The Journal of Social Psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Journal of Social Psychology - Essay Example Also, people are more likely to notice consistent feedback more than inconsistent feedback and to interpret ambiguous feedback as consistent with their own self-conceptions. However, sometimes people receive self-inconsistent feedback. According to Self-Verification Theory (Swann 1987, as cited by Collins and Stukas), people are likely to reject such feedback. Nevertheless, there are some situations in which self-change is promoted and self-inconsistent feedback is meant to be taken seriously and scrutinized. In particular, the therapeutic clinic is a context for such change, which is often set in motion by the delivery of self-inconsistent feedback. However, Self-Verification Theory had already demonstrated that people in need of therapeutic change (e.g., depressed people) may show a preference for negative (self-consistent) feedback over positive (self-inconsistent) feedback. Indeed, in the setting of therapy, clients may be more willing to accept self-inconsistent feedback, althou gh other factors--such as therapists' statuses and clients' attitudes toward therapy--may moderate acceptance. This is why Collins and Stukas (2006) tried to study the effects of experimentally manipulated personality feedback that they--in the guise of therapists--e-mailed to participants on the degree of their acceptance of the feedback. Consistent with Self-Verification Theory (Swann, 1987), participants accepted feedback that was consistent with their self-views more readily than they did feedback that was inconsistent with their self-views. What they did was to randomly assign participants in receiving self-inconsistent or self-consistent feedback, and they simply returned their evaluations of the feedback to us by e-mail. Collins and Stukas (June 2006) hypothesized that (a) participants would be more willing to accept self-consistent feedback than self-inconsistent feedback, (b) participants would be more willing to accept self-inconsistent feedback from a high-status therapist than from a low-status therapist, and (c) participants with positive attitudes toward therapy would be more w illing to accept self-inconsistent feedback than would participants with negative attitudes toward therapy. Although Collins and Stukas (June, 2006) obtained results that are consistent with past researches, the thing is that they chose a very minimal operationalization of the therapeutic context, one that allowed us to manipulate both therapist status and feedback without concern for the potential influence of other variables that are normally found in this setting (e.g., dynamics of an actual interaction, appearance of the therapist and therapist's office, actual psychopathology of the clients). They also used a very short measure to assess participants' self-concepts. This reductionistic approach worked well from both a practical standpoint and an ethical one, but doing research in the real setting might prove more difficult. This research from Collins and Stukas (June 2006) might be helpful in terms of the modern methodologies used in this study. We could use similar approach in determining Self-Feedbacks by electronic mail to our respondents. Schmitt, D.P. and Allik, J. (2005, October). Simultaneous Administration of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale in 53 Nations: Exploring the Universal and Culture-Specific Features of Global Self-Esteem, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 89(4): 623-642. In Schmitt and Allik's study