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Modesty versus self-enhancement as alternative forms of ingratiation

1969; Elsevier BV; Volume: 5; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0022-1031(69)90045-6

1096-0465

Lloyd K. Stires, EDWARD E. JONES,

Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior

Within the general framework of a competitive job-seeking task, subjects described themselves to a potential supervisor on a series of traits. For subjects in two (dependence) conditions, these ratings were to serve the supervisor as the most important basis for determining who would be his high-paid assistant and who would be a low-paid clerical helper. Subjects in the third (no dependence) condition believed that job assignments were determined by coin flip and the ratings were simply a means of getting acquainted with the supervisor. In one dependence condition (supervisor-aware), the subjects believed that the supervisor was cognizant of his role in the assignment of subordinates. In the other dependence condition (supervisor-unaware), the subjects were told that the supervisor actually determined job assignments by a simple statement of preference but thought job assignments were determined by coin flip. As predicted, subjects in the supervisor-aware condition were more inclined than supervisor-unaware subjects to be modest in their claims of personal attributes that reflect the judgments of others (e.g., “popular”). Subjects in both dependence conditions were less modest in claiming traits reflecting task competence than were control subjects. Further evidence indicates that dependent subjects with an aware supervisor went to greater lengths to establish the credibility of their ratings than other subjects did. Conclusion: While self-enhancement is the normal reaction to a condition of social dependence, the tendency to claim positive attributes is complicated and inhibited by the knowledge that the target person is aware of his relative power.