(Individuals); Social Cognition; State of the Art Reviews

A major assumption in personality theOry.is that the human mind tends to organize experience into conceptual systems. An individual's overall theory of reality includes both self-theory and world-theory. One of the basic postulates in an individual's self-theory is an overall assessment of self-esteem, which becomeS the most important influence on his/her pleasure/pain Balance. As 'a higher order postulate, ielf-estiem.is resistant to change. Direct self-assessment of selfTesteem,.using self-report techniques, appears to.be of considerable value in allowing the acquisition of considerable information.relatively easily. A major.disadvantage is that people.cannot be.expected to be in direct contact with their preconscious level of *self-esteem and often become defensive. A major task, then, is the development of self-esteem scale items that are; uninfluenced by defensiveness. Other approaches to measuring self-esteem that are:free of the influence'of defensiveness inclUde behavioral measures and ratings by others. Self-esteem, when viewed as x basic construct 1n,an individual's.implicit conceptual system of, self, is of sudh fundamental importance in understanding human behavior that it warrants a great deal of creative 'effort in establishing better,ways to measure it. (JAC) 4