Self-Enhancement Theory

Self-Evaluation Motivations

The idea that people want to feel good about themselves is not a unique or unusual concept. Sigmund Freud, a pioneer in the field of psychology, was perhaps one of the first proponents of this idea in the early 1900s. He proposed that people continually strive to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. This drive is called the pleasure principle, and it is important especially with respect to young children because of what is considered their selfishness and disregard for others, which allows them to receive basic needs for survival (e.g., crying when hungry). This drive continues over time, where the individual is interested in feeling good about the self and seeking immediate gratification. The same motivation for seeking pleasure was introduced in the drive-reduction theory in the 1940s. Once again, the basic premise was that all behavior is motivated by the desire to seek pleasure that is a result of needs and desires being met. When drive-induced tensions are alleviated, the individual feels pleasure, resulting in an enhancement of the self.

That people want to feel pleasure by thinking positively of themselves and having others express the same regard has been evident in numerous studies within psychology. Self-enhancement theory arose from this basic premise, suggesting that regardless of how a person feels about himself or herself, the person wants others to think positively of him or her. A widely studied phenomenon in social psychology, self-enhancement has been considered a universal motivator. Because an individual cannot directly observe the self, one must look to others to gain self-knowledge that allows one to create beliefs and opinions about the self. Although this knowledge about the self is not always accurate, it still plays an influential role in how one perceives the self.

One way to learn about the self is through interaction and feedback from others. Learning what others think about the self can help reinforce one's self-knowledge. Feedback can be positive or negative and can be consistent or inconsistent with one's self-view. The extent to which people prefer good/bad or (in)consistent self-evaluations has been widely studied. In the 1970s, there were several competing schools of thought on the type of feedback people preferred. Until this time, many “mini-theories” tried to explain the motivational processes affecting self-knowledge. These mini-theories were then categorized into three distinct areas to indicate the type of information preferred from others: accurate information (self-assessment theory), consistent information (self-verification [Page 691]theory), and positive information (self-enhancement theory).

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