Self-belief change despite the desire to remain the same.

Abstract

In order to understand behavior change, it is important to understand self-belief change. People prefer to verify, and thus to have stable self-beliefs in order to maintain the perception that they know themselves well, or self-knowledge confidence. Explanations of self-belief change must take into account people's desire to maintain self-knowledge confidence. I offer a new perspective of self-belief change. According to this perspective, people's self-beliefs change when they can maintain self-knowledge confidence. I conducted two experimental studies to test this perspective. In the first study, participants received feedback that either verified or challenged one of their self-beliefs that they held with either certainty or uncertainty. Participants' self-knowledge confidence was bolstered when one of their certain self-beliefs was verified. In the second study, participants received feedback that challenged one of their self-beliefs that they held with either certainty or uncertainty. Some were also given feedback that verified a different one of their certain self-beliefs. When participants had one of their certain self-beliefs verified before they had one of their self-beliefs challenged, they were more likely to change their self-belief. In addition, participants were more likely to change a certain self-belief than an uncertain self-belief. These effects were mediated by the extent to which participants were open to accepting self-inconsistent information and weren't motivated to verify their self-belief that was challenged. I discuss the role of self-knowledge confidence in self-belief change. I also discuss implications for the perspectives of self-belief change that have been offered in the literature to date, and the extent to which self-belief changes last over time and across situations.