Assimilation and Accommodation in Self-Conception: Towards a Dynamic Theory of Self-Representation

129 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993.How information about the self is organized and whether information about the self is stable or not are basic issues that have generated considerable controversy. This dissertation provided a conceptual integration of discrepant finding in the literature that concern the stability of information related to the self. It proposed a methodology for examining the stable and dynamic aspects of self-knowledge within the context of an individual experiment, and developed measures with desirable psychometric properties for assessing subject's feelings regarding their achievement and social competence. The main experiment examined three hypotheses regarding how information about the self is organized in memory. The data indicate that people have a range of acceptable opinions about themselves within any given domain, and that while the particular opinion they may report at any given time may be responsive to the context in which that judgment is made, the range of opinions they endorse remains relatively stable. Specific implications for how information about the self is organized and how self-representations are utilized in the self-evaluation process are discussed.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD