suggests that a clear sense of self can be obtained without having to seek accurate self-knowledge. We can erroneously think we are unique in our qualities, focus on our successes, forget about our mistakes and still have a sound feeling that we know who we are. What is important is that we believe that we know who we are.
Knowing that self-concept clarity does not reflect accuracy of self-knowledge but, rather, a set of subjective self-beliefs, the paradox of self-esteem being linked to both distorted self-views and a clear self-concept becomes less paradoxical. Since truthfulness is not a necessity for a clear self-concept, the belief that we know who we are can develop through routes that are to some extent biased and self-serving. As noted above, people often process self-relevant information in an overly favorable way (e.g., Brown, 1986; Marks, 1984; Silverman, 1964), but even when this leads to self-knowledge and self-beliefs that are not in agreement with reality, this is not necessarily a threat to the clarity of the self-concept. As long as these biases foster beliefs about the self, they promote self-concept clarity, independent of their accuracy. Support for this notion lies in the finding that self-concept clarity is moderately correlated to self-deception: The higher people are in self-concept clarity, the more likely they are to engage in self-deceptive behaviors in general (Brandt & Vonk, 2004). So, ironically, those who are inclined to be somewhat dishonest toward themselves, tend to have clearer self-concepts.
This suggests that believing that we know ourselves might in some respects be similar to positive illusions such as believing that we have control over chance-determined situations and viewing positive traits as more characteristic of our personalities than negative one’s. One thing that positive illusions and thinking that we know who we are have in common is that their relationship with reality is disputable. Another resemblance is that, despite that, all of these beliefs are also positively correlated with self-esteem, suggesting that they might be advantageous for mental health.
In trying to understand the relationship between having a clear sense of self and high self-esteem, various explanations have been offered. For example, Campbell (1990) suggests that individuals who have uncertain self-concepts are more dependent on self-relevant information and are more susceptible to and influenced by this information than are people with more articulated self-views. Baumgardner (1990) proposes that knowing who we are gives us the opportunity to take control over future outcomes because it enables us to seek circumstances that allow us to maximize our successes and minimize our failures. If either of these explanations would be fully true, there should not only be a relation between self-concept clarity and explicit self-esteem, but also between self-concept clarity and implicit self-esteem. Yet, when correlating self-concept clarity to implicit feelings of self-worth measured by name-letter preference (see Kitayama & Karasawa, 1997; Koole & Pelham, 2003; Nuttin, 1985) while controlling for explicit self-esteem, Brandt and Vonk (2004) found no relation between the two, whereas they did find a substantial correlation between self-concept clarity and explicit self-esteem. So having a clear sense of self is related to self-reported levels of self-esteem, suggesting that believing that we know who we are, is connected to believing that we like ourselves. But apparently, this belief does not predict to what extent we like ourselves on a more unaware, intuitive level, which unsettles existing explanations about the relation between self-esteem and having a clear sense of self.
If being confident about who you are is not connected to more automatic and consciously unaccessible feelings of self-worth, what accounts for the relation between knowing who you are and positive explicit levels of self-esteem? We suggest that both confidence about who you are and explicit self-esteem originate from the same underlying self-theory, which is: “I’m doing fine”. This basic theory produces several beliefs, including “I know who I am” and “I like myself”.1 Believing that we are doing well leads us to state that we feel worthy, and convinces us that we have clear views on ourselves. It also leads to biases in the processing of self-relevant information, reflected in positive illusions about the self. This in turn might result in distorted self-views such as unrealistic optimism and self-deception. In support of this notion, Brandt and Vonk (2004) found a modest but significant correlation between explicit self-esteem and self-deception, but no relation between implicit feelings of self-worth and self-deception.
In sum, substantial amounts of research have shown that having a well-defined and confident idea of who you are is related to healthy, positive feelings of self-worth. Paradoxically, having illusions about ourselves is also connected to high self-esteem. This paradox can be understood once we realize that having a clear sense of self does not mean that our self-knowledge is accurate, and that this relationship mainly exists on an explicit level of self-esteem. We therefore argue that positive illusions, as well as explicit self-esteem, and self-concept clarity, stem from the same basic self-theory, “I’m doing fine”.
Notes
1. The belief “I know who I am” is in our view most strongly reflected in the Self-Concept Clarity Scale (Campbell et al., 1996), which is a self-report scale that asks people directly to what extent they feel their self-concept is clear and stable. However, several other measures are used to tap self-concept clarity, such as extremity, reaction times, and confidence intervals related to self-descriptions (e.g., Baumgardner, 1990; Campbell, 1990). We argue that these measures also reflect the belief “I know who I am”, since people who think they know themselves, actually have well-defined ideas about where they stand at a multi-tude of personality characteristics. This conviction can result in extreme, fast, and confident self-descriptions, reflecting a clear, yet not necessarily accurate, self-concept.
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