Wb. Swann et Dg. Schroeder, THE SEARCH FOR BEAUTY AND TRUTH - A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING REACTIONS TO EVALUATIONS, Personality & social psychology bulletin, 21(12), 1995, pp. 1307-1318
It is proposed that independent desires for positivity and verisimilit
ude shape the sequence of cognitive operations people perform on self-
relevant evaluations. In phase 1, the mere identification of evaluativ
e information triggers a minimally cognitive tendency to embrace favor
able evaluations and eschew unfavorable ones, a positive tropism. If s
ufficient motivation and cognitive resources are available, people pro
ceed to phase 2, wherein they evaluate the verisimilitude of the evalu
ation by comparing it with a series of representations of self, beginn
ing with their actual selves. To the extent that actual selves are unc
ertain and cognitive resources and motivation to continue processing a
re ample, people make additional comparisons with various possible sel
ves (e.g., who they ought to be, who they ideally might be, and who th
ey are according to ''objectively accurate'' indexes). If sufficient c
ognitive resources and motivation are still available, people will eng
age in a third phase, consisting of a cost-benefit analysis.