Abraham Tesser

Last updated
Abraham Tesser
Born
Abraham Tesser

(1941-05-24)24 May 1941
Alma mater Purdue University (PhD, 1967)
Scientific career
Fields psychology, Social psychology
Institutions University of Georgia

Abraham Tesser' [1] (born May 24, 1941, Brooklyn, NY) is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Georgia. His research has made significant contributions to several areas in the field of Social Psychology. He created the self-evaluation maintenance model, a theory in social psychology that focuses on the motives for self-enhancement.

Contents

Biography

Abraham Tesser received a BA from Long Island University in 1962 and an MS in 1965 and PhD in 1967 from Purdue University. He is now a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus from the University of Georgia where he held a faculty position (1967-1999) and directed the Institute for Behavioral Research (1984-1994). His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute for Mental Health. He served in the field of social psychology as president in 2000 of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and as Editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His major research contributions have been in the areas of interpersonal communication, attitudes and the psychology of self.

Research

Interpersonal Communication: The Mum Effect

This research, [2] in collaboration with Sidney Rosen, identified (and named) a robust tendency for persons to avoid communicating information with negative consequences (bad news) to the relevant recipient. A variety of explanations for the effect has been explored and reported.

Attitudes

Self-Generated attitude change (attitude polarization). This research [3] suggests that simply thinking about an attitude object, even with no new information or change in circumstances, can result in attitude change usually in a more extreme direction (polarization). Such changes seem to depend on the presence of cognitive schemas. [4]
Attitudes and Behavior. The Mismatch Model. Self-reported attitudes might primarily reflect a person's feelings or her beliefs about an attitude object Her behavior with respect to the object might also primarily reflect feelings about the object, i.e., consummatory behaviors, or beliefs about the object, i.e., instrumental behaviors. According to the Mismatch Model the relationship between attitudes and behavior is maximized when there is a match between the attitude component reflected in the self-report and the component reflected in the behavior. [5]
Attitude Heritability. Attitudes differ in the extent to which they are influenced by genetic factors, i.e., their heritability. Attitudes with greater heritability are more accessible, more resistant to social influence and more influential in attracting/repelling us to/from others. [6]

The Psychology of Self

The Self-evaluation maintenance theory [7] posits two processes, the comparison process and the reflection process, to explain how the outstanding performance of others can affect our own behavior. When a close other, e.g., a friend or relative, performs better in a highly self-relevant domain then self-evaluation is likely to suffer by comparison. If the performance domain is low in self-relevance then the reflection process is likely to be more important and the outstanding performance of a friend or relative boost self-evaluation. Assume that people want to maintain a positive self-evaluation. Now, predictions can be tested about when people will alter the self-relevance of a performance domain, how close (or distant) they will feel toward another, and whether they will facilitate or hinder the performance of another. The emotions underlying these behavioral changes have also been explored. The model has been extended to recognize the effects of committed relationships, e.g., marriage, by Stephen Beach. [8]
Confluence and the Self Zoo. The number of processes that affect self-esteem is large and diverse, a "self zoo" . Using three broad classes of mechanisms, cognitive consistency, social comparison and value expression, the "confluence" work shows that many of these mechanisms are not independent. For example, a threat to self-esteem via social comparison can be addressed via increases in cognitive consistency or value expression and vice versa [9]

Related Research Articles

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as the mental disturbance people feel when their beliefs and actions are inconsistent and contradictory, ultimately encouraging some change to align better and reduce this dissonance. Relevant items of information include peoples' actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other, people do all in their power to change either so that they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Job satisfaction</span> Attitude of a person towards work

Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentment with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be measured in cognitive (evaluative), affective, and behavioral components. Researchers have also noted that job satisfaction measures vary in the extent to which they measure feelings about the job. or cognitions about the job.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attitude (psychology)</span> Concept in psychology and communication studies

An attitude "is a summary evaluation of an object of thought. An attitude object can be anything a person discriminates or holds in mind." Attitudes include beliefs (cognition), emotional responses (affect) and behavioral tendencies. In the classical definition an attitude is persistent, while in more contemporary conceptualizations, attitudes may vary depending upon situations, context, or moods.

Self-perception theory (SPT) is an account of attitude formation developed by psychologist Daryl Bem. It asserts that people develop their attitudes by observing their own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused it. The theory is counterintuitive in nature, as the conventional wisdom is that attitudes determine behaviors. Furthermore, the theory suggests that people induce attitudes without accessing internal cognition and mood states. The person interprets their own overt behaviors rationally in the same way they attempt to explain others' behaviors.

In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional errors is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors. It refers to the systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, often leading to perceptual distortions, inaccurate assessments, or illogical interpretations of events and behaviors.

Self-knowledge is a term used in psychology to describe the information that an individual draws upon when finding answers to the questions "What am I like?" and "Who am I?".

Attitudes are associated beliefs and behaviors towards some object. They are not stable, and because of the communication and behavior of other people, are subject to change by social influences, as well as by the individual's motivation to maintain cognitive consistency when cognitive dissonance occurs—when two attitudes or attitude and behavior conflict. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of affective and cognitive components. It has been suggested that the inter-structural composition of an associative network can be altered by the activation of a single node. Thus, by activating an affective or emotional node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined.

Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings towards some object. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having an attitude towards someone or something that contains both positively and negatively valenced components. The term also refers to situations where "mixed feelings" of a more general sort are experienced, or where a person experiences uncertainty or indecisiveness.

