Introspection and Self-Enhancement 1 Running Head: INTROSPECTION AND SELF-ENHANCEMENT The Why’s the Limit: Curtailing Self-Enhancement with Explanatory Introspection Constantine Sedikides University of Southampton Robert S. Horton Wabash College Aiden P. Gregg University of Southampton Introspection and Self-Enhancement 2 Abstract Self-enhancement is linked to psychological gains (e., subjective well-being, persistence in adversity), but also to intrapersonal and interpersonal costs (e., excessive risk- taking, antisocial behavior). Thus, constraints on self-enhancement may sometimes afford intrapersonal and interpersonal advantages.
We tested whether explanatory introspection (i., generating reasons for why one might or might not possess personality traits) constitutes one such constraint. Experiment 1 demonstrated that explanatory introspection curtails self- enhancement. Experiment 2 clarified that the underlying mechanism must (a) involve explanatory questioning rather than descriptive imagining, (b) invoke the self rather than another person, and (c) feature written expression rather than unaided contemplation. Finally, Experiment 3 obtained evidence that an increase in uncertainty about oneself mediates the effect.
Introspection and Self-Enhancement 3 The Why’s the Limit: Curtailing Self-enhancement with Explanatory Introspection Most people, most of the time, see themselves through rose-colored glasses. Whether rating themselves as above-average on personality traits and abilities (Alicke, 1985) or believing themselves less susceptible to bias than the average person (Pronin, Yin, & Ross, 2002)— whether showing selective recall for flattering autobiographical episodes (Sanitioso, Kunda, & Fong, 1990) or engaging in social comparisons that validate a positive self-view (Dunning, 1999)—whether attributing their successes internally and their failures externally (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004) or thinking that their own future will surpass that of their peers (Weinstein, 1980)—people by and large evaluate themselves more favorably either than the objective facts warrant (Gosling, John, Craik, & Robins, 1998) or than external observers think justified (Epley & Dunning, 2000). Tellingly, people even believe that they outdo their own doppelgangers: they rate themselves more favorably than they rate their peers on the basis of identical behavioral evidence (Alicke, Vredenburg, Hiatt, & Govorun, 2001). Moreover, egocentric biases like the better-than-average effect are pervasive existing not only in (self- promoting) individualistic cultures, but also in (self-deprecating) collectivistic cultures (Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003).
All such phenomena can be viewed as forms of self-enhancement. Although perhaps irrational in the normative sense—half of us being forever doomed to be below average1—self- enhancement is nonetheless linked to substantial benefits. These include good psychological health (Taylor, Lerner, Sherman, Sage, & McDowell, 2003), better coping with physical illness (Taylor et al., 2003) and traumatic loss (Bonanno, Rennicke, & Dekel, 2005), greater persistence in the face of adversity (Taylor & Brown, 1988), and good social adjustment (Donnellan, Trzesniewski, Robins, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2005). However, self-enhancement is also linked to several substantial costs.
Intrapersonal costs include imprudent risk-taking (Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1993), ineffective action planning (Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2001), and an increased likelihood of disengaging from Introspection and Self-Enhancement 4 academic studies (Robins & Beer, 2001). Interpersonal costs involve being perceived negatively and treated unpleasantly by others. For example, after a brief period of infatuation, peers come to regard inveterate self-enhancers as conceited, defensive and hostile (Paulhus, 1998), and are generally prone to deride them, if not isolate them interpersonally (Schlenker & Leary, 1982). In addition, concerns about promoting or protecting a favorable public self-image can prompt actions that lead to illness, injury, and death: Notoriously, people from temperate climes often sunbathe for hours to look and feel good among their peers, thereby raising their risk of sunstroke, sunburn, and skin cancer (Leary, Tchividjian, & Kraxberger, 1994).
