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Since its introduction, self-concept clarity has been viewed as a construct related to the structure and organization of a person's self-concept. We argue, however, that self-concept clarity may best be understood as a combination of subjective, metacognitive beliefs about the self-concept and objective structure and organization. We consider the unique influences of both objective and subjective clarity and offer some suggestions and novel hypotheses for investigating this proposed distinction.

Grandiose and vulnerable narcissism share some core features (e.g., entitlement, self-absorption) but differ in other important ways (e.g., self-esteem). To reconcile these differing characteristics, we predicted that differences in perceived agency mediate the association between narcissistic subtypes and differences in self-esteem. One hundred college students completed self-report measures of grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, explicit global self-esteem, and perceived agency. As predicted, grandiose narcissism was positively associated with agency and self-esteem, whereas vulnerable narcissism was negatively associated with agency and self-esteem. Perceived agency also mediated the associations between each narcissistic subtype and self-esteem. Furthermore, a partial correlation showed that when controlling for agency, the previously null correlation between measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism became significantly positive. These findings indicate that agency serves as a primary differentiator between the narcissistic subtypes.

Research on American students has indicated that a subjective overachiever strives to attain outstanding performance but is also chronically plagued by self-doubt. The present investigation compared Chinese college students in Hong Kong and Singapore to their Caucasian American counterparts in an attempt to examine the similarities and differences in subjective overachievement across cultures. Results supported the relevance of the subjective achievement experience in different cultures but also revealed important differences. Compared to American participants, Chinese participants showed more ambivalence about the benefits of failure, and they manifested higher levels of self-doubt as well as the tendency to discount ability under conditions of effort exertion. These cross-cultural differences persisted after controlling for individual differences in self-construals.

The impact on self-esteem of activating self-doubt was investigated in three studies. Individuals with enduring high self-doubt were expected to be more threatened by an experimental induction of self-doubt (modeled on the ease of retrieval paradigm) than individuals low in enduring self-doubt, and their self-esteem was predicted to decline. The predictions were supported when self-esteem was measured postexperimentally (Experiment 1) and when it was measured both pre- and postexperimentally (Experiment 2). There was no comparable loss in self-esteem for individuals low in self-doubt. A third experiment explored the phenomenology of low-self-doubt individuals and replicated the finding that their level of self-esteem was unaffected by the induction designed to produce doubt.

Although prior research has documented a pervasive egocentric bias in the self-perceptions, self-ascriptions, and behaviors of most people, shy individuals seem not to share this bias. This study examined whether the apparent absence of an egocentric bias among shy individuals is reflected in their excuse making following poor performance. It also examined whether anticipating a challenge to one's excuses would dissuade even nonshy individuals from making excuses. Shy and nonshy subjects received either success or failure feedback on an intelligence test and then were or were not told that they would be retested. Consistent with predictions, shy individuals refrained from making consistency-lowering excuses regardless of performance feedback and retest instructions. By contrast, nonshy subjects made consistency-lowering excuses after failure feedback, but only when they expected that their excuses would go unchallenged by a retest.

The regulation of affiliation patterns in everyday life has important implications for subjective well-being. For instance, Cheek & Buss (1981) distinguished approach (sociability) motivation from avoidance tendencies (shyness) and found that individuals high in both traits experienced the most stilted and uncomfortable interaction in comparison to any other trait combination among dyad members. In the present field study, participants were free to self-regulate their social interaction in any way. Meaningful patterns of initiation of encounters, perceptions of the encounter and objective features of the encounter emerged. The pattern of findings suggests that further research on the self-regulation of affective life, through affiliation patterns, would be productive.

Factor analyses of Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale were conducted with two samples of introduction, psychology, students obtained during consecutive rears. Four factors replicated across years for both males and females: theatric al acting ability, sociability/social anxiety, other-directedness, and speaking ability. The correlations of these factors with several personality instruments were examined to aid in interpreting the factors. The findings indicated that this scale is not unidimensional, raising the possibility that some of its factors, notably sociability/social anxiety,, mat, interact differentially with characteristics of experimental situations.

Undergraduate students were asked to perform several interracial behaviors. Half of the subjects were committed to their decisions prior to volunteering; the other half were not. Committed subjects volunteered for fewer behaviors and evaluated the behaviors less positively than did uncommitted subjects. Multiple regression analyses revealed that committed subjects placed the most weight on attitudinal considerations whereas uncommitted subjects placed the most weight on personal norm considerations in making their behavioral decisions.

The present study examined self-presentational claims of handicaps to future performance. Specifically, it was hypothesized that subjects would claim a handicap when others were unaware of a prior failing performance. Subjects initially completed a "social accuracy" test and received false feedback that they had failed. When led to believe that the experimenter was unaware of the previous failure, subjects were more likely to-claim mood as a handicap to an upcoming task than when they believed that the experimenter was aware of the failure. Results of the study are discussed in terms of a distinction between protective and acquisitive self-presentation and the role of public identity in self-handicapping behaviors.

Research has shown that individuals' causal attributions are affected by the degree of public scrutiny of their behavior (Bradley, 1978). An experiment was conducted to test a self-presentational explanation of this finding. High and low self-monitors were or were not closely scrutinized (videotaped) during their performance of a task at which they either succeeded or failed. Low self-monitors were expected to provide an attributional baseline (little or no self-presentation) against which the self-presentational tendencies of high self-monitors could be assessed. It was found that high self-monitors assumed significantly greater responsibility for success than for failure when videotaped, but assumed only somewhat more responsibility for success than for failure when not taped. Surprisingly, low self-monitors' attributions were affected by the manipulation of evaluation intensity. Low self-monitors assumed more responsibility for success than for failure when they were not taped, but assumed no more responsibility for success than for failure when they were taped.

A study was conducted to explore the role of individual differences in self-presentational concerns on a public form of self-handicapping. Male and female introductory psychology students, high and low in public self-consciousness, chose either facilitating or interfering music prior to taking a test described either as a valid predictor of academic success or as having unknown predictive ability. In addition, in an attempt to induce protective and acquisitive self-presentational styles, hay the subjects were given instructions that emphasized the likelihood of failure, while the remainder were given instructions that underscored the likelihood of success. Males handicapped more than females. High public self-conscious individuals handicapped more than their low public self-conscious counterparts, but only when they confronted a test characterized as valid. The success-versus failure-oriented instructions had no effect in the present study.

In the present study, an attributional analysis of cognitions associated with the test-anxiety response is reported Late in the semester, 433 undergraduates in introductory level courses (who had scored high, moderate, or low on a test-anxiety inventory) completed a questionnaire that required (l) a self-assessment of success or failure in the course, (2) open-ended attributions about the causes of that success or failure, and (3) that subjects then rate their open-ended responses on several relevant dimensions. A content analysis of students' written accounts suggested that unsuccessful, highly test-anxious students blamed their character (as opposed to their behavior or the environment) for their failure. Consistent with earlier work, there also emerged a general tendency for successful students to emphasize internal over external attributions, while failing students showed an opposite pattern.

In an effort to uncover some of the determinants of self-handicapping, male and female introductory psychology students chose to listen to either facilitating or interfering music prior to taking a test described either as a valid or an invalid predictor of academic success. In addition, half of the subjects were led to believe that a preexisting distracter, or handicap, was already present in the environment whereas the remainder were not. Results revealed that self-handicapping occurred in anticipation of an important task, but only when there was no preexisting handicap. Attributions for success and failure revealed a clear self-serving bias, replicating earlier work. The results are discussed in terms of the attributional and practical utility of convenient excuses versus self-generated self-handicaps.