Tadahiro Ito

The purpose of this study was to examine self-enhancement tendency of Japanese people when evaluating self and others, and study the relation between the tendency and self-esteem. In Study 1, subjects were asked to evaluate themselves and an average undergraduate of their age in terms of several attributes. Results showed that self-evaluations were more favorable than evaluations of the average undergraduate on such personality attributes as kindness and diligence, which they rated more important, and less favorable on such attributes as appearance, sociability, and financial resource. In addition, subjects with low self-esteem were likely to appraise themselves more negatively than those with high self-esteem, but the two groups showed the same level of self-enhancement when rating themselves on personality attributes. In Study 2, subjects provided percentile rankings of themselves on ten attributes in relation to undergraduates of their age. Results indicated that more than half of the subjects thought that they were above average (better-than-average effect) on such personality attributes as kindness.

The present studies were conducted to examine the effects of the controllability and stability of self-handicapping and the style of self-handicapping on observers' impressions. Subjects were requested to read a description of a person (self-handicapper) who acquired or claimed a handicap before a test. The results showed that (a) contorollable and unstable handicaps augmented the perception of responsibility and reduced observer's intention of helping behavior, (b) uncontorollable and stable handicaps reduced the perception of self-handicapper's confidence and success-probability, and (c) claimed self-handicapping was perceived more negatively than acquired self-handicapping. These results suggested the negative effects of self-handicapping on self-handicappers in both a short term and a long term.