Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 1986 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

1986. Vol. 51, No. 4,858-866 0022-3514/86/S00.75

Stability and Malleability of the Self-Concept

Hazel Markus Ziva Kunda

University of Michigan Princeton University

The self-concept literature is characterized by a continuing controversy over whether the self-concept
is stable or malleable. In this article we suggest that it is both but that the stability observed for general
descriptions of the self may mask significant local variation. In this study the social environment was
varied by creating a situation in which subjects found themselves to be either very unique or very
similar to others. Following this manipulation, subjects responded to a series of self-concept mea-
sures. Although the uniqueness and similarity subjects did not differ in the trait terms they used to
describe themselves, they did differ systematically in their latency for these judgments, in positivity
and negativity of their word associations, and in their judgments of similarity to reference groups.
These findings imply that subjects made to feel unique recruited conceptions of themselves as similar
to others, whereas subjects made to feel similar to others recruited conceptions of themselves as
unique. The results suggest that very general self-descriptive measures are inadequate for revealing
how the individual adjusts and calibrates the self-concept in response to challenges from the social
environment.

Two seemingly contradictory aspects of the self have been
emphasized in the empirical self-concept literature. The self
has been regarded as a stable and enduring structure that pro-
tects itself against change (e.g., Greenwald, 1980; Markus,
1977; Mortimer & Lorence, 1981; Swann & Read, 1981). Yet,
it is also acknowledged that in different social environments
different selves appear to emerge. People vary from one time to
another in their self-relevant thoughts, feelings, and behavior
(e.g., Gergen, 1967b; Savin-Williams & Demo, 1983). One's
feelings about the self when talking to the boss are different
from those one has when talking to a subordinate, and one's
feelings about the self when being asked for a date are different
from those one has when being stood up for one. The defense of
an unpopular view engenders a very different set of self-relevant
thoughts than those engendered by a reluctant decision to go
along with the group.
Most comprehensive theories of the self have recognized
these two apparently contradictory aspects of the self. Thus
Rogers (1951) described the self-concept as organized and con-
sistent but also as fluid. Similarly, Turner (1956) characterized
the self as a "stable set of evaluative standards" but also as quite
variable—"the picture the person has of himself or herself at
any given moment" (p. 231).
In this article, we seek to examine the means by which the
self-concept may remain relatively stable yet still vary with the
social environment.
The Stable Self-Concept
The dual nature of the self-concept, that is, its stability and
malleability, has rarely been the focus of empirical work. Most
The research reported here was supported by National Institute of
Mental Health grant MH29753. We would like to thank Nancy Cantor,
Richard Nisbett, R. B. Zajonc, and an anonymous reviewer for valuable
comments on an earlier version of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Hazel
Markus, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Ar-
bor, Michigan 48106.
laboratory research has, in fact, stressed only one aspect—sta-
bility. The most pervasive and least ambiguous finding to
emerge from the recent surge of research on the self-concept is
that individuals seek out consistency and stability and actively
resist any information that challenges their prevailing view of
themselves. Swann and his colleagues (Swann, 1985; Swann &
Hill, 1982; Swann & Read, 1981) found, for example, that per-
ceivers will go to great lengths to verify their self-conceptions
by attending most closely to information that fits their view of
the self and by trying to arrange their environments so as to
acquire further self-confirming evidence. Other studies reveal
that individuals appear to ignore or reject those accounts of
their behavior that differ from their own (e.g., Greenwald, 1980;
Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Markus, 1977; Wurf & Markus,
1983; lesser & Campbell, 1983; Rosenberg, 1979). Together,
these findings suggest that the self-concept is anything but mal-
leable and mutable. On the contrary, they imply a stable sense
of self that is quite unresponsive to variations in the social situa-
tion and one that individuals are determined to preserve.
