I opened the most recent Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin to find that three of my graduate school friends Drs. Cameron Anderson, Daniel Ames, and Samuel Gosling (now all professors) had recently published an interesting article. They were looking at the effect of self-enhancement (or believing that you are better at something than everyone else believes you are) on social acceptance in the workplace.

This has been an interesting area of work over the last 20 years because there are two divergent findings. One set of researchers find that self-enhancing is good for you. When you have an overinflated view of yourself you are more likely to continue working at a goal because you believe you are that good, and therefore more likely to succeed. A second set of researchers argues that this enhancement is a bad thing because others don’t like you as much and you get socially punished for your views of yourself.

Anderson, Ames, and Gosling showed that what you enhanced about was an important determinant of its effect. People who tended to enhance their standing in the group (or believe they had higher standing in the group than they really did) were not as well liked, and tended to be shunned by others. Those who self-enhanced on how much others accepted them did not suffer the same costs. Why? The authors believe that status-enhancement threatens the group. When the rest of the group sees this they tend to alienate that individual. In other domains self-enhancement did not have this same effect because it doesn’t threaten the group.

Further Reading:

Anderson, C., Ames, D. R., & Gosling, S. D. (2008). Punishing hubris: The perils of overestimating one’s status in a group. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 90-101.

Dr. Anderson’s website

http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/anderson.html

Dr. Ames’ website

http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/full.cfm?id=56194

Dr. Gosling’s website

http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/HomePage/Faculty/Gosling/index.htm