In view of these inauspicious correlates, it is perhaps salutary that self-enhancement, although pervasive, is not inevitable: it varies naturally and can be strategically manipulated. For example, the topic of judgment moderates self-enhancement: people self-enhance less on traits that lack ambiguity (Dunning, Meyerowitz, & Holzberg, 1989) or that they believe they can modify (Dauenheimer, Stahlberg, Spreeman, & Sedikides, 2002). In addition, several interpersonal factors are also known to constrain self-enhancement. These include the similarity of the comparison other to the self (Stapel & Schwinghammer, 2004), the concreteness of the comparison other (Alicke, Klotz, Breitenbecher, Yurak, & Vredenburg, 1995), concerns about preserving close relationships (Tice, Butler, Muraven, & Stillwell, 1995), and social pressures to be accountable (Sedikides, Herbst, Hardin, & Dardis, 2002).
However, given the problems that self-enhancement sometimes poses, it is worth exploring what other factors have the potential to curtail it. In this article, we investigate a possible intrapersonal factor: introspection. Varieties of Introspection The human ability to introspect has long fascinated philosophers. Descartes (see Cottingham, Stoothoff, & Murdoch, 1984) regarded reflexive thought as proof of an indubitable self.
Introspection has also captivated the attention of psychologists, from the early structuralists (Titchener, 1912; Wundt, 1894) to modern-day experimental social psychologists (Hirt & Markman, 1995; Hixon & Swann, 1993; Wilson, Dunn, Kraft, & Lisle, 1989). Importantly, introspection is considered a uniquely human capacity (Sedikides & Skowronski, 1997, 2000; Introspection and Self-Enhancement 5 Sedikides, Skowronski, & Dunbar, 2006) and its investigation is central to personality and social psychology (Bless & Forgas, 2000; Maio & Olson, 1998; Wilson & Dunn, 2004). Conceptual Distinctions Introspection is the process of looking inward, thinking “about [one’s] thoughts and feelings” (Wilson et al. 33), or about oneself as a whole.
However, introspection is not a unitary construct. Indeed, it can be conceptualized in at least two distinct ways. One type of introspection constitutes what we term descriptive introspection. This denotes the act of contemplating what one’s personality is like.
When introspecting descriptively, people ask themselves questions like “Do I have (or not have) traits X and Y?” or “To what extent do I have (or not have) traits X and Y?” People then conclude that they possess or lack particular traits to some degree or other. Another type of introspection constitutes what we term explanatory introspection. This denotes the act of contemplating why one does or does not think of oneself in a particular way. When introspecting explanatorily, people ask themselves questions like “Why might I have (or not have) traits X and Y?” or “What are the reasons for my having (or not having) traits X and Y?” People then generate reasons that explain why they either possess or lack particular traits to some degree or other.
Descriptive and Explanatory Introspection: A Review of the Literature Descriptive and explanatory introspection, or key elements thereof, have already been operationalized as independent variables in past research. Consider two lines of inquiry. First, Tesser (1978) investigated the consequences of thinking about an attitude object for which a well-developed knowledge base exists. Intensive thinking led to the formation of an evaluatively-consistent belief set, which in turn polarized attitudinal judgments.
That is, intensive thinking produced “more univalent, less ambivalent” attitudes (p. Second, Hixon and Swann (1993: Experiment 3) had participants peruse particular dimensions of personality. In particular, undergraduates with low self-esteem pondered the question “What kind of person are you in terms of sociability, likeability, and interestingness?” while weighing up the accuracy of two evaluations—one flattering and one critical—that graduate students ostensibly provided of Introspection and Self-Enhancement 6 them. Consistent with their pre-existing negative self-view, the undergraduates endorsed the critical evaluation over the flattering one.
The two lines of inquiry have common elements. First, in terms of procedure, participants either reviewed a stored body of knowledge, or answered a “what” question. Both activities are clearly reminiscent of descriptive introspection. Second, in terms of outcome, participants either consolidated an attitude or confirmed a self-view.
Either way, a previously held belief was strengthened. The conjunction of these facts suggests that descriptive introspection is a source of psychological stability (Silvia & Gendolla, 2001). In other lines of research, examples of explanatory introspection are clearly discernible. Wilson and his colleagues have investigated the impact of this type of introspection on attitudes towards various objects (e., the self, political candidates, collegiate classes; Wilson, Dunn et al.