The Malleable Self-Concept
The dynamic and malleable properties of the self-concept are
thought to derive primarily from its essentially social nature. In
referring to the variable nature of the self, James wrote that
the individual has "as many different social selves as there are
distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares"
(James, 1910, p. 294). Although psychologists have extensively
analyzed self-presentation (Jones & Pittman, 1982) and impres-
sion management (Schlenker, 1980) and variation in self-
esteem (Jones, Rhodewalt, Berglas, & Skelton, 1981; Morse &
Gergen, 1970), there are only a few (cf. Fazio, Effrein, & Fal-
lender, 1981; McGuire & McGuire, 1982) who have empirically
broached the social malleability of the self-concept. Instead, re-
search on the social nature of the self has been primarily con-
cerned with the process of reflected appraisal and with the con-
ditions under which there is a correspondence between how

858
 STABILITY AND MALLEABILITY OF THE SELF-CONCEPT
people see themselves and how others see them (e.g., Rosenberg,
1981; Shrauger & Schoeneman, 1979). These studies have suc-
cessfully revealed the social origins of the stable and enduring
aspects of the self-concept but they have been much less in-
volved with characterizing the self-concept as it is constructed
in different social situations.
Sociologists have been more concerned with the shifting dy-
namic nature of the self (Martindale, 1980;Zurcher, 1977). Al-
exander and Knight (1971), for example, developed the concept
of situated identities to refer to the meanings of the self that
emerge during a particular social encounter. These identities
are thought to be created afresh each time and not to be carried
over from one situation to another. Sociological studies high-
lighting the social malleability of the self, however, are rarely
concerned with how the self-conceptions offered by the social
environment are combined with the existing self-conceptions.
Moreover, these studies are not easily reconciled with the much
larger volume of research demonstrating the impressive stabil-
ity of the self-concept.
The Working Self-Concept
In this article, we examine the stability of the self-concept as
it confronts challenging information. Drawing on current
thinking about cognitive structures, we propose that, although
the self-concept is in some respects quite stable, this stability
can mask significant local variations that arise when the indi-
vidual responds systematically to events in the social environ-
ment. Recent research in a variety of areas of psychology indi-
cates that individuals possess a great diversity of complex
knowledge structures from which different substructures can
be activated and then creatively combined and used to meet the
demands of different occasions. This has been demonstrated for
social judgment (Higgins & King, 1981; Higgins, King, & Ma-
vin, 1982), attitudes (Salancik & Conway, 1975;Snyder, 1982),
and inferential rules (Nisbett, Krantz, Jepson, & Kunda, 1983),
to list but a few examples. In the perspective developed here, the
self is not a unitary structure, or even a generalized average of
images and cognitions. Instead, the self-concept encompasses
within its scope a wide variety of self-conceptions—the good
selves, the bad selves, the hoped-for selves, the feared selves,
the not-me selves, the ideal selves, the possible selves, the ought
selves (cf. Gergen, 1967a; Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Hig-
gins, 1983; Jones & Pittman, 1982; McGuire, 1984; Sullivan,
1953; Tesser & Campbell, 1983). The self-concept at a given
moment—the working self-concept—is a subset of this universe
of self-conceptions.
The content of a particular working self-concept depends on
what subset of selves was active just before, on what has been
invoked by the individual as a result of an experience, event, or
situation, and, very importantly, on what has been elicited by
the social situation at the given time. Thus the working self-
concept is a temporary structure consisting of elements from
the collection of self-conceptions, organized in a configuration
determined by ongoing social events. The self-concept, then,
can be viewed as stable in that the universe of self-conceptions
is relatively stable. Certainly, new self-conceptions will be
added, yet once a particular self-conception has been created,
it is unlikely to disappear even if seldom elicited. At the same
859
time, there are variations in which self-conceptions are active
in thought and memory. The self-concept appears as malleable,
then, because the contents of the working self-concept change.
Some self-conceptions, because of their importance in denn-
ing the self and their extensive elaboration, are probably con-
stantly available for characterizing the self; they are what Hig-
gins has called chronically accessible (Higgins et al., 1982).
These conceptions reflect one's behavior in domains of endur-
ing salience, investment, or concern, and they have been vari-
ously labeled as core self-conceptions or as self-schemas (e.g.,
Markus, 1977). Other self-conceptions, however, vary in then-
accessibility depending on the individual's affective or motiva-
tional states, or on prevailing social conditions (e.g., I'm behind
in all my work, I'm the only one who is dressed up, I'm the
best dancer here, I could win a scholarship). The working self-
concept consists, then, of one's core self-conceptions embedded
in a context of more tentative self-conceptions that are tied to
the immediate social circumstances.
