Seeking and Avoiding Self-evaluation by Working Individually or in Groups

Willerman, Ben; Lewit, David W.; Tellegen, Auke

doi:10.1016/b978-0-08-009237-9.50018-4

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…A well-replicated finding is that people exposed to self-awareness manipulations seek to avoid self-awareness, especially following failure (Steenbarger & Aderman, 1979;Wicklund, 1975). A related finding is that persons high in fear of failure prefer working in a group to working alone (Willerman, Lewit, & Tellegen, 1960). This avoidance of self-awareness and individuation relates to Fromm's belief that persons seek to escape freedom and to associate with powerful others when they perceive themselves as lacking the wherewithal to function independently, as would be expected to follow from heightened attention to individual limitations.…”

Section: Identificationmentioning

confidence: 92%

Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control.

Rothbaum

Weisz²,

Snyder³

1982

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

1,780

1,282

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There is extensive evidence that people strongly value and are reluctant to relinquish the perception of control. Yet, both helplessness and locus of control theorists interpret various "inward" behaviors (passivity, withdrawal, and submissiveness) as signs of relinquished perceived control. As evidence, they note that inward behavior frequently is accompanied by causal attributions to limited ability, chance, and powerful others-all attributions that suggest uncontrollability. In contrast, we claim,that these attributions and the behaviors to which they relate may often reflect a type of perceived control that is generally overlooked. People attempt to gain control not only by bringing the environment into line with their wishes (primary control) but also by bringing themselves into line with environmental forces (secondary control). Four manifestations of secondary control are considered: (a) Attributions to severely, limited ability can serve to enhance predictive control and to protect against disappointment. Passive and withdrawn behaviors reflect the attempt to inhibit unfulfillable expectations, (b) Attributions to chance can reflect illusory control, since people often construe chance as a personal characteristic akin to an ability ("luck"). Individuals who make attributions to chance may exhibit passivity and withdrawal in skill situations, reserving energy and emotional investment for situations that allow them to capitalize on their perceived strength-that is, being lucky, (c) Attributions to powerful others permit vicarious control when the individual identifies with these others. Submission to a powerful leader, a group, or a deity sometimes enables the individual to join in their power, (d) All of the preceding attributions may foster interpretive control, in which the individual seeks to understand and derive meaning from otherwise uncontrollable events in order to accept them. When perceived control is recognized in both its primary and secondary forms, a broad range of inward behaviors can be seen as efforts to sustain rather than relinquish the perception of control.Factor analytic studies with children (reviewed in Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1978) and systematic observations of adults (e.g., Beck, 1967;Marks, 1977) have identified a This article was funded in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant 1-RO1-MH-34210-01.The authors are indebted to Camille Wortman for her unusually thorough review of a draft of this article. Her comments added depth and clarity to many of the Central points.Requests for reprints should be sent to Fred Rothbaum, Department of Child Study, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155. set of interrelated problem behaviors including passivity, withdrawal, and submissiveness (hereafter referred to as inward behavior). The popularity of the learned helplessness model (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978;Seligman, 1975) is due largely to its lucid account of at least some of these seemingly maladaptive behaviors (especially passivity and withdrawal). Adherents o...

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Section: Identificationmentioning

confidence: 92%

Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control.

Rothbaum

Weisz²,

Snyder³

1982

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

1,780

1,282

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Second, simply by virtue of perceiving less attention directed toward themselves personally, they might anticipate more positive evaluations. Such a pattern would be somewhat akin to the finding that when individuals fear failure on their own, they prefer to be immersed in a group (Willerman, Lewit, & Tellegen, 1960).…”

Section: What About "Safety In Numbers"?mentioning

confidence: 94%

Dominant Group Members in Intergroup Interaction: Safety or Vulnerability in Numbers?

