When our identities are mistaken: Reaffirming self-conceptions through social interaction.

Although those who have labored to change self-concepts in naturally occurring situations (jave often experienced difficulty, laboratory investigators have re-ported considerable success in this endeavor. This research sought to reconcile these contradictory findings by examining how people respond behaviorally and psychologically when they receive feedback that disconfirms their self-concep-tions. The results showed that self-discrepant feedback produced changes in self-ratings only when recipients had no opportunity to reject and refute it. If par-ticipants had opportunity to behaviorally discredit discrepant feedback, they did so and subsequently displayed minimal self-rating change. The discussion pro-poses some important differences between transitory fluctuations and enduring changes in self-ratings and suggests some conditions that must be met before lasting self-concept changes will occur. Are peoples conceptions of themselves stable and enduring or do they shift mark-edly over time? Depending on who one asks,