Self-conceptions become active in working memory when
they are triggered by significant self-relevant events, or they can
be tuned in by the individual in responses to an event or situa-
tion. Thus putting one's foot in one's mouth with an ill-consid-
ered comment to a colleague may be accompanied by a flood
of negative self-conceptions—one's self as foolish, awkward, or
impulsive. Such challenges to one's self-esteem, however, even
minor or self-inflicted ones, will not be received passively (e.g.,
Swann & Hill, 1982; Tesser & Campbell, 1983). Instead, the
individual is likely to counter these newly activated negative
self-conceptions by recruiting from the universe of self-concep-
tions those that offer a different view of the self—the self as tact-
ful, controlled, and socially skilled. The result of this cognitive
work is that the content of the working self-concept becomes
decidedly different from what it was prior to the embarrassing
remark. In fact, the consequences of an embarrassing or a chal-
lenging self-relevant event may actually be a momentary rise in
self-esteem or a brief period of self-promotion caused by the
positive self-conceptions that are recruited to counteract the
initially negative thoughts about the self (see also Greenberg &
Pyszczynski, 1985; Steele & Liu, 1983). Such variations in the
content of the working self-concept are significant. They can
have powerful consequences for one's mood, for temporary self-
esteem, and for the immediately consequent thoughts and ac-
tions.
Variation in the Self-Concept
Malleability in the self-concept—variation in the working
self-concept—occurs as the context of self-conceptions sur-
rounding the core elements changes. This mutability or fluidity
in the self-concept will be fairly subtle; it will not, under most
circumstances, involve a major revision or reorganization of
significant self-relevant thoughts and feelings. Indeed, many
typical assessments of the self-concept, such as adjective check-
lists, will not reflect these variations in self-conceptions.
Changes of this nature require measures that reveal the differ-
ential availability of self-conceptions and measures that reveal
changes in the meaning or interpretation given to various self-
descriptions.
In developing a paradigm that would allow us to explore vari-
860 HAZEL MARKUS AND ZIVA KUNDA
aliens in the content and configuration of self-knowledge, we
selected a domain of general significance and investment such
that self-knowledge about it would constitute a core component
of the self-concept. We chose to study self-knowledge of one's
uniqueness or similarity to others. It is vital to know that one
is similar to others and that one can claim membership in some
group or society, but it is equally essential that one be suffi-
ciently different from others so as not to forsake one's own iden-
tity. In this study we constructed situations designed to bring
both self-conceptions of uniqueness and self-conceptions of
similarity into play.
We reasoned that when people received information about
themselves that threatened a certain core self-conception, they
would make every effort to reaffirm that aspect of their selves.
Thus people led to think of themselves as extremely similar to
others would experience a threat to their uniqueness and strive
to reaffirm their self-conceptions of uniqueness, whereas people
led to feel extremely unique would attempt to bolster their self-
conceptions as similar to others (see Maslach, 1974; Snyder &
Fromkin, 1980; and Ziller, 1964, for extensive empirical and
theoretical work in this area). Fromkin (1970; Snyder & From-
kin, 1980), in fact, has shown that both extreme similarity and
extreme uniqueness are aversive states and lead to behavioral
attempts to reestablish the opposite state. In this article, we hy-
pothesized that these behavioral reactions are mediated by
changes in the working self-concept.
To examine the nature of the variation in the content and
configuration of the working self-concept, we led college stu-
dents to believe that they were either very unique and different
from their peers on some important dimensions or very ordi-
nary and similar to a group of their peers. This was accom-
plished by providing them with false feedback indicating that
their preferences were either very different from those of a num-
ber of confederates in the study or very similar to those of the
confederates. In one case, we attempted to surround the core
self-conceptions of uniqueness and similarity with evidence
that the subject was nearly a clone of the other students, and in
the other case, we sought to embed these same core self-concep-
tions within indications of the subject's unusualness.
We anticipated that the working self-concept would vary
markedly as a function of this uniqueness/similarity manipula-
tion. We did not expect that subjects would simply accept the
view of themselves as extremely common or extremely unique,
nor did we expect that they could simply reject the information
communicated by the social situation. Rather, we anticipated
that subjects made to feel extremely unique, perhaps a little odd
and peculiar, would attempt to recruit from their universe of
self-conceptions some reassuring examples of past behaviors to
reveal their similarity to others. Such subjects might think
about how their jeans and sweatshirts made them indistinguish-
able from their fellow students, about how different they were
from the foreign students on campus, and how they, like every-
one else, loved the newest popular movies. In contrast, students
made to feel uncomfortably similar to others should recruit
from their collection of self-conceptions those that were evi-
dence of their uniqueness. These individuals might think about
how they sometimes laugh at things no one else finds amusing,
about how bored they are with some of the latest fads on cam-
pus, and how they resemble, in some respects, members of the
opposite sex.
