The primary purpose of this project was to examine the adaptiveness of maintaining accurate or illusory social self-perceptions in a large population of high school students. First it is shown that there is a lack of congruence between perceived and actual social acceptance and that this incongruence is not just due to methodological problems in the way that accuracy is assessed. Rather, the results provide converging evidence that discrepancies between self-reported peer acceptance and actual acceptance occur due to biases in the way that adolescents process social information. Second, it is shown that there are unique psychological profiles of maintaining accurate or illusory self-perceptions and that the pattern of relations are affected by the direction of the inaccuracy (either over- vs. underrating) as well as the degree of the inaccuracy (moderate vs. extreme). Discrepant negative self-evaluations appear to be associated with negative affect and ill being, particularly when they represent extreme departures from accuracy. In contrast, optimistic self-appraisals of one's social acceptance that are not unduly disparate from social reality appear beneficial, whereas, veridical self-judgments appear to be more limiting in terms of their impact on mental health. The findings also found that although extreme overrating of one's social acceptance was not maladaptive, it also was not associated with any accrued benefits from the standpoint of fewer symptoms of depression. Discussion focuses on theoretical and clinical issues associated with maintaining accuracy of social self-perceptions along with directions for future research. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-01, Section: B, page: 0718. / Major Professor: Janet Kistner. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77647 |
| Contributors | Balthazor, Michael John., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 97 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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