The cognitive-affective crossfire: When self-consistency confronts self-enhancement.

Abstract

Self-consistency theory assumes that people want others to treat them in a predictable manner. Self-enhancement theory contends that people want others to treat them in a positive manner. We attempted to help reconcile the two theories by testing the hypothesis that people's cognitive responses conform to self-consistency theory and their affective responses conform to self-enhancement theory. We presented individuals who possessed either positive or negative self-concepts with either favorable or unfavorable social feedback. We then measured cognitive reactions to the feedback (e.g., perceived self-descriptiveness) and affective reactions to the feedback (e.g., mood states). Cognitive responses were primarily driven by the consistency of the feedback and affective responses were controlled by how enhancing it was. We propose that conceptualizing cognition an affect as partially independent mental systems helps resolve some long-standing paradoxes regarding people's responses to self-relevant social feedback.