Some people think they know themselves well, but do they really?

Some people will tell you that they have a clear sense of who they are, and that their sense of self is stable over time. Psychologists refer to this as having high "self-concept clarity". In a new study, Jean Guerrettaz and Robert Arkin shine a spotlight on these self-proclaimed self-knowers. The researchers find that their confidence is often fragile, and that somewhat paradoxically, it is people confident in their sense of self whose self-esteem is most undermined by challenging questions about who they are.Guerrettaz and Arkin asked 91 undergrads to fill out a questionnaire about their confidence in their self-knowledge (their "self-concept clarity" to use the jargon), and then to provide ten traits to answer the question "Who am I?". The students were then given the challenge of providing either two or eight examples of when in life they'd exhibited what they considered to be their two most important traits. After all this, the participants said how hard they'd found the challenge and they completed a measure of their self-esteem.Here's the key finding - the students who claimed to have high self-concept clarity said they found it more difficult to recall eight than two examples demonstrating their most important traits. What's more, struggling to find eight examples of each trait left their self-esteem drained, as compared to their high self-concept peers who only had to find two examples.It's as if the awkward experience of the trickier version of the challenge had und...

Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - January 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Research Digest Source Type: blogs