Self-enhancement is a type of motivation that works to make people feel good about themselves and to maintain self-esteem. This motive becomes especially prominent in situations of threat, failure or blows to one's self-esteem. Self-enhancement involves a preference for positive over negative self-views. It is one of the three self-evaluation motives along with self-assessment (the drive for an accurate self-concept) and self-verification (the drive for a self-concept congruent with one's identity). Self-evaluation motives drive the process of self-regulation, that is, how people control and direct their own actions. There are a variety of strategies that people can use to enhance their sense of personal worth. For example, they can downplay skills that they lack or they can criticise others to seem better by comparison. These strategies are successful, in that people tend to think of themselves as having more positive qualities and fewer negative qualities than others. Although self-enhancement is seen in people with low self-esteem as well as with high self-esteem, these two groups tend to use different strategies. People who already have high esteem enhance their self-concept directly, by processing new information in a biased way. People with low self-esteem use more indirect strategies, for example by avoiding situations in which their negative qualities will be noticeable. There are controversies over whether or not self-enhancement is beneficial to the individual, and over whether self-enhancement is culturally universal or specific to Western individualism.
Levels Self-enhancement can occur in many different situations and under many different guises. The general motive of self-enhancement can have many differing underlying explanations, each of which becomes more or less dominant depending on the situation. The explanations of the self-enhancement motive can occur in different combinations. Self-enhancement can occur as an underlying motive or personality trait without occurring as an observed effect.
Both the extent and the type of self-enhancement vary across a number of dimensions.
Self-advancement vs. self-protection Self-enhancement can occur by either self-advancing or self-protecting, that is either by enhancing the positivity of one's self-concept, or by reducing the negativity of one's self-concept. Self-protection appears to be the stronger of the two motives, given that avoiding negativity is of greater importance than encouraging positivity. However, as with all motivations, there are differences between individuals. For example, people with higher self-esteem appear to favour self-advancement, whereas people with lower self-esteem tend to self-protect. This highlights the role of risk: to not defend oneself against negativity in favour of self-promotion offers the potential for losses, whereas whilst one may not gain outright from self-protection, one does not incur the negativity either. People high in self-esteem tend to be greater risk takers and therefore opt for the more risky strategy of self-advancement, whereas those low in self-esteem and risk-taking hedge their bets with self-protection.
Public vs. private Self-enhancement can occur in private or in public. Public self-enhancement is obvious positive self-presentation, whereas private self enhancement is unnoticeable except to the individual. The presence of other people i.e. in public self-enhancement, can either augment or inhibit self-enhancement. Whilst self-enhancement may not always take place in public it is nevertheless still influenced by the social world, for example via social comparisons.
Central vs. peripheral Potential areas of self-enhancement differ in terms how important, or central, they are to a person. Self-enhancement tends to occur more in the domains that are the most important to a person, and less in more peripheral, less important domains.
Candid vs. tactical Self-enhancement can occur either candidly or tactically. Candid self-enhancement serves the purpose of immediate gratification whereas tactical self-enhancement can result in potentially larger benefits from delayed gratification. Tactical self-enhancement is often preferred over candid self-enhancement as overt self-enhancement is socially displeasing for those around it. Narcissism is an exemplification of extreme candid self-enhancement.
Types Self-enhancement does not just occur at random. Its incidence is often highly systematic and can occur in any number of ways in order to achieve its goal of inflating perceptions of the self. Importantly, we are typically unaware that we are self-enhancing. Awareness of self-enhancing processes would highlight the facade we are trying to create, revealing that the self we perceive is in fact an enhanced version of our actual self.
Self-serving attribution bias
Self-enhancement can also affect the causal explanations people generate for social outcomes. People have a tendency to exhibit a self-serving attribution bias, that is to attribute positive outcomes to one's internal disposition but negative outcomes to factors beyond one's control e.g. others, chance or circumstance. In short, people claim credit for their successes but deny responsibilities for their failures. The self-serving attribution bias is very robust, occurring in public as well as in private, even when a premium is placed on honesty. People most commonly manifest a self-serving bias when they explain the origin or events in which they personally had a hand or a stake. Explanations for moral transgressions follow similar self-serving patterns, as do explanations for group behaviour. The ultimate attribution error is the tendency to regard negative acts by one's out-group and positive acts by one's in-group as essential to their nature i.e. attributable to their internal disposition and not a product of external factors. This may reflect the operation of the self-serving bias refracted through social identification.
Selectivity
Selective memory
People sometimes self-enhance by selectively remembering their strengths rather than weaknesses. This pattern of selective forgetting has been described as mnemic neglect. Mnemic neglect may reflect biases in the processing of information at either encoding, retrieval or retention.
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