Journal
PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
Volume 41, Issue 9, Pages 1167-1179Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0146167215591571
Keywords
temporal self-appraisal; lay theories; implicit theories; memory revision; subjective time
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Funding
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [410-2009-0690]
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
- Canada Research Chairs Program
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Temporal self-appraisal theory suggests that people can regulate current self-view by recalling former selves in ways that flatter present identity. People critique their subjectively distant (but not recent) former selves, creating the illusion of improvement over time. However, this revisionist strategy might not apply to everyone: People with fixed (entity) beliefs may not benefit from critiquing even distant selves. In three studies, we found that implicit theories of change and stability moderate the effects of subjective distance on the remembered self. In all studies, participants rated past selves portrayed as subjectively close or distant (controlling calendar time). Incremental theorists (but not entity theorists) were more critical of their subjectively distant (but not recent) past attributes. We found the same pattern when measuring existing implicit theories (Studies 1, 2) or manipulating them (Study 3). The present research is the first to integrate temporal self-appraisal theory and the implicit theories literature.
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