Participants wrote down some reasons why they liked or disliked an object and thereafter expressed their attitudes toward that object. Reasons-analysis perturbed attitudes, prompting either a shift in direction or an increase in variability (Wilson et al. This perturbation was attributed to the temporary accessibility of reasons that, although easily verbalized and subjectively plausible, are nonetheless unrepresentative of the full set of reasons and at odds with dispositional preferences. Similar experimental procedures, findings and explanations apply to a line of research on value change by Maio, Olson, and colleagues (Bernard, Maio, & Olson, 2003a; Maio & Olson, 1998; Maio, Olson, Allen, & Bernard, 2001).
Both research programs suggest that explanatory introspection is an agent of psychological change. Explanatory introspection also features in research on explanatory bias. Participants, when instructed to explain why a particular hypothetical outcome might occur, overestimate the likelihood of its occurrence (Ross, Lepper, Strack, & Steinmetz, 1977). The bias is observed regardless of whether the to-be-explained outcome pertains to the self (Kunda & Sanitioso, 1989), to another person (Anderson, 1982), or to an event like a political election (Caroll, 1978) or sporting competition (Markman & Hirt, 2002).
As in the attitudes/values literature, Introspection and Self-Enhancement 7 information availability and accessibility have been invoked as underlying mechanisms. In particular, the goal of explaining some outcome prompts an information search that brings outcome-consistent arguments to the forefront of the mind (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), where they influence, in an assimilative manner, the ensuing judgment (Kunda & Sanitioso, 1989). An alternative account of explanatory bias posits that the goal of outcome explanation prompts a frame of mind in which the explanation (or focal hypothesis; Koehler, 1991) is assumed to be true. Evidence is then reviewed from the perspective of that frame, and thus selectively accumulates in the direction of the focal hypothesis, leading its merits to be overestimated (Hirt & Markman, 1995).
Regardless of the underlying mechanism, research on explanatory bias suggests that explanatory introspection has well-defined directional effects. Finally, explanatory introspection features in debiasing research. In a typical task, participants are presented with an event and instructed to explain how it might give rise both to one outcome and to another (alternative or contrary) outcome. This task—variants of which are known as counterexplanation, consider-the-opposite, inoculation, or consider-an-alternative— attenuates the magnitude of the explanatory bias (Anderson, 1982; Hirt & Markman, 1995; Hirt, Kardes, & Markman, 2004; Lord, Lepper, & Preston, 1984).
This body of research suggests that explanatory introspection, when it involves a consideration of more than one point of view, exerts a moderating influence on psychological processes. Taking our cue from the above lines of research, we wondered whether explanatory introspection could curtail self-enhancement. We accordingly devised an introspection manipulation that blended elements of a prototypical debiasing manipulation with elements of a typical reasons-analysis manipulation. Specifically, we had participants generate reasons for why they might or might not have a set of important personality traits.2 Two key features of our adaptation are worth noting.
First, our participants focused on the self rather than on a hypothetical person, object, or event. Second, our participants focused on central (or core) facets of the self (Sedikides, 1993). Thus, with the self involved, our particular adaptation likely Introspection and Self-Enhancement 8 facilitated the emergence of motivational processes above and beyond conventional cognitive ones. Any account of underlying mechanisms would need to take this into consideration.
Pretesting First off, we ran a pretest in order to identify a set of nomothetic trait dimensions that participants would regard as central to their self-concept. In this pretest—as in all subsequently reported experiments—participants were undergraduates from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, fulfilling an introductory psychology course option. Central trait dimensions can be operationally defined as those that elicit extreme ratings when it comes to three pertinent properties: self-descriptiveness (i., either highly self- descriptive or not at all self-descriptive), valence (i., either highly positive or highly negative), and importance (i., very important to have or very important not to have). Sixty-five participants duly rated 24 trait adjectives—corresponding to the positive and negative poles of 12 trait dimensions—in terms of all three properties (Table 1).
Central trait dimensions were then selected for use, if two conditions were met.
