The Self-Contradiction:Structure, Positive Influences And Its Impact On Contradiction-seeking

Self is an important research topic in social psychology. Perceiving themselves in various ways and forming a stable conceptualization of their selves, people are susceptible to the influcneces of these self conception. The concept of self-contradiction refers to the extent to which people perceived that contradiction and inconsistency existed in their readily accessible self-relevant information. In this study, we introduced the concepts of "self-contradiction" and "contradiction-seeking" for the first time and formulated a theoretical framework explaining one’s self dynamic in terms of self-contradiction and contradiction-seeking.Specifically, centering on the "self-contradiction" and "contradiction seeking", the two key concepts in our theoretical framework, we conducted a total of eight studies to identify and validate the dimensional structure of self-contradiction, to examine its positive influences and to test its relationship with contradiction seeking. The research design included three parts. In the first part, study 1 developed the self-contradiction questionnaire, and determined its factorial structure. In the second part, we conducted two experiments to examine the positive influences of moderate level of self-contradiction. In study 2a, self-contradiction moderated the one’s end-of-history illusion, and in study 2b, perceivers differed in their attitude and personality inference of targets with varying degrees of self-contradiction. In the third part, we conducted several studies to develop a scale measuring an individual’s motivation to seek self-contradictory information, and to explore, through a cross-sectional study and three experiments, the relationship between one’s self-contradiction and the contradiction-seeking motivation. Specifically, in study 4a, we provided the first evidence supporting the hypothesized impact of self-contradiction on one’s contradiction-seeking behavior. On the basis of study 4a, we further tested the mediation mechanism of motivation, as well as the possible moderation effect of the modifiability of self domains in study 4b. Lastly, we examined a boundary condition to the effect of self-contradiction by testing whether participants’ self-contradiction level may interfere with the effectiveness of self-contradiction manipulation.The main conclusions across 8 studies include:(1) based on the newly developed self-contradiction questionnaire, the theoretical three-dimensional model of self-contradiction was confirmed. In addition, the current study provided a preliminary validation of this questionnaire.(2) Self-contradiction showed several positive influences. In the intra-individual level, the moderate level of self-contradiction may buffer one against the ubiquitous end-of-history illusion. Compared to those with low level of self-contradiction, individuals with higher levels of self-contradiction suffered less from this illusion. In inter-personal level, participants exhibited a more negative attitude towards targets with extremely high or low level of self-contradiction, and preferred those with moderate level of self-contradiction. The self-verifying behaviors that usually accompanied a person with high self-consistency (or low self-contradiction) may exacerbate participants’ attitude towards the targets.(3) The level of self-contradiction could influence one’s contradiction-seeking motivation and behaviors. Compared with those with high self-contradiction, individuals who received low self-contradiction manipulation were more likely to actively seek self-contradictory information, wherein the individual’s motivation acted as a mediator and the participants’ self-contradiction level prior to the manipulation exerted a moderating effect.