Social comparison theory, initially proposed by social psychologist Leon Festinger in 1954, centers on the belief that individuals drive to gain accurate self-evaluations. The theory explains how individuals evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing themselves to others to reduce uncertainty in these domains and learn how to define the self. Comparing oneself to others socially is a form of measurement and self-assessment to identify where an individual stands according to their own set of standards and emotions about themselves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crab mentality</span> Metaphor about spiteful attitude

Crab mentality, also known as crab theory, crabs in a bucket mentality, or the crab-bucket effect, is a way of thinking usually described by the phrase "if I can't have it, neither can you".

Self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) concerns discrepancies between two people in a relationship. The theory posits an individual will maintain as well as enhance their self-esteem via a social comparison to another individual. Self-evaluation refers to the self-perceived social ranking one has towards themselves. It is the continuous process of determining personal growth and progress, which can be raised or lowered by the behavior of others. Abraham Tesser created the self-evaluation maintenance theory in 1988. The self-evaluation maintenance model assumes two things: that a person will try to maintain or increase their own self-evaluation, and self-evaluation is influenced by relationships with others.

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 and self-verification . Self-evaluation motives drive the process of self-regulation, that is, how people control and direct their own actions.

In social psychology, illusory superiority is a cognitive bias wherein people overestimate their own qualities and abilities compared to others. Illusory superiority is one of many positive illusions, relating to the self, that are evident in the study of intelligence, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desirable personal characteristics and personality traits. Overestimation of abilities compared to an objective measure is known as the overconfidence effect.

Implicit self-esteem refers to a person's disposition to evaluate themselves in a spontaneous, automatic, or unconscious manner. It contrasts with explicit self-esteem, which entails more conscious and reflective self-evaluation. Both explicit and implicit self-esteem are constituents of self-esteem.

Self-justification describes how, when a person encounters cognitive dissonance, or a situation in which a person's behavior is inconsistent with their beliefs (hypocrisy), that person tends to justify the behavior and deny any negative feedback associated with the behavior.

Implicit attitudes are evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self. These evaluations are generally either favorable or unfavorable and come about from various influences in the individual experience. The commonly used definition of implicit attitude within cognitive and social psychology comes from Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji's template for definitions of terms related to implicit cognition: "Implicit attitudes are introspectively unidentified traces of past experience that mediate favorable or unfavorable feeling, thought, or action toward social objects". These thoughts, feelings or actions have an influence on behavior that the individual may not be aware of.

Social comparison bias is the tendency to have feelings of dislike and competitiveness with someone seen as physically, socially, or mentally better than oneself. Social comparison bias or social comparison theory is the idea that individuals determine their own worth based on how they compare to others. The theory was developed in 1954 by psychologist Leon Festinger. This can be compared to social comparison, which is believed to be central to achievement motivation, feelings of injustice, depression, jealousy, and people's willingness to remain in relationships or jobs. The basis of the theory is that people are believed to compete for the best outcome in relation to their peers. For example, one might make a comparison between the low-end department stores they go to frequently and the designer stores of their peers. Such comparisons may evoke feelings of resentment, anger, and envy with their peers. This bias revolves mostly around wealth and social status; it is unconscious and people who make these are largely unaware of them. In most cases, people try to compare themselves to those in their peer group or with whom they are similar.

Praise as a form of social interaction expresses recognition, reassurance or admiration.

Frederick Rhodewalt was an American social psychologist at the University of Utah.

Functional attitude theory (FAT) suggests that beliefs and attitudes are influential to various psychological functions. Attitudes can be influential on many processes such as being utilitarian (useful), social, relating to values, or a reduction of cognitive dissonance. They can be beneficial and help people interact with the world. In the late 1950s when psychoanalysis and behaviorism reigned supreme as the foci of psychological studies, Smith, Bruner, and White (1956) and Katz (1960) separately and independently developed typologies of human attitudes in relation to the functions to which they believed the attitudes served. This theory proposes that attitudes are held by individuals because they are important and integral to psychological functioning. The function of an attitude is more important than whether the attitude is accurate or correct.

References

  1. Abraham Tesser
  2. Tesser, A., & Rosen, S. The reluctance to transmit bad news. In L. Berkowitz (Editor), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Volume 8). New York: Academic Press, 1975, 194-232.
  3. Tesser, A. Self-generated attitude change. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. XI). New York: Academic Press, 1978.
  4. Tesser, A., & Leone, C. Cognitive schemas and thought as determinants of attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1977, 13, 340-356.
  5. Millar, M. G. & Tesser, A. (1992). The role of beliefs and feelings in guiding behavior: The Mis-match Model. In L. Martin & A. Tesser (Eds.) The Construction of Social Judgement. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  6. Tesser, A. (1993) On the importance of heritability in psychological research: The case of attitudes. Psychological Review, 100, 129-142.
  7. Tesser, A. (1988). Toward a self-evaluation maintenance model of social behavior. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 21), 181-227. New York: Academic Press.
  8. Beach, S. R. H. & Tesser, A. (1995). Self-esteem and the extended self-evaluation maintenance model: The self in social context. In M. Kernis (Ed.) Efficacy, Agency, and Self Esteem. New York: Plenum. Pp 145-170.
  9. Tesser, A., Crepaz, N., Collins, J. C. , Cornell, D. & Beach, S.R.H. (2000). Confluence of self defense mechanisms: On integrating the self zoo. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1476-1489.. The element that connects these processes is posited to be negative affect.