We hypothesized that both groups would engage in self-veri-
fication as a result of the information communicated by the ma-
nipulation but that the self-concepts being verified would be
very different from each other. Thus subjects led to believe they
are extremely unique should attempt to verify their similarity
to others, whereas those led to believe they are very similar to
others should make every effort to affirm their uniqueness.
Measuring the Working Self-Concept
We did not expect the two groups of subjects to show impor-
tant revisions in their core self-conceptions of uniqueness or
similarity as a consequence of the experimental manipulation.
That is, we did not expect their general self-descriptions on an
adjective checklist to vary. We did, however, expect their work-
ing self-concepts to differ. So we anticipated that their responses
on a number of indirect measures of the self-concept would
vary systematically with condition. Thus, in comparison to sub-
jects made to feel similar to others (similarity subjects), subjects
made to feel extremely unique (uniqueness subjects) would en-
hance the positivity of the desired similarity and deflate the pos-
itivity of the threatening uniqueness. To reveal the positivity or
negativity associated with the manipulated uniqueness or simi-
larity, subjects were given an opportunity to provide word asso-
ciations to these concepts. Moreover, we expected that the two
groups would differ in the accessibility of self-conceptions as
unique and as similar. As an indication of the accessibility of
self-conceptions of uniqueness or similarity we recorded the la-
tency of subjects' self-categorization responses and required
subjects to perform a social comparison task in which they were
asked to judge their similarity to a number of basic reference
groups. In comparison to similarity subjects, uniqueness sub-
jects were expected to provide evidence that conceptions of the
self as similar to others were readily accessible and that concep-
tions of the self as unique were much less accessible.
Method
Subjects
Subjects were 40 University of Michigan female undergraduates, who
participated in the study to earn credit in an introductory psychology
course.
Procedure
Subjects were run one at a time, each with three female confederates.
The confederates were undergraduate students who were paid for their
participation. The subject and confederates were all seated in a row be-
hind a long table, with the subject always at the far left. Subjects were
told that the study was concerned with attitudes and opinions. For the
first task, subjects were shown posters in a series of 18 trials. Each poster
had three items, such as three colors, three cartoons, or three greeting
cards, and the subject was to write down for each poster the number of
the item she liked best. Following this the manipulation was delivered.
The experimenter explained that she had to transfer the responses to
computer coding sheets and that it would save her time and money if
the subjects would read out their responses so that she could transfer
them immediately to the coding sheets. To make the task more interest-
 STABILITY AND MALLEABILITY OF THE SELF-CONCEPT
ing for them too, she said, she would show them each poster as they
went along. On each trial the real subject went first, and her responses
determined those of the confederates.
Uniqueness condition. On all but 3 of the 18 trials the confederates
all disagreed with the subject and agreed with each other. Thus, if on a
given trial the subject said she had picked Color C as her favorite, each
of the confederates said she had picked Color A. On the remaining three
trials, included to increase credibility, the first confederate agreed with
the subject and the other two disagreed with her and with each other.
Similarity condition. On all but 3 of the 18 trials the confederates
all agreed with the subject. Thus, if on a given trial the subject said she
had picked Color C as her favorite, each of the three confederates also
said she had picked Color C. On the three remaining trials, none of the
confederates agreed with the subject and two of them agreed with each
other.
Following this manipulation, subjects responded to a series of depen-
dent measures.
Task 1: Judgments of similarity to reference groups. Subjects were
shown 26 slides, each containing the name of a group. Of the groups
presented, the first 15 were in-groups—groups that all or almost all of
the subjects belonged to, for example, Americans or Women. The next
11 were out-groups—groups that all or almost all of the subjects did not
belong to, for example, men or UCLA students. For each slide, subjects
indicated by pressing one of six labeled buttons how similar they felt to
the presented group on a 6-point scale that ranged from not at all similar
(1) to extremely similar (6). A computer activated the slide projector
and collected both subjects' responses and reaction times. The slides
were projected for 4 s with 2 s between slides.