Vorauer

2003

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

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An experiment examined how low- and high-prejudice dominant group members' (LPs' and HPs') reactions to intergroup contact were affected by whether they were accompanied by fellow ingroup members who exhibited prejudice-relevant behavior. Participants answered questions alone or in a group and then estimated how they were viewed by an observer who was an ingroup or an outgroup member. HPs believed that they were viewed more negatively by an outgroup member in the individual than the group condition. LPs showed the opposite effect, which led them to evaluate the outgroup member more negatively in the group condition. All participants in the group condition expected an outgroup member to exaggerate their similarity to the other ingroup members present, and LPs evaluated the other ingroup members more negatively when the observer was an outgroup member. The results suggest that intergroup attitudes guide the types of intergroup contact situations that are experienced most positively.

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“…Moreover, it has been found that ''poor performers'' (as novices often are) generally tend to avoid diagnostic information due to ego-defensive motives (Zuckerman et al, 1979). Especially in situations when (negative) feedback can be directly attributed to the person seeking it, individuals with low task abilities often tend to avoid feedback information rather than seeking it (Ashford and Tsui, 1991;Janis and Mann, 1977;Lambird and Mann, 2006;Willerman, Lewitt, and Tellegen, 1960).…”

Section: Development Of Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complementing Mass Customization Toolkits with User Communities: How Peer Input Improves Customer Self‐Design^*

Franke

Keinz

Schreier

2008

J of Product Innov Manag

180

118

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In this paper, the authors propose that the canonical customer-toolkit dyad in mass customization (MC) should be complemented with user communities. Many companies in various industries have begun to offer their customers the opportunity to design their own products online. The companies provide Web-based MC toolkits that allow customers who prefer individualized products to tailor items such as sneakers, personal computers (PCs), cars, kitchens, cereals, or skis to their specific preferences. Most existing MC toolkits are based on the underlying concept of an isolated, dyadic interaction process between the individual customer and the MC toolkit. Information from external sources is not provided. As a result, most academic research on MC toolkits has focused on this dyadic perspective. The main premise of this paper is that novice MC toolkit users in particular might largely benefit from information given by other customers. Pioneering research shows that customers in the computer gaming and digital music instruments industries are willing to support each other for the sake of efficient toolkit use (e.g., how certain toolkit functions work). Expanding on their work, the present paper provides evidence that peer assistance appears also extremely useful in the two other major phases of the customer's individual self-design process, namely, the development of an initial idea and the evaluation of a preliminary design solution. Two controlled experiments were conducted in which 191 subjects used an MC toolkit to design their own individual skis. The authors found that during the phase of developing an initial idea, having access to other users' designs as potential starting points stimulates the integration of existing solution chunks into the problem-solving process, which indicates more systematic problem-solving behavior. Peer customer input also turned out to have positive effects on the evaluation of preliminary design solutions. Providing other customers' opinions on interim design solutions stimulated favorable problem-solving behavior, namely, the integration of external feedback. The use of these two problem-solving heuristics in turn leads to an improved process outcome-that is, self-designed products that meet the preferences of the customers more effectively (measured in terms of perceived preference fit, purchase intention, and willingness to pay). These findings have important theoretical and managerial implications.

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Seeking and Avoiding Self-evaluation by Working Individually or in Groups

Cited by 12 publications

References 5 publications

Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control.

Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control.

Dominant Group Members in Intergroup Interaction: Safety or Vulnerability in Numbers?

Complementing Mass Customization Toolkits with User Communities: How Peer Input Improves Customer Self‐Design^*

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Seeking and Avoiding Self-evaluation by Working Individually or in Groups

Cited by 12 publications

References 5 publications

Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control.

Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control.

Dominant Group Members in Intergroup Interaction: Safety or Vulnerability in Numbers?

Complementing Mass Customization Toolkits with User Communities: How Peer Input Improves Customer Self‐Design*

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Complementing Mass Customization Toolkits with User Communities: How Peer Input Improves Customer Self‐Design^*