The Self at Work

Fundamental Theory and Research

D. Lance Ferris, Russell E. Johnson, Constantine Sedikides, D. Lance Ferris, Russell E. Johnson, Constantine Sedikides

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138648227
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317235347
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

The Self at Work brings researchers in industrial and organizational psychology and organizational behavior together with researchers in social and personality psychology to explore how the self impacts the workplace. Covering topics such as self-efficacy, self-esteem, self-control, power, and identification, each chapter examines how research on the self informs and furthers understanding of organizational topics such as employee engagement, feedback-seeking, and leadership. With their combined expertise, the chapter authors consider how research on the self has influenced management research and practice (and vice-versa), limitations of applying social psychology research in the organizational realm, and future directions for organizational research on the self. This book is a valuable resource for researchers, graduate students, and professionals who are interested in how research on the self can inform industrial/organizational psychology.

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1

THE SELF AT WORK

An Overview

D. Lance Ferris, Russell E. Johnson, and Constantine Sedikides

Issues pertaining to the self are ubiquitous at work. Consider the case of Maggie, a senior manager at a large accounting firm who is hoping to be promoted to partner. Although the promotion comes with a pay raise, Maggie especially desires the position because of the boost it would give her self-esteem and because of the greater power and autonomy that being partner affords. For these reasons, Maggie is motivated to present an overly favorable impression of herself to the partners by seeking positive feedback about her accomplishments and by displaying visible signs of being engaged at work (e.g., working late and coming in on weekends, holding meetings with clients at the office, etc.). Or consider the case of Erlich, who is a member of a close-knit team working in a software company. The culture and leadership in this company stresses benevolence and universalism, which causes employees to see themselves as interconnected with one another. Erlich’s work can sometimes be quite demanding, which leaves him feeling mentally depleted and prone to making mistakes. When mistakes occur, they hinder the performance of his team members, leaving Erlich feeling guilt and shame. To escape negative feelings about himself and his abilities, Erlich smokes marijuana in the evening. As these two examples illustrate, what people think and feel about themselves impact how they perform their jobs and interact with work colleagues. The thoughts and feelings that people have about themselves are also shaped by their jobs and interactions, and the broader work environment. The self and work are indeed intertwined, thus necessitating that industrial and organizational psychologists have an understanding of theory and research pertaining to the self.

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The Self: A Brief Historical Overview

Few concepts are as fundamental or impactful to psychology as the self. The self is implicated in a mind-bogglingly large array of concepts – a partial list provided by Baumeister (1998, p. 681) includes “self-affirmation, self-appraisal, self-as-target effect, self-awareness, self-concept, self-construal, self-deception, self-defeating behavior, self-enhancement, self-esteem, self-evaluation maintenance, self-interest, self-monitoring, self-perception, self-presentation, self-protection, self-reference, self-regulation, self-serving bias, self-verification” – to which we could add self-efficacy, core self-evaluations, self-determination, self-control, and self-conscious emotions, among others. This is an impressive catalogue, and one that grows even larger when we include concepts relevant to the self but that do not contain the word “self” (such as social comparison, narcissism, authenticity, or engagement).

Fully appreciating what the self is and what it does has historically been challenging, in part because of this sheer variety of concepts related to the self and the self’s influence on so many cognitive, affective, conative, and behavioral processes. Greenwald and Pratkanis (1984) identified work by James (1890) and Allport (1943) as milestones in scholarly understanding of what the self is and what it does. In particular, James (1890, p. 291) defined the self thus:

In its widest possible sense . . . a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. (emphasis in original)

Although this definition of the self may leave females, landlubbers, and the horseless feeling excluded, it nonetheless illustrates just how broad the concept of “self” can be. To simplify, James further divided this definition into what he called the four constituent elements of the self: the material self (broadly, one’s physical body and possessions), the social self (broadly, the aspects of the self that are presented to others), the spiritual self (broadly, one’s inner thoughts), and the pure ego (broadly, the unitary agent, thinker, knower, or observer – what some refer to as the soul). James also delineated how these constituents can inspire a variety of feelings (e.g., pride, vanity, shame, and inferiority) and motivate a variety of actions (e.g., to acquire objects, to be noticed, and to be moral), which foreshadowed future work on self-relevant emotions and motivations.