Task 2: Self-categorization judgments. Subjects were shown 31
slides, each containing a trait adjective. Of these, 8 were related to
uniqueness (e.g., original, independent, unique) and 9 to similarity (e.g.,
average, normal, follower). These were the critical-manipulation rele-
vant words. The uniqueness and the similarity words were approxi-
mately matched for word frequency and likability. Fourteen other words
from the dimension extroversion-introversion were included for com-
parison. The order of the words was determined randomly and fixed for
all subjects. Subjects responded to each slide by pressing either a me
button if the adjective described them or a not me button if the adjective
did not describe them. Each slide was presented for 4 s, with 3 s until
the onset of the next trait slide. Once again, latencies were collected.
Task 3: Word association. Subjects were given a booklet containing
six pages. On the tap of each page was a word, and they were instructed
to write down as many words as came to mind. Subjects were given I
min to work on each page and 5 s between pages. The first two words
were conceptually related to similarity (ordinary, conforming), the next
two were neutral (honest, polite), and the last two were conceptually
related to uniqueness (unusual, individualistic).
Manipulation check. Subjects were asked what percentage of the
time they thought the other participants had agreed with their prefer-
ence judgment in the first part of the study. Following the experiment,
each subject was debriefed at length.
Results
Manipulation Check
As expected, subjects were very much aware of the extent to
which participants had agreed with them. The uniqueness sub-
jects estimated that the others agreed with them 8% of the time
and the similarity subjects estimated 77% of the time. In actual-
ity, there was 17% and 83% agreement.
Stability of the Self-Concept
As can be seen in Figure 1, the uniqueness (those receiving
the uniqueness manipulation) and similarity subjects (those re-
861
Me Responses
Uniqueness Subjects
Similarity Subjects
Similarity Uniqueness
Words Words
WORD TYPE
Figure 1. Number of similarity and uniqueness words endorsed by
similarity and uniqueness subjects as self-descriptive.
ceiving the similarity manipulation) did not differ in either the
number of uniqueness-related words endorsed as self-descrip-
tive, the number of similarity-related words endorsed as self-
descriptive, or in the number of control words endorsed as self-
descriptive (all Fs < 1). The fact that both groups of subjects
endorsed almost half of the uniqueness words and almost half of
the similarity words indicates that indeed both their uniqueness
and their similarity were of importance to them. On the basis
of these data alone, one might conclude that these groups did
not differ in their self-concepts with respect to uniqueness and
similarity. They seem not to have been influenced by the infor-
mation about their similarity or uniqueness that was presented
in the experimental manipulation.
Malleability of the Self-Concept
Latency for self-categorization judgments. Although sub-
jects' overall self-categorizations did not reveal any effects of
the uniqueness/similarity manipulation (see Figure 1), the la-
tencies for these self-categorizations were markedly different for
the two groups. These results imply that the two groups of sub-
jects may indeed have been recruiting different self-conceptions
into their working self-concepts as a result of the challenge pro-
vided by the experimental feedback. The differences in laten-
cies between the two groups reflect the fact that different types
of self-conceptions were mediating their self-categorization
judgments.
We expected that the attempts of uniqueness subjects to re-
affirm their similarity to others would take the form of a search
for pertinent self-conceptions. Such subjects would, therefore,
activate similarity-related terms and the related behavioral evi-
dence known to be self-descriptive as well as uniqueness-related
terms and related behaviors known to be uncharacteristic of the
self. This activation would result in shorter latencies for terms
conceptually related to similarity. The opposite should be true
of similarity subjects. Uniqueness subjects would, therefore, be
expected to have faster me responses to similarity words and
862 HAZEL MARKUS AND ZIVA KUNDA
Similarity Words
3000
E2 Me
2800 • Not Me
2600
)
\ 2400
2200
2000
1800
Uniqueness Similarity
Subjects Subjects
CONDITION
Figure 2. Latencies of me? and not me responses of similarity and uniqueness
subjects to similarity and uniqueness words.
faster not me responses to uniqueness words, whereas similarity
subjects should be quicker to endorse uniqueness words and to
reject similarity words.
As can be seen in Figure 2, with respect to the uniqueness
words, the similarity subjects were faster to respond me than
were the uniqueness subjects. With respect to the similarity ad-
jectives, the uniqueness subjects were faster to respond me than
were the similarity subjects. Figure 2 also shows the not me re-
sponses to the two sets of words. For the similarity adjectives,
the uniqueness subjects were markedly slower to respond not
me than were the similarity subjects. The pattern is not as clear,
however, for the uniqueness words. Here the two groups did not
differ in their not me latencies.
