ABSTRACT
People wear many different hats in their everyday lives, shifting among multiple selves across diverse social contexts. The “core” self, once conceptualized as a static component of the self-concept that drives behavior across situations (cf. Allport, 1955; Rogers, 1961), has been supplanted by the multidimensional and flexible “working” self (Markus & Wurf, 1987). This self interacts reciprocally with context, from one situation to the next, in order to meet intrapsychic and interpersonal demands. It functions as both product and producer of situations (Canevello & Crocker, 2010; Kihlstom & Cantor, 1984). Although Bandura (1977, 1982) initiated a view of a self-concept that is sculpted through social processes, Markus and Wurf (1987) highlighted multiple self-aspects (traits, domains, states) and self-beliefs (attributes) that are linked to the self with different associative strengths, and that change over time and situations in response to social and emotional demands. This perspective on the self subsumes actual, ideal, and possible selves (Schlenker, 1985; Higgins, 1987); motives, needs, and goals (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987; Carver & Scheier, 1998; Higgins, 1997); and strategies such as self-enhancement and self-verification (Tesser, 1986, 1988; Swann, 1983). Individual differences in the variation of self-concept content across contexts may drive variations in self-esteem (Kernis & Goldman, 2003). The present contextualized perspective on the self links the structure of self-concept beliefs to the dynamics (e.g., level and stability) of self-esteem.
