Self-Discrepancy Theory

Self-Guides

Self-discrepancy theory proposes that people represent a negative life event as saying something about their current state, their actual self now. This actual self is compared with their self-guides, the kind of person they want or desire to be (e.g., going to a good college, having a good marriage). When there is a discrepancy between individuals' actual self and their self-guides, a self-discrepancy, people suffer emotionally. When the actual self is discrepant from an ideal, people feel sad, disappointed, discouraged—dejection-related emotions that relate to depression. When the actual self is discrepant from an ought, people feel nervous, tense, and worried—agitationrelated emotions that relate to anxiety. Thus, selfdiscrepancy theory proposes that people's emotional vulnerabilities depend on the type of self-guide that motivates their lives: dejection/depression when ideals dominate and agitation/anxiety when oughts dominate.

The rationale behind these predictions is that different emotions are associated with different psychological situations that people experience: Success or failure to meet your ideals produce different psychological situations than success or failure to meet your oughts. Specifically, with an ideal (i.e., one of your hopes and aspirations), you experience success as the presence of a positive outcome (a gain), which is a happy experience, and you experience failure as the absence of positive outcomes (a nongain), which is a sad experience. In contrast, with an ought (i.e., one of your duties and obligations), you experience success as the absence of a negative outcome (a nonloss), which is a relaxing experience, and you experience failure as the presence of a negative outcome (a loss), which is a worrying experience.

Self-discrepancy theory also makes predictions about the kind of parenting that is likely to result in children having strong ideal self-guides and the kind that is likely to result in children having strong ought self-guides. Again, these predictions are based on the underlying idea that self-regulation in relation to ideals involves experiencing successes in the world as the presence of positive outcomes (gains) and failures as the absence of positive outcomes (nongains), whereas self-regulation in relation to oughts involves experiencing successes as the absence of negative outcomes (nonlosses) and failures as the presence of negative outcomes (losses). When children interact with their parents (or other caretakers), the parents respond to the children in ways that make the children experience one of these different kinds of psychological situations. Over time, the children respond to themselves as their parents respond to them, producing the same specific kinds of psychological situations, and this develops into the kind of self-guide (ideal or ought) that is associated with those psychological situations. The pattern of parenting that is predicted to create strong ideals in children is when parents combine bolstering (when managing success) and love withdrawal (when disciplining failure). Bolstering occurs, for instance, when parents encourage the child to overcome difficulties, hug and kiss the child when he or she succeeds, or set up opportunities for the child to engage in success activities; it creates an experience of the presence of positive outcomes in the child. Love withdrawal occurs, for instance, when parents end a meal when the child throws some food, take away a toy when the child refuses to share it, or stop a story when the child is not paying attention; this creates an experience of the absence of positive outcomes in the child.

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