Accepting Self, Accepting Others, and Rating Peers Generously

Summary.-After participating more than 20 hr. in 58 small groups, 487 undergraduates rated own and each other's within-group behavior separately acceptance versus rejection of others and of self. Individuals' ratings by pooled group peers and self agreed substantially, although more strongly self-accepting than otheraccepting conduct. Despite moderate positive correlations between self-acceptance and acceptance of others, how favorably one rated one's group peers correlated appreciably, consistently, and positively only with acceptance of others, not with acceptance of self. Theorists such as Gibb (1964), Rogers (1951), and M. Rosenberg (1979) associated self-acceptance with high regard others, although empirical findings (J. Brown, 1986; Hurley, 1976b) have challenged this view. The present study explored this issue through round-robin ratings of interpersonal conduct in small, continuing groups. These ratings were on measures of interpersonal behavior's two principal dimensions, consistent with Conte and Plutchik's (1981) conclusion that for interpersonal personality data, however, any factors after the first two account very little of the total variance (p. 707). In accord with Adams (1964), Foa (1961), and Hurley (1976a), these dimensions were labeled acceptance versus rejection of self and acceptance versus rejection of others, although they have also been denoted status and love (R. Brown, 1965), dominance and affiliativeness (Wiggins, 1982), and so forth.