Self-Enhancement

Definition

People engage in self-enhancement whenever they seek, interpret, or distort evidence about themselves in a way designed to maintain, create, or amplify a positive self-image. Self-enhancement is cognitive or interpersonal activity aimed at boosting beliefs that one is a lovable and capable human being. A related concept is motivated reasoning, which is thought that is expressly aimed at reaching congenial conclusions about one's self and place in the world.

Self-enhancement needs to be distinguished from other similar activities that people may engage in. Self-improvement refers to the motive to become a better individual in reality; self-enhancement instead refers to the motive to create the perception that one is a competent and capable individual, regardless of reality. Self-assessment refers to the motive to obtain an accurate view of the self, whether that view be positive or negative; people engage in self-enhancement when they shade their treatment of the evidence toward creating positive perceptions of self. Self-verification refers to activity people engage in to confirm previously held notions about themselves, whether those perceptions be desirable or undesirable; people engaging in self-enhancement only want to confirm the desirable and deny the undesirable in themselves.

Self-enhancement is also related to a self-protection motive. People engage in self-protection when they strive to deny undesirable aspects of themselves. Self-enhancement refers to claiming as much good as one can about one's strengths and achievements. Selfenhancement is also related to, but different from, a self-presentation motive, which is creating a positive self-image to convince other people that one is competent and capable, regardless of what one believes about one's self.

History and Evidence

The idea that people manage information about themselves to convince themselves that they are capable beings has a long history, at least in Western thought. Indeed, in ancient Greece, the Epicureans raised self-enhancement to a moral principle, asserting that people should entertain only those thoughts about themselves that gave them pleasure.

Scholars in Western thought and in psychology have long assumed that people gather and distort evidence about themselves to maintain positive selfimages, and modern psychology has spent a good deal of effort cataloging many of the tactics that people use in the service of self-enhancement. A few of the major ones, all somewhat interrelated, are discussed here.