I love my multiple selves, but which one is my favorite: motivational primacy of the tripartite self

Luke, Michelle, Sedikides, Constantine, Gaertner, Lowell, O'Mara, Erin, Eckstein Jackson, Lydia, Cai, Huajian and Wu, Quiping (2010) I love my multiple selves, but which one is my favorite: motivational primacy of the tripartite self. The 11th Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP 2010), Las Vegas, USA. 28 - 30 Jan 2010.

Abstract

Past research evidenced stronger reactions of the individual than collective self to both threat and enhancement, suggesting the motivational primacy of the individual self (Gaertner, Sedikides, Vevea, & Iuzzini, 2002). Absent, however, was consideration of the relational self. The current research rectified that absence, thus expanding our theoretical model while enriching the empirical assessment of primacy. Research, conducted in the US and China, tested the relative primacy of the individual, relational, and collective self. Participants were primed with a particular self before listing 12 future goals. Subsequently, they indicated the importance of each goal and indicated whether a given goal represented their individual, relational, or collective self. The evidence supported a three-tiered motivational hierarchy among the selves, with the individual self at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the relational self, and trailed at the bottom by the collective self. This hierarchy may reflect a fundamental structural pattern of the human self—a pattern whose outline was drawn by evolutionary forces

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Contributors

Author: Constantine Sedikides

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