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In Search of Clarity: Self-Esteem and Domains of Confidence and ConfusionUniversity of Waterloo
University of Waterloo, jwood{at}uwaterloo.ca
University of Waterloo To date, research suggests that self-concept clarity is a monolithic construct: Some people have clearly defined self-concepts in all domains, whereas others do not. The authors argued that self-concept clarity is instead multifaceted and varies across trait domains. The authors predicted that social commodities (SCs; e.g., looks, popularity, social skills) would show less self-concept clarity than would communal qualities (CQs; e.g., kindness, warmth, honesty), due to domain differences in observability, ambiguity, and controllability. Results replicated past findings that self-esteem predicts self-concept clarity but also demonstrated that participants' SC self-views were less clear than their CQ self-views. Moreover, people showed greater clarity about traits that were lower in observability and higher in ambiguity and controllability. These findings suggest that everyone, regardless of self-esteem, has self-concept domains of relative confidence and confusion.
Key Words: self-concept • self-concept clarity • self-esteem • trait domains
This version was published on November
1, 2008 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 34, No. 11,
1541-1555 (2008) This article has been cited by other articles:
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