Chapter 6

2. The extent to which an individual’s self-concept consists of many different aspects.
4. A person’s knowledge about him- or herself, including one’s own traits, social identities, and experiences.
5. choice paradigm, A laboratory situation in which people make a choice between two alternatives, and after they do, attraction to the alternatives is assessed.
8. Assigning to others those traits that people fear they possess themselves.
10. dissonance theory, The idea that people have such distaste for perceiving inconsistencies in their beliefs, attitudes, and behavior that they will bias their own attitudes and beliefs to try to deny inconsistencies.
11. a coherent life story that connects one’s past, present, and possible future.

1. set of processes for guiding one’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior to reach desired goals.
3. Placing obstacles in the way of one’s own success to protect self-esteem from a possible future failure.
4. Being kind to ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, recognizing that imperfection is part of the human condition, and accepting rather than denying negative feelings about ourselves.
6. theory, The theory that people sometimes infer their attitudes and attributes by observing their behavior and the situation in which it occurs.
7. effect, The tendency for salient rewards or threats to lead people to attribute the reason, or justification, for engaging in an activity to an external factor, which thereby undermines their intrinsic motivation for and enjoyment of the activity.
9. clarity, A clearly defined, internally consistent, and temporally stable self-concept