William James observed that there was a "selective industry of the mind, " by which he meant that people attend to and define as meaningful those stimuli and experiences that they perceive as personally relevant and as suiting their private interests. James considered "selective industry " to be integral to all basic cognitive processes but to hold a special place with respect to the self system because of its role in the formation of identity and the energization and direction of behavior. In James's discussion of the self, selective industry is manifested as (a) the selection of identities to be valued and invested in and (b) the selective processing of information to support advantaged standing on valued domains. This article discusses major developments in the contemporary psychology of the self that demonstrate and elaborate on these two forms of "industry" and discusses at least one lapse in James's thinking about the self and one of his observations awaiting exploitation.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Affleck, G. , & Tennen, H. (1990). Social comparison and coping with medical disorders. In J. Suls & T. A. Wills (Eds.), Social comparison: Contemporary theory and research (pp. 369-393). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
2.
Affleck, G. , Tennen, H., Pfeiffer, C., Fifield, J., & Rowe, J. (1987). Downward comparison and coping with serious medical problems. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. 57, 570-578.
3.
Alloy, L. , & Abramson, L. (1979). Judgments of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: Sadder but wiser. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 108, 441-485.
4.
Bernstein, R. J. (1971). Introduction. In W. James, Essays in radical empiricism and a pluralistic universe (pp. i-xi). New York: E. P. Dutton.
5.
Campbell, J. (1986). Similarity and uniqueness: The effects of attribute type, relevance, and individual differences in self-esteem and depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 281-294.
6.
Carver, C. S. , & Scheier, M. (1981). Attention and self-regulation: A control-theory approach to human behavior. New York: Springer-Verlag.
7.
Duval, S. , & Wicklund, R. (1972). A theory of objective self-awareness. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
8.
Epstein, S. (1973). The self-concept revisited, or a theory of a theory. American Psychologist, 28, 404-416.
9.
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117-140.
10.
Goethals, A. G. (1986). Fabricating and ignoring social reality: Self-serving estimates of consensus. In J. Olson, C. P. Herman, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Relative deprivation and social comparison: The Ontario Symposium (Vol. 4). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
11.
Goethals, A. G. , Messick, D., & Allison, S. (1990). The uniqueness bias: Studies of constructive social comparison. In J. Suls & T. A. Wills (Eds.), Social comparison: Contemporary theory and research (pp. 149-176). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
12.
Greenwald, A. G. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history. American Psychologist, 35, 603-618.
13.
Greenwald, A. G. , & Pratkanis, A. R. (1984). The self. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 3, pp. 129-178). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
14.
Hakmiller, K. (1966). Threat as a determinant of downward social comparison. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Suppl. 1, 32-39.
15.
Hansen, R. D. , & Donoghue, J. M. (1977). The power of consensus: Information derived from one's own and other's behaviors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 294-302.
16.
Higgins, E. T. (1987). Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect. Psychological Review, 94, 319-340.
17.
James, W. (1950). The principles of psychology (Vol. 1). New York: Holt. (Original work published 1890)
18.
Kunda, Z. , & Sanitioso, R. (1989). Motivated changes in the self-concept. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 272-285.
19.
Latané, B. (Ed.). (1966). Studies in social comparison. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Suppl. 1, whole issue.
20.
Major, B. , Testa, M., & Blysma, W. (in press). Responses to upward and downward social comparisons: The impact of esteem-relevance and perceived control. In J. Suls & T. A. Wills (Eds.), Social comparison: Contemporary theory and research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
21.
Markus, H. , & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41, 954-969.
22.
Markus, H. , & Ruvolo, A. (1989). Possible selves: Personalized representations of goals. In L. Pervin (Ed.), Goal concepts in personality and social psychology (pp. 211-241). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
23.
Miller, D. T. , & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82, 213-255.
24.
Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity to process information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
25.
Miller, G. A. (1962). Psychology: The science of mental life. New York: Harper & Row.
26.
Nisbett, R. E. , & Kunda, Z. (1985). Perception of social distributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 297-311.
27.
Nisbett, R. E. , & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
28.
Oyserman, D. , & Markus, H. (1988, August). Possible selves and delinquency. Paper presented at the International Congress of Psychology, Sydney, Australia.
29.
Rogers, T. B. , Kuiper, N., & Kirker, W. S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 677-688.
30.
Shrauger, J. S. (1975). Responses to evaluation as a function of inifial self-perceptions. Psychological Bulletin, 82, 581-596.
31.
Singer, J. E. (1966). Social comparison: Progress and issues. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Suppl. 1, 103-110.
32.
Suls, J. (1986). Notes on the occasion of social comparison theory's thirtieth birthday. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 12, 289-296.
33.
Suls, J. , & Miller, R. (Eds.). (1977). Social comparison processes: Theoretical and empirical perspectives. Washington, DC: Hemisphere.
34.
Suls, J. , & Wan, C. K. (1987). In search of the false uniqueness phenomenon: Fear and estimates of social consensus. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 211-217.
35.
Suls, J. , Wan, C., & Sanders, G. (1988). False consensus and false uniqueness in estimating the prevalence of health-relevant behaviors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18, 66-79.
36.
Swann, W. B., Jr. (1987). Identity negotiation: Where two roads meet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1038-1051.
37.
Swann, W. B., Jr. , & Read, S. J. (1981). Self-verification processes: How we sustain our self-conceptions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 17, 351-372.
38.
Taylor, S. , & Lobel, M. (1989). Social comparison activity under threat: Downward evaluation and upward contacts. Psychological Review, 96, 569-575.
39.
Taylor, S. , Wood, J. V., & Lichtman, R. (1983). It could be worse: Selective evaluation as a response to victimization. Journal of Social Issues, 39, 19-40.
40.
Taylor, S. E. , & Brown, J. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.
41.
Tesser, A. (1988). Toward a self-evaluation maintenance model of social behavior. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 181-227). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
42.
Tesser, A. , & Campbell, J. (1980). Self-definition: The impact of the relative performance and similarity of others. Social Psychology Quarterly, 43, 341-347.
43.
Tesser, A. , Millar, M., & Moore, J. (1988). Some affective consequences of social comparison and reflection processes: The pain and pleasure of being close. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 49-61.
44.
Trope, Y. (1983). Self-assessment in achievement behavior. In J. Suls & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on the self (Vol. 2, pp. 93-121). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
45.
Tversky, A. , & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty. Science, 185, 1124-1131.
46.
Wheeler, L. (1966). Motivation as a determinant of upward comparison. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Suppl. 1, 27-31.
47.
Wicklund, R. (1975). Objective self-awareness. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 8, pp. 233-275). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
48.
Wills, T. A. (1981). Downward comparison principles in social psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 90, 245-271.
49.
Wills, T. A. (1987). Downward comparison as a coping mechanism. In C. R. Snyder & C. Ford (Eds.), Coping with negative life events: Clinical and social-psychological perspectives (pp. 243-268). New York: Plenum.
50.
Wills, T. A. (1990). Similarity and downward comparison. In J. Suls & T. A. Wills (Eds.), Social comparison: Contemporary theory and research (pp. 51-78). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
51.
Wood, J. V. (1989). Theory and research concerning social comparisons of personal attributes. Psychological Bulletin, 106, 231-248.
52.
Wood, J. V. , Taylor, S., & Lichtman, R. (1985). Social comparison in adjustment to breast cancer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1169-1183.
53.
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement, 9, 1-27.
54.
Zuckerman, M. (1979). Attribution of success and failure revisited, or: The motivational bias is alive and well in attribution theory. Journal of Personality, 47, 245-287.
