Self-aspects as social categories: the role of personal importance and valence

✍ Scribed by Bernd Simon; Claudia Hastedt

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 128 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0046-2772
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199906)29:4<479::aid-ejsp939>3.0.co;2-m

✦ Synopsis

Building on a self-aspect model (SAM) of the individual self and the collective self, the authors hypothesized that personally important and positive aspects of the self would facilitate the construal of a collective self. Following a self-description task, research participants selected either two positive or two negative self-aspects. One aspect in each pair had to be of high personal importance and one of low personal importance. Then, measures of self-categorization, perceived ingroup and outgroup homogeneity and intergroup dierentiation were administered. Our hypothesis received convergent support from all measures. It is concluded that personally important and positive self-aspects are very likely to function as meaningful social categories.