OUGD601: Essay Research - The self-discrepancy theory

The self-discrepancy theory states that people compare themselves to internalized standards called "self-guides". These different representations of the self can be contradictory and result in emotional discomfort. Self-discrepancy is the gap between two of these self-representations. The theory states that people are motivated to reduce the gap in order to remove disparity in self-guides.^[1]

Developed by Edward Tory Higgins in 1987, the theory provides a platform for understanding how different types of discrepancies between representations of the self are related to different kinds of emotional vulnerabilities. It maintains close ties to a long-standing tradition of belief-incongruity research. Higgins sought to illustrate that internal disagreement causes emotional and psychological turmoil. 

The theory postulates three basic domains of the self:

Actual

Actual self is your representation of the attributes that you believe you actually possess, or that you believe others believe you possess. The "actual self" is a person's basic self-concept. It is one's perception of their own attributes (intelligence, athleticism, attractiveness, etc.).

Ideal

Ideal self is your representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) would like you, ideally, to possess (i.e., a representation of someone's hopes, aspirations, or wishes for you). The "ideal-self" is what usually motivates individuals to change, improve and achieve.

The ideal self-regulatory system focuses on the presence or absence of positive outcomes (e.g., love provided or withdrawn).

Ought

Ought is your representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) believes you should or ought to possess (i.e., a representation of someone's sense of your duty, obligations, or responsibilities).

The ought self-regulatory system focuses on the presence or absence of negative outcomes (e.g., criticism administered or suspended).

Self-discrepancy theory initiates the importance of considering two different standpoints (or vantage points) in which "the self" is perceived. A standpoint on the self is defined as "a point of view from which you can be judged that reflects a set of attitudes or values."

OUGD601: Essay Research - The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life - Erving Goffman - Quotes

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959[edit]

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1959; Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1973.

• I mean this report to serve as a sort of handbook detailing one sociological perspective from which social life can be studied, especially the kind of social life that is organised within the physical confines of a building or plant. A set of features will be described which together form a framework that can be applied to any concrete social establishment, be it domestic, industrial, or commercial.
  • Preface, lead paragraph

• Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.
  • p. 13.

• In many kinds of social interaction, unofficial communication provides a way in which one team can extend a definite but non-compromising invitation to the other, requesting that social distance and formality be increased or decreased, or that both teams shift the interaction to one involving the performance of a new set of roles.
  • p. 121

• In our society, defecation involves an individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our performances. Such activity also causes the individual to disarrange his clothing and to 'go out of play," that is, to drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in face-to-face interaction. At the same time it becomes difficult for him to reassemble his personal front should the need to enter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is a reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them.
  • p. 121 (1973 edition)

• Often, when two teams enter social interaction, we can identify one as having the lower general prestige and the other team the higher. Ordinarily, when we think of realigning actions in such cases, we think of efforts on the part of the lower team to alter the basis of interaction in a direction more favourable to them or to decrease the social distance and formality between themselves and the higher team. Interestingly enough, there are occasions when it serves the wider goals of the higher team to lower barriers and admit the lower team to greater intimacy and equality with it.
  • p. 126

• In recent years there have been elaborate attempts to bring into one framework the concepts and findings derived from three different areas of inquiry: the individual personality, social interaction, and society. I would like to suggest here a simple addition to these inter-disciplinary attempts.
  • p. 155

• When an individual appears before others, he wittingly and unwittingly projects a definition of the situation, of which a conception of himself is an important part. When an event occurs which is expressively incompatible with this fostered impression, significant consequences are simultaneously felt in three levels of social reality, each of which involves a different point of reference and a different order of fact.

First, the social interaction, treated here as a dialogue between two teams, may come to an embarrassed and confused halt; the situation may cease to be defined, previous positions may become no longer tenable, and participants may find themselves without a charted course of action...

Secondly, in addition to these disorganizing consequences for action at the moment, performance disruptions may have consequences of a more far-reaching kind. Audiences tend to accept the self projected by the individual performer during any current performance as a responsible representative of his colleague-grouping, of his team, and of his social establishment...

Finally, we often find that the individual may deeply involve his ego in his identification with a particular role, establishment, and group and in his self-conception as someone who does not disrupt social interaction or let down the social units which depend upon that interaction.

• p. 155-6

• The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.
  • p 252; Cited in: Javier Trevino, Goffman's Legacy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, p. 55.

• The degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.
  • p. 229

• Knowing that his audiences are capable of forming bad impressions of him, the individual may come to feel ashamed of a well-intentioned honest act merely because the context of its performance provides false impressions that are bad. Feeling this unwarranted shame, he may feel that his feelings can be seen; feeling that he is thus seen, he may feel that his appearance confirms these false conclusions concerning him. He may then add to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty. In this way it is possible for all of us to become fleetingly for ourselves the worst person we can imagine that others might imagine us to be.
  • p. 236