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Self-Enhancing Feedback

Self-Enhancing Feedback
Self-Enhancing Feedback
The social world is rife with opportunities for feedback. People are surrounded with evaluative information from the moment they awake, through a day that may include any number of social interactions and displays of mastery (or lack of), to the moment they hit the pillow to sleep (Sutton, Hornsey, & Douglas, this volume). However, despite this wealth of available personal data, most healthy adults do not possess commendably accurate or objective views of themselves (Dunning, 2005). Moreover, this inaccuracy is not random: it is systematically biased in a self-flattering manner. Put another way, people usually see themselves through rose-colored glasses (Alicke & Sedikides, 2009; Taylor & Brown, 1988). At least three key questions are raised by this observation. First, why do people possess a positivity bias? Second, how do they maintain this bias despite the seemingly contradictory feedback available to them? And third, why does it matter: what consequences does this bias have for psychological and behavioral functioning? In this chapter, we will address all three questions, but will dedicate most of our attention to the second one. In so doing, we hope to illustrate the inventive ways that people use (and sometimes abuse) feedback for the sake of self-positivity
0-262-19478-3
Peter Lang Publishing Group
Hepper, Erica G.
fe969931-cea2-4781-a474-d41a89b213ae
Sedikides, Constantine
9d45e66d-75bb-44de-87d7-21fd553812c2
Sutton, R..
Hornsey, M.
Douglas, K.
Hepper, Erica G.
fe969931-cea2-4781-a474-d41a89b213ae
Sedikides, Constantine
9d45e66d-75bb-44de-87d7-21fd553812c2
Sutton, R..
Hornsey, M.
Douglas, K.

Hepper, Erica G. and Sedikides, Constantine (2010) Self-Enhancing Feedback. In, Sutton, R.., Hornsey, M. and Douglas, K. (eds.) Feedback: The Handbook of Praise, Criticism, and Advice. Peter Lang Publishing Group. (In Press)

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

The social world is rife with opportunities for feedback. People are surrounded with evaluative information from the moment they awake, through a day that may include any number of social interactions and displays of mastery (or lack of), to the moment they hit the pillow to sleep (Sutton, Hornsey, & Douglas, this volume). However, despite this wealth of available personal data, most healthy adults do not possess commendably accurate or objective views of themselves (Dunning, 2005). Moreover, this inaccuracy is not random: it is systematically biased in a self-flattering manner. Put another way, people usually see themselves through rose-colored glasses (Alicke & Sedikides, 2009; Taylor & Brown, 1988). At least three key questions are raised by this observation. First, why do people possess a positivity bias? Second, how do they maintain this bias despite the seemingly contradictory feedback available to them? And third, why does it matter: what consequences does this bias have for psychological and behavioral functioning? In this chapter, we will address all three questions, but will dedicate most of our attention to the second one. In so doing, we hope to illustrate the inventive ways that people use (and sometimes abuse) feedback for the sake of self-positivity

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Accepted/In Press date: 20 April 2010

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 146063
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/146063
ISBN: 0-262-19478-3
PURE UUID: fdd13c68-4635-4576-b6c0-55380bc7891b
ORCID for Constantine Sedikides: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-889X

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Date deposited: 20 Apr 2010 14:08
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:43

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Contributors

Author: Erica G. Hepper
Editor: R.. Sutton
Editor: M. Hornsey
Editor: K. Douglas

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