Following the publication of James’ (1890) work, the self largely disappeared as a topic of serious research. During this ensuing period, as Allport (1943) noted, behaviorism took hold in psychology (with the exception of psychoanalysis’ preoccupation with the ego) and cognitive concepts like the “self,” “identity,” and “esteem” fell by the wayside. Arguing for a greater focus on the self in psychology, Allport pointed out that a decisive influence on human behavior and cognition is the involvement of the self. For example, it is altogether different when another person’s clothes, relationships, or works are criticized compared to when that same criticism is leveled at our own clothes, relationships, or works. These two cases – when the self versus another person is criticized – give rise to distinct thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In terms of how the self should be conceptualized, Allport (p. 459) noted that researchers conceive of the self in eight ways:

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(1) as knower, (2) as object of knowledge, (3) as primordial selfishness, (4) as dominator, (5) as a passive organizer and rationalizer, (6) as a fighter for ends, (7) as one segregated behavioral system among others, (8) as a subjective patterning of cultural values.

In Allport’s list, we see many of the topics that researchers of the self continue to examine today, such as narcissism (or the self as “primordial selfishness”), power and status (or the self as “dominator”), the moral self (or the self as “a fighter for ends”), self-regulation and -control (or the self as “a passive organizer and rationalizer”), and individualistic and collectivistic self-construals (or the self as “a subjective patterning of cultural values”).

In line with the cognitive revolution occurring in psychology at the time, Greenwald and Pratkanis’ (1984) own review highlighted studies on the self and cognition, including how people remember better material that has been “touched” by the self (such as material generated by the self vs. someone else, or relevant to the self like words describing one’s qualities), how people overestimate the amount of control they have over events, and how their evaluations are biased in ways that favor themselves. Greenwald and Pratkanis (p. 166) ultimately concluded that the self is not only the focus of affective evaluations, but also a “central cognitive structure, a self-concept with content that varies from person to person” and can be described as “complex, consisting of diffuse public, private, and collective facets, each providing a distinct basis for self-evaluation.”

Three Functions of the Self

The reviews by James (1890), Allport (1943), and Greenwald and Pratkanis (1984) highlight the broad and wide-ranging impact of the self. More recently, Baumeister (1998, p. 681) argued the various self-related research findings can be organized into a tripartite view of the self’s functions, proposing the self is “an entity marked by reflexive consciousness, interpersonal roles and reputation, and executive function.” This tripartite view constitutes a parsimonious way to conceptualize (and ultimately appreciate) what the self does.

First, the reflexive consciousness function of the self refers to humans possessing the capacity for self-awareness. The self can be both observer and observed – or, as James (1890) put it, there is both the self-as-subject (the “I” self) and the self-as-object (the “Me” self) in a phrase such as “I can see me” (see also Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 2016; Sedikides & Gregg, 2003). The reflexive consciousness function of the self allows people to appraise themselves, to know their capabilities and form opinions about themselves, and ultimately to strive to improve and enhance ourselves. Concepts such as self-esteem and self-efficacy largely (but not exclusively)¹ arise from the self’s reflexive consciousness function.

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Second, the interpersonal function of the self refers to how the self exists within interpersonal relations – individuals are mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, daughters and sons, friends and enemies, older and younger, teammates and competitors, supplicants and superiors – all depending on the interpersonal context. Moreover, the interpersonal context influences and is influenced by the self. Indeed, some authors have argued that what people perceive as the self is largely the reflection of others’ appraisals of the self (i.e., reflected appraisals, or the looking-glass or mirrored self; Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934), yet the self also expends considerable effort to manage the appraisals of others. The interpersonal function of the self gives rise to concepts such as self-monitoring and impression management, as well as biases in how people perceive and evaluate others (e.g., academics and athletes evaluating others based on their CVs or sports prowess, respectively), their ability to identify with social groups, and uniquely interpersonal emotions such as guilt, embarrassment, or even anxiety during a blind date.

