CHANGES IN SELF CONCEPTS IN RELATION TO PERCEPTION OF OTHERS
Abstract
The subjects of the study were 87 students living together in a university dormitory. Self-evaluations of their own personality traits were examined in relation to their perception of their best friends. The results of the study were as follows: Students perceived smaller differences betwe n themselves and their best friends than between themselves and a least-like roommate. Students who perceived their best friends to be relatively unlike themselves changed their selfevaluations more in a six-week time interval than did students who perceived their best friends to be like themselves. Students changed their self-evaluations, during the six-week time interval, so that they perceived smaller differences between themselves and their best friends. This reduction in perceived difference was accomplished through a process such that at the end of the six weeks, subjects tended to evaluate themselves in the way that they had previously evaluated their best friends. Subjects who ascribed relatively good personality traits to their best friends, as compared with themselves, changed their self-evaluations so that they later ascribed more positive traits to themselves. Subjects who gave their best friends relatively poor descriptions changed their self-evaluations in a egative direction. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 1961
- Accession Number
- AD0263841
Entities
People
- Dorothy M. Kipnis
Organizations
- University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign