0.3 Individuals and their situations  (Page 4/7)

It makes sense that people will try to support their own beliefs in their social worlds. If someone is competitive, then they look for and seek out competitive qualities in other people - that is how they see the world. So not only do people have their own beliefs, but they also try to support these beliefs by influencing the people with them as well. Each belief is going to form a part of their personality. For instance, is someone competitive going to be a nicer or crueler person? My guess is they wouldn't be as affectionate, seeing as how when someone looks for competition they are almost looking for a fight.

Consider another example drawn from the domain of self-conceptions. Consider the case of those individuals who conceive of themselves as competent, intelligent people. How might such individuals arrange the circumstances of their lives to preserve and sustain these images of self-competence? Jones and Berglas Jones, E. E., + Berglas, A. Control of attributions about the self through self-handicapping strategies: The appeal of alcohol and the role of underachievement. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 1978,4, 200-206. have proposed that people strive to protect their images of self-competence by actions that make it easier for them to externalize (i.e., explain away) their failures and to internalize (i.e., take credit for) their successes. They have labeled such actions self-handicapping strategies . In an empirical demonstration of self-handicapping strategies in action, Berglas and Jones observed that male college students who have reason to anticipate that they may not perform well on a problem-solving task will choose to take drugs that will interfere with their subsequent problem-solving performance. Should they then perform poorly, they have provided themselves with a readily available explanation for their failure that in no way threatens their images of self-competence. should they then perform well, they may pride themselves for being sufficiently intelligent and competent to overcome the handicap of the performance-inhibiting drug.

It is commonplace for people to do such things. People often come up with excuses or try to make themselves appear to be competent or more competent than they actually are. This might be a serious issue that really impacts someones self-esteem. If people weren't foolish and didn't make up stuff about their own personal competence, they might not be as happy as they are. I believe that in some form self-promotion is necessary. I don't think that people necessarily have to lie or do things that are wrong in order to make themselves appear to be more competent - there are many other ways of being arrogant without making a fool of yourself or hurting someone.

More generally, Jones and Berglas have proposed that, to the extent that individuals are concerned with maintaining images of self-competence, they will try to choose settings and circumstances for their performances that maximize the implications of success for enhancing their self-competence images at the same time as they minimize the implications of failure for threatening their self-competence images. To the extent that their choices of life settings meet these criteria, they will manage to live their lives in worlds that protect and enhance both their private self-conceptions and their public images of competence.