Department of Philosophy, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University.
Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park.
Psychol Sci. 2022 May;33(5):699-715. doi: 10.1177/09567976211049439. Epub 2022 Apr 7.
Research shows that people prefer self-consistent over self-discrepant feedback-the . It is not clear, however, whether the effect stems from striving for self-verification or from the preference for subjectively accurate information. We argue that people prefer self-verifying feedback because they find it to be more accurate than self-discrepant feedback. We thus experimentally manipulated feedback credibility by providing information on its source: a student (control condition) or an experienced psychologist (experimental condition). In line with our expectations, the results of two preregistered studies with 342 adults showed that people preferred self-verifying feedback only in the control condition. In the experimental condition, the effect disappeared (or reversed, in Study 1). Study 2 showed that individual differences in credibility (epistemic authority) ascribed to the self and to psychologists matter as well. These findings suggest that feedback credibility, rather than the desire for self-verification, often drives the self-verification effect.
研究表明，人们更喜欢与自我一致而非不一致的反馈。然而，不清楚这种影响是源于自我验证的努力还是源于对主观准确信息的偏好。我们认为，人们更喜欢自我验证的反馈，因为他们认为这种反馈比自我不一致的反馈更准确。因此，我们通过提供反馈来源的信息（学生[对照条件]或经验丰富的心理学家[实验条件]）来操纵反馈可信度。与我们的预期一致，两项有 342 名成年人参与的预先注册研究的结果表明，人们只在对照条件下更喜欢自我验证的反馈。在实验条件下，这种影响消失了（或在研究 1 中发生了逆转）。研究 2 表明，个体对自我和心理学家的可信度（认知权威）的差异也很重要。这些发现表明，反馈可信度而非自我验证的愿望往往会推动自我验证效应。
