Abstract
This study focused on complexity of the self-schema as one factor that influences people's responses to social feedback that challenges their established view of self. Complexity refers to the number of independent attributes included in the schema. A card-sorting task (Zajonc, 1960) was used to identify the high- and low-complexity groups. Subjects were given bogus feedback relevant to the targeted domain of self-knowledge, and changes in self-descriptiveness ratings and response latency times were monitored. Results suggest that high-complexity subjects were able to attend to and encode the disconfirming feedback, while low-complexity subjects responded by rejecting the feedback and reasserting positive aspects of the self. The implications of these findings for clarifying the process of self-schema updating, revision, and change are discussed.
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Farchaus Stein, K. Complexity of the self-schema and responses to disconfirming feedback. Cogn Ther Res 18, 161–178 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02357222
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02357222