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Project

Self-affirmation and self-superiority beliefs.

Most people believe that their traits and abilities are better than those of others. Even though self-superiority beliefs may provoke conflicts and hinder cooperation, being so widespread they must have some social functionality as well. This project tests the hypothesis that self-superiority beliefs serve a self-affirmative function. Self-affirmation is the process through which people gain reassurance of their personal worth (e.g. by contemplating their values). People may engage in it to protect their self-esteem when they face threatening experiences. By testing the hypothesis that self-superiority beliefs form a hitherto unstudied mechanism of self-affirmation the project will yield (a) a better understanding of the determinants and consequences of self-superiority beliefs, (b) new and easily administrable self-affirmation procedures, and (c) new techniques to reduce the adverse effects of (self-)stereotyping and faulty social information processing.
Date:1 Oct 2012 →  30 Sep 2016
Keywords:Self-presentation, Negotation, Illusory superiority, Stereotyping, Self-threat, Superiority beliefs, Self-conceptSelf-, Self-affirmation
Disciplines:Animal experimental and comparative psychology, Applied psychology, Human experimental psychology, Social psychology