The overall analysis of these data yielded a significant 2 X 2 X
2 interaction (Experimental Condition X Word X Response),
f(S6) = 2.12, p < .05,' which indicates that similarity words
and uniqueness words yielded different patterns of interaction.
Planned comparisons showed that the Condition X Response
interaction for similarity words was significant, /(28) = 2.61,
p < .01, but the interaction for uniqueness words was not, t <
I. The control words—words related to extroverted and intro-
verted—did not yield a significant Condition X Response inter-
action, which indicates that the effects of experimental manipu-
lation were restricted to the manipulation-relevant domain of
uniqueness-similarity.
The fact that the pattern was less evident for the uniqueness
terms reflects the finding that uniqueness subjects were not
quicker than similarity subjects to reject uniqueness words. It
appears that the patterns for the similarity and uniqueness
words were not, as might be expected, mirror images of one
another because the uniqueness terms were extremely positive,
even though every attempt was made to equate the uniqueness
and similarity words for positivity and desirability. All subjects
seemed to have difficulty rejecting characterizations of them-
selves as, for example, special. This result may indeed suggest
the type of self-conception that is particularly resistant to in-
fluence. In general, however, the results imply that the stability
of self-conception suggested by the results of the initial self-cate-
Uniqueness Words
3000
2800 Me
Not Me
2600
u
» 2400
2200
2000
1800
Uniqueness Similarity
Subjects Subjects
CONDITION
gorization belies a great deal of variation in the contents of the
working self-concepts of these individuals.
Word association. Another clear indication that the stu-
dents did not ignore the self-relevant information conveyed in
the manipulation but were, in fact, made uncomfortable by it
came from their subsequent performance on the word associa-
tion task. The manipulation was associated with marked
differences in the affective connotations of the uniqueness-sim-
ilarity dimension. Subjects' responses to each word were coded
for total number of word associations, for number of unique-
ness-relevant and similarity-relevant words, and for the number
of positive (e.g., nice, happy) and negative (e.g., bad, ugly) ex-
pressions; agreement between coders was 87%.
We expected that our manipulation would affect the way sub-
jects interpreted the concepts of uniqueness and similarity. We
anticipated that the uniqueness subjects would find this ex-
treme uniqueness to be threatening and unpleasant and that
related concepts would thus be colored negatively. In contrast,
concepts relevant to similarity would be colored positively. The
opposite was expected to hold for the similarity subjects. And
it was the negativity attached to uniqueness or similarity as a
result of the manipulation that we assumed would instigate the
search and elicitation of self-conceptions to counter those sug-
gested by the experiment. For the word association task, the two
groups did not differ in number of associations to either unique-
ness, similarity, or control words, or in number of dimension-
related traits generated to them. However, as can be seen in Fig-
1
All contrasts used error terms obtained from a 2 X 3 X 2 repeated
measures ANOVA (Experimental Condition [uniqueness, similarity] X
Word type [uniqueness, similarity, control] X Response [me, not me]).
Experimental condition was a between-subjects factor, and the remain-
ing two factors were within-subjects. The weights for similarity words
were +1, — 1, — 1, +1, respectively for uniqueness condition, me re-
sponses; uniqueness condition, not me responses; similarity condition,
me responses; similarity condition, not me responses. The weights for
uniqueness words were — I,+ !,+!, — I, respectively for the four groups.
All p levels reported for planned comparisons are based on one-tailed
tests.
 STABILITY AND MALLEABILITY OF THE SELF-CONCEPT
Similarity Words
Uniqueness Similarity
Subjects Subjects
CONDITION
Figure 3. Number of positive and negative associations generated by similarity and uniqueness
subjects in response to similarity and uniqueness words.
ure 3, when responding to the similarity stimulus words,
uniqueness subjects generated more positive and fewer negative
associations than did similarity subjects. The opposite pattern
was found for uniqueness stimulus words—in response to these,
uniqueness subjects generated fewer positive and more negative
associations than did similarity subjects. A contrast showed this
three-way interaction (2 X 2 X 2) to be significant, #66) = 2.95,
p<.01. 2
As may be seen in Figure 3, the terms conceptually related to
uniqueness appear to be colored more positively than the terms
conceptually related to similarity—subjects generated more
positive and fewer negative words in response to them than to
the similarity words. A contrast showed this two-way interac-
tion to be significant, f(66) = 5.55, p < .001. This enhanced
positivity of uniqueness words, also noted in the latency data,
may explain why the effect of the manipulation was less pro-
nounced for those words than it was for similarity words—
planned comparisons showed the Condition X Valence interac-
tion for similarity words to be significant, /(33) = 2.53, p < .01,
whereas the interaction for uniqueness words was marginal,
f(33)= 1.37,0 <.10.
