Abstract
College students and elderly subjects made self-descriptiveness and other-descriptiveness ratings for the same set of 120 trait adjectives representing three levels of likability. Elderly subjects attributed a greater number of likable traits uniquely to their best friend than to themselves alone, whereas young adults judged themselves more favorably than the other person. The elderly were generally slower at making the descriptiveness decisions, but particularly for uniquely descriptive items, as though trait distinctiveness information was still obtained on a comparative rather than a prestored basis even after many years of developing the self-concept. Scores on a self-consciousness questionnaire revealed that elderly subjects were lower on both public and private self-consciousness, but not on social anxiety.
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Helpful comments were provided on an earlier draft by Donald Kausler and Joel Freund.
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Mueller, J.H., Ross, M.J. Uniqueness of the self-concept across the life span. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 22, 83–86 (1984). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333769
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333769