Finally, the executive function of the self refers to how the self “makes decisions, initiates actions, and in other ways exerts control over both self and environment” (Baumeister, 1998, p. 712). Put simply, the self is a doer and is not relegated to being a passive observer – if anything, the self reacts negatively to reductions in control and autonomous choices. The executive function of the self is ultimately what gives rise to motivated behavior, be it job-specific, prosocial, antisocial, or more neutral everyday behavior. It also gives rise to attempts – and failures – to exert self-control over our behavior by, for example, regulating what goals are chosen, what plans and strategies are formulated, and when and how goal-directed action is initiated and maintained. It is the executive function of the self that translates cognition, conation, and affect into observable action.

The Self at Work

So far, we have primarily drawn upon the literature in social and personality psychology (what we refer to as social/personality) to discuss the self. Yet as the tripartite view makes plain, the self is intimately involved in many (if not most) aspects of one’s lives, including their work lives, where the self is particularly influential by shaping how employees perceive and understand their environment, job tasks, colleagues, and interpersonal interactions. Employees are continuously evaluating their own work and abilities (and are in turn evaluated by others), regulating their behaviors that contribute to and influence their environment, and interacting with other employees inhabiting different social roles.

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In line with this idea, some of the more explicit organizational applications of research on the self include organization-based self-esteem (Pierce, Gardner, Cummings, & Dunham, 1989), workplace contingencies of self-worth (Ferris, Lian, Brown, & Morrison, 2015), self-control depletion and its effects on deviant and prosocial organizational behavior (Koopman, Lanaj, & Scott, 2016; Trougakos, Beal, Cheng, Hideg, & Zweig, 2015; Marcus & Schuler, 2004), organizational and relational identification (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Lord & Brown, 2004), workplace identity negotiation and change (Ibarra, 1999; Swann, Johnson, & Bosson, 2009), and CEO narcissism (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007; Grijalva, Harms, Newman, Gaddis, & Fraley, 2015; Sedikides & Campbell, 2017). In some ways it is surprising that a book on the self at work has not been published previously, given the pervasive impact the self has on work and organizational phenomena. Indeed, we would argue that most of the topics that interest scholars of industrial-organizational or organizational behavior (what we refer to as IO/OB) stand to be influenced by the self.

Consider, for example, the topics of other volumes within SIOP’s Organizational Frontiers series. Many of these volumes broadly address ratings and evaluations, either of the self or others, in training and performance contexts (Ashkanasy, Bennett, & Martinko, 2016; Ellingson & Noe, 2017; Highhouse, Dalal, & Salas, 2014; Kozlowski & Salas, 2010). Here, the reflexive consciousness functions of the self become implicated, particularly because numerous studies have shown that the self holds a privileged status in memory and evaluations (Sedikides, Gaertner, & Cai, 2015; Sedikides, Green, Saunders, Skowronski, & Zengel, 2016). For example, people retrieve memories associated with the self more quickly than unrelated memories (Ross & Sicoly, 1979), they are more likely to remember something that did not happen (so-called “false alarms”) when it is consistent with their self-views (Bransford & Franks, 1971), and they are more likely to remember their successes than failures (Glixman, 1949). Similarly, they judge themselves more positively than others do, taking credit for successes and denying res...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Self at Work
• Praise
• Series Page
• SIOP Organizational Frontiers Series
• Series Editor
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• 1 The Self at Work: An Overview
• Part I Fundamental Concepts and Theories
• Part II Integrative Themes
• Part III Applications to Organizational Concepts
• Index