Cut & Paste into your own notes

What things is your self-esteem most contingent on? (i.e., you feel proud of yourself on these things when you do well, and feel pain when you don't)
Have you ever caught yourself symbolically self-completing? It may not have bene obvious at the time, but in retrospect can you spot one?
What are the strategies you use most for recovering when there is a threat to your self?
Are there any of these strategies that you are sure you haven't used?

Self Threat & Compensation

You don't seem to be logged in

Go log inGo make a login
Pages will open in a new tab. Return here when you are set

We talked about things that upset people’s sense of self, and ways people try to repair that damage:

Three theories that describe how our self can feel under attack:

  1. Symbolic self-completion theory says that we feel insecure when we are lacking experience or expertise in a role. This motivates us to acquire symbols for that role, to help us ‘complete’ the image of it applying to ourselves (or, as we put it in self-symoblic theory, it will make our performance of it feel more ‘real’)
  2. Contingencies of self-esteem theory says that we pick a few domains (such as our work or family life) to invest ourselves into. Our self-esteem then becomes contingent on how we are doing in that role: It rewards us by feeling good when we do well, and tries to prod us into action by feeling bad when we do poorly. This can be useful for motivating us into action, but is also thought to sometimes make us ‘fragile’ if we try to compensate to feel better, rather than solving our problems.
  3. Amoebic self theory says that we have 3 ‘boundaries’ that we defend. A body boundary (we generally want knives, dirt, and poisons to stay on the outside of our skin), a social boundary (keep your friends close, and enemies out), and a spatial-symbolic boundary (our survival depends on keeping dangerous things away from us, and having rules-maintained that prohibit theft, murder, etc)

Mandel’s theory describes different ways we can try to respond to such threats (outside using motivated reasoning to reframe the situation in a non-threatening way.

  • Some of these are direct: You try to solve the problem, or, at least, symbolically self-complete this identity, to make you feel like you’ve got closer to solving it
  • Some are indirect: You either turn away from the threatened domain to focus on other things, or you choose something so involving (ice cream!) that it distracts you hard from the threatened area
  • You can engage in “fluid compensation” that reminds you of other areas of your self that you like. This helps you feel better about yourself over-all

It’s not entirely clear which of these strategies people will choose when. It’s probably often hard for them to decide themselves.