As if I hadn't over-shared enough already...

For as long as I’ve known myself (20 years) I’ve always thought that I was an I-want-what-can’t-have sort of person. It has recently come to my attention, however, that I’m actually an I-want-what-is-consistent-with-my-self-concepts sort of person.

I’ve dumped more than my fair share of truly great guys in my short lifetime. My friends would always say, “He worships the ground you walk on AND he’s gorgeous! Why would you do that?!” My response would always be about how I thought that I liked him, but now that I have him hooked I don’t want him.

In reality, however, it was because they (whomever I was dating at the time) didn’t verify my self-concepts (an individual’s overall beliefs about his or her own personal characteristics). This idea that we all want confirmation of our self-concepts from others is called self-verification (Swann, Hixon, & de la Ronde, 1992). Interestingly, we want this confirmation even if it is negative.

To better explain, I’ll tell you about Mickey (because – let’s face it – I just like talking about boys).



Mickey was such a sweetheart. He sang me songs, made me cupcakes, hung onto my every word. He also showered me with praise, insisting that everything I did was perfect. Normally, one would think this was a good thing, that I should want to date someone who thinks very highly of me. The problem was: I don’t think very highly of myself (at least not on certain traits).

When he would praise me for my singing abilities (of which I have absolutely NONE) or insisted that my looks were goddess-like (again, a clear exaggeration), it would contradict my own beliefs about myself.

There are two reasons such discrepancies are unsettling. The first is intrapersonal; it suggests that I don’t know myself. It’s frightening to think that a person could not know something about themselves; if we don’t then we can’t predict or control things about our own lives. The second reason is interpersonal; it suggests that Mickey had completely unrealistic expectations of my abilities, or that he didn’t actually know me.

Not only do we prefer, remember, and spend more time paying attention to others’ perceptions that are consistent with our own, we intentionally choose to interact with people who corroborate our self-concepts (Swann et al., 1992). This has been shown in everyone from roommates to spouses. In my case, it’s boyfriends.

If my own appraisal of myself were higher, Mickey (and several other all too nice guys) might have confirmed rather than contradicted my self-concepts and we might have lasted longer. Nevertheless, it makes more sense why things work so well with the current beau; he doesn’t even try to stifle his laughter when I sing. He’s smart enough to know when to massage my ego and when to tell the truth.
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Swann, W., Hixon, J., & de la Ronde, C. (1992). Embracing the bitter 'truth': Negative self-concepts and marital commitment. Psychological Science, 3, 118-121.

Through Mischievous Eyes

My dad and I are two peas in a pod. In fact, it wouldn’t even be an exaggeration to call him one of my best friends. Because of our similarities, whenever I would do something reckless or stupid in high school my mother would be the one to fly into a rage and he wouldn’t think of it as a big deal. School pranks, protests, spending too much time with friends – those were all things he did at my age too.

While my dad would stand by during our arguments, my mom and I would play out our respective roles in the actor-observer effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Watson, 1982). The actor-observer effect is the tendency for an individual to attribute his or her own actions to a situational cause (e.g., having a bad day, being sick) and to attribute other people’s actions to a personal cause (e.g., being a bad person, being unintelligent). From my point of view I was the “actor” while my mom filled the role of the “observer.”

To illustrate, we’ll use the night I pulled my senior prank – though it was closer to morning by the time our argument played out. As the “actor” I attributed my desired to climb the football stadium lights with 30-ft banners at 2 a.m. to situational factors; pranks are part of high school and it’s important to do something epic to remember it. As the “observer” my mother attributed my actions to my personal characteristics; I was irresponsible, rebellious, and reckless.

Why was I so sure I wasn’t a bad person for doing it? Why was my mother so sure that I was? There are two simple reasons for this: information and perspective.

As the actor, I had more information about myself and how I act in different situations. I knew that climbing 150 feet above the gridiron wasn’t really all that hard or dangerous. I knew that I was a cautious climber and that I hadn’t actually done anything illegal (i.e., I didn’t damage any property in the process). Moreover, I knew that even though I was being a little wild at the time, on any other day I was normally just a regular kid who followed the rules. My mother didn’t have access to this information.

Additionally, from my perspective I could see the factors outside of myself (e.g., everyone’s hope to commemorate their last year with their life-long friends). My mom could only see me, the “actor,” and was oblivious to the surrounding circumstances.

Interestingly, my father, as my mischievous inspiration (viz., the Texas A&M cafeteria armadillo release of 1978), had access to the information and could see things from the perspective that my mother – a Filipino immigrant who attended an all girls Catholic school (with real live nuns and everything!) – could not. In some ways he was an “actor” just like me. Therefore, the actor-observer effect did not interfere with our fun the way it did with my mom and I.

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Jones, E., & Nisbett, R. (1987). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 79-94). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

Watson, D. (1982). The actor and the observer: How are their perceptions of causality divergent? Psychological Bulletin, 92, 682-700.

Lasting Impressions

[Post Script: 7/11/10, this entry is full of so many lies.. lol]

I fall for (romantically, not literally) good musicians easily and it takes a lot for me to get over them. I attribute this crazy tendency of mine to the primacy effect (Asch, 1946). The primacy effect is our tendency to place a greater weight on information that we receive earlier, rather than later. Essentially, first impressions count more than anything we find out later on about a person.

Once we have formed an impression of another person (or musician) it is easy to succumb to confirmation biases. Confirmation biases are our tendencies to (1) look for more information that agrees with our impression, (2) interpret any vague or unclear information in a way that it fits with our impressions, and (3) ignore any information that does not fit our impression.

To illustrate, I’ll let you in on my high school infatuation with Bob, the tambourine for The Nameless Band. The Nameless Band were a local ska band that I simply had to go listen to every time they played at Fitzgerald’s in Houston. The first time I saw Bob play I went weak in the knees and my heart went all fluttery just watching him.

Needless to say, my initial impression of Bob was a good one. From there I should have seen that it was all down hill, but due to my firmly solidified first impression of him such was not the case.

Because he was in a ska band – and I love ska music – I assumed that he would like the same bands as me, so I found out what his favorites were. They were, indeed, similar to my taste, which served to further reinforce my impression (or infatuation). This manner of unintentionally searching for information to confirm one’s expectations is called confirmatory hypothesis testing (Snyder & Swann, 1978). I didn’t think to ask about his favorite folk musicians; if I had, I would have found out information about him that didn’t support my he’s-so-perfect-for-me impression of him. In other words, because I expected Steve to be a certain kind of person, I asked questions about him that would verify my expectations without knowing it.

Similarly, I eventually began to talk to Bob, but occasionally he would do something rather mean (e.g., ignore me at a party or not respond to my emails). This should have served to sufficiently anger me and bring an end to his good impression. For years I was proved wrong time again; my belief that he was an insightful, charming, artist was discredited, but I still clung to the idea that my initial impression of him was correct – that he really was as awesome as he was the first time I saw him on stage. This tendency for individuals, such as myself, to hold onto their beliefs even after they have been proven wrong is called belief perseverance (Ross, Lepper, & Hubbard, 1975).

In the end, my little crush was, well, crushed. I got over Bob and many more after him, but not before suffering through the primacy effect and the confirmation biases that followed it. I’m now extremely happy with a non-musician with no social psychological concepts involved… I think.
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Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258-290.

Ross, L., Lepper, M., & Hubbard, M. (1975). Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 880-892.

Snyder, M., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (1978). Behavioral confirmation in social interaction: From social perception to social reality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1202-1212.