Control words showed a pattern of results similar to that
found for similarity words, although less pronounced, f(33) =
1.37, p < .10. In retrospect this is not surprising because the
control words—honest and polite—are associated with being
Table 1
Mean Judgments of Similarity to In-Groups and
Out-Groups by Experimental Condition
Experimental condition
Group Uniqueness Similarity
In-group 5.13 4.93
Out-group 1.82 2.26
Note. The higher the mean, the greater the degree of similarity to
groups. For both groups, N = 19.
863
Uniqueness Words
1.2
1.0 E2 Positive
M • Negative
10.8
•S0.6
k-
| 0.4
3
Z
0.2
0
Uniqueness Similarity
Subjects Subjects
CONDITION
conventional and ordinary and, therefore, may be subject to the
same reinterpretation as are words that directly convey similar-
ity to others.
Similarity to reference groups. The fact that the two groups
did indeed recruit different self-conceptions in response to the
experimental manipulation is also indicated by the results of
their judgments of similarity to basic reference groups. We
anticipated that this task would be subtle and nonreactive, re-
vealing the accessibility of particular self-conceptions. Many
self-definitions are derived from social comparisons. And the
outcome of a particular social comparison depends on what
self-conceptions are active in the working self-concept. Thus,
if the two groups differed in their judgments of similarity to
common reference groups, we assumed that it was because they
had different self-conceptions accessible. If, as expected, sub-
jects were seeking evidence to counter the self-conception con-
veyed by the experimental manipulation, uniqueness subjects
would want to affirm their similarity to others and would, there-
fore, rate themselves as more similar to in-groups and as rela-
tively less similar to out-groups than would similarity subjects,
who would want to affirm their uniqueness.
Not surprisingly, all subjects felt more similar to in-groups
than to out-groups, F(\, 36) = 236, p < .OOl, 3 yet, as can be
seen in Table 1, similarity subjects described themselves as
more similar to out-groups and less similar to in-groups than
did the uniqueness subjects. These ratings were analyzed by a
2 x 2 (Experimental Condition X Group) repeated measures
analysis of variance (ANOVA), which showed the obtained inter-
action to be marginally significant, F(l, 36) = 2.75,p =.11.
If, as we expected, one method of reaffirming uniqueness or
similarity is to search through one's collection of self-concep-
2
Once again, contrasts used error terms obtained from a 2 X 3 X 2
repeated measures ANOVA (Experimental Condition [uniqueness, simi-
larity] X Word Type [uniqueness, similarity, control] x Valence [posi-
tive, negative]).
3
Unlike the earlier analysis, these analyses involved all available re-
sponses rather than a subset of responses and, therefore, used F tests
from the ANOVA rather than planned comparisons.
864 HAZEL MARKUS AND ZIVA KUNDA
Table 2
Mean Latencies (in Milliseconds) of High Similarity
Judgments of Similarity to In-Group and Out-Group
by Experimental Condition
Experimental condition
Group Uniqueness" Similarity6
In-group 2,056 2,127
Out-group 2,794 2,456
= 14.
tions for relevant examples of similarity or dissimilarity to com-
mon reference groups, one's membership in these groups
should become accessible in the working self-concept, and this
should be reflected in the time needed to make judgments of
similarity to in-groups and out-groups. The search of unique-
ness subjects for evidence of their similarity to others would
therefore be reflected in shorter latencies to judgments about
similarity to in-groups. Similarity subjects, on the other hand,
searching their memories for evidence of their uniqueness and
seeking examples of their similarity to relatively unusual
groups, should be quicker to make judgments about their simi-
larity to out-groups. Uniqueness subjects would therefore be
quicker than similarity subjects to respond on in-group judg-
ments and slower than similarity subjects to respond on out-
group judgments.4
As may be seen in Table 2, that pattern was found. These
latencies were analyzed using a 2 X 2 repeated measures
ANOVA, which showed the obtained interaction to be margