Self-evaluation motives

Self-evaluation is the process by which the self-concept is socially negotiated and modified. It is a scientific and cultural truism that self-evaluation is motivated. Motives influence the ways in which people select self-relevant information, gauge its veracity, draw inferences about themselves, and make plans for the future. Empirically-oriented psychologists have identified and investigated four cardinal self-evaluation motives (or self-motives) relevant to the development, maintenance, and modification of self-views. These are self-enhancement, self-assessment, self-verification, and self-improvement.

The self-enhancement motive is the motive to improve the positivity of one's self-concept, and to protect the self from negative information (we search for positivity and avoid negativity). This motive influences people's self-evaluations.

For instance, people process information important to the self in a selective manner, focusing on information that has favourable implications to the self and discarding information with unfavourable implications. People also choose to compare themselves socially to others so as to be placed in a favourable position. By doing this, people seek to boost the (self-evaluated) positivity of themselves or to decrease its negativity, hence increasing their levels of self-esteem with the aim of having others see them as more socially desirable.

The self-assessment motive is based on the assumption that people want to have an accurate and objective evaluation of the self. To achieve this goal, they work so as to reduce any uncertainty about their abilities or personality traits.Feedback is sought to increase the accuracy and objectivity of previously formed self-conceptions. This is regardless of whether the new information confirms or challenges the previously existing self-conceptions.

The self-verification motive asserts that what motivates people to engage in the self-evaluation process is the desire to verify their pre-existing self-conceptions, maintaining consistency between their previously formed self-conceptions and any new information that could be important to the self (feedback) By doing this, people get the sense of control and predictability in the social world.

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