Reflected Self-appraisals And Self-confidence:Relational-interdependent Self-construal As A Moderator

Reflected self-appraisals refer to "What I think you think of me". Symbolic interaction theory came up with that the individuals define themselves by the internalization of perceived others’evaluations of themselves. Namely, reflected-self appraisals will be affect self-concept to a certain extent. A large number of studies have also confirmed that, reflected self-appraisals is the foundation of formation, consolidation and change of the self-concept. Nowadays, family, peer relationship and self-development are hot. The intersection of these areas is a long argument:the degree of self depends on our perception of others’evaluation (friends and family members, especially) of ourselves. Thus it can be seen that the research of the relationship of reflected self-appraisals and self-perception is an important research method for contacting the social environment and self-development. The predecessor extensively studied the relationship of reflected self-appraisals and self-evaluation. And reflected self-appraisals plays a medium role of actual evaluation of others and self-evaluation. At the same time, others’evaluation influence on reflected self-appraisals and self-evaluation. Also, individual’s self-concept will change others’actual evaluation of them through the self-presentation and social behavior, thus affect the reflected self-appraisal process.Younger participants always understand themselves through others’appraisals. But for individuals whose self-concept and self-evaluation is relatively mature, the procedure of reflected self-evaluation is not passive as feedback model supposed. The information of reflected self-evaluation is not only from others’feedback, but also from self-views. Individuals will process the information actively and selectively in social activities, and then generate self-evaluation.As the development of self-concept and self-evaluation is stable, for individuals who are used to or not used to defining themselves in terms of relationship, is the extent to which reflected self-appraisals affects self-evaluation different? So we introduced the relational-interdependent self-construal (RISC), and used self-confidence as a dependent variable to check whether reflected self-appraisals is good for individuals or not.This study explores the influence of reflected self-appraisals on self-confidence, and whether this effect would be affected by RISC. Because the high RISC individuals define themselves according to their intimate relationship with others, we conclude that high RISC individuals’confidence will susceptible after activating reflected self-appraisals, and low RISC individuals’confidence will be relatively stable. This paper used two studies to demonstrate this hypothesis by means of measuring relational self-construal in Study 1 and priming RISC or independent self-construal to manipulate self-construal in Study 2.In Study 1, subjects were asked to finish the revised edition of relational-interdependent self-construal scales at first. One day later, they were asked to complete a task of reflected self-appraisals on a computer to judge how much these words accord with best friend’s opinion of you, and answer three questions assessing state self-confidence. In Study 2, procedure is similar to the previous study, completing RISC scale is replaced by priming independent or RISC.In Study 1, we supposed reflected self-appraisals and RISC as independent variables, self-confidence as dependent variables, and a regression was run. Reflected self-appraisals’main effect was significant, and the interaction of reflected self-appraisals and RISC was significant. Further simple slope analysis revealed that reflected self-appraisals would not predict self-confidence when RISC was low. But reflected self-appraisals was significantly related to self-confidence when RISC was high, namely positive reflected self-appraisals was connected with high self-confidence. In conclusion, the results supported the hypothesis:The relation between reflected self-appraisals and self-confidence varies as a function of RISC.In Study 2, A 2(reflected self-appraisals:negative versus positive) x 2(self-construal:relational interdependence versus independence) analysis of covariance was conducted on the self-confidence. A main effect for reflected self-appraisals was found. Self-confidence was significantly higher with positive reflected self-appraisals rather than with negative reflected self-appraisals. Self-construal’s main effect was not significant. The interaction of reflected self-appraisals and primed self-construal was significant. Further analysis of simple effect showed that participants primed with RISC were more self-confident as the score of reflected self-appraisals increasing. And participants’self-confidence primed with independence would not increase significantly when reflected self-appraisals became more positive. In general, the effects of RISC as naturally occurring personality variable (Study 1) and priming RISC (Study 2) on relationship of reflected self-appraisals and self-confidence are remarkably similar.Both studies supported the hypothesis that the relationship of reflected self-appraisals and self-confidence depends on relational-interdependent self-confidence. As expected, individuals high in RISC reported higher self-confidence in the condition of positive reflected self-appraisals. And those high in RISC became lower self-confidence in the condition of negative reflected self-appraisals. Thus social self-consistency is more important for individuals high in RISC. If participants were low in RISC, their self-confidence would not be significantly affected by reflected self-appraisals that was either positive or negative.