ABSTRACT
Verbal self-ratings give disproportionate attention to one particular way of knowing and representing oneself. A great many things that people ‘know’ about themselves are not of a kind that can be told in this way or in this context. One may have different ways of seeing oneself at different levels, and there may be contradictions and conflicts between them. An alternative assumption which often seems to be lurking behind the use of such language is that other people are passive tabula rasa; their beliefs about themselves are true, but only because conforming personality traits can be stamped onto them in the tender years by the culture. The tendency is to take this as evidence that women who already have deviant personalities make deviant choices.
