ABSTRACT
How people evaluate themselves has a number of important implications for their psychological functioning. Self-evaluation appears to influence the manner in which people deal with challenge (see Bandura, 1994; Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998, for reviews), as well as people's emotional experiences (see Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989; Higgins, 1987, for reviews). Hence, a great deal of attention has been directed toward understanding how people evaluate their competencies and expectancies for future performance. In addition to the question of the consequences of self-evaluation, several other questions have guided work on the topic. What motives drive the manner in which people evaluate themselves? What aspects of the situation influence how people evaluate themselves? What characteristics of the person determine the form that self-evaluation takes? The effort to answer questions such as these in social psychology began with James (1890), continued on with Festinger (1954a), and is evident in much current social-cognitive work (see Eccles et al., 1998; Suls & Wills, 1991; Swann, 1990; Taylor & Brown, 1998; Trope, 1986; Wood, 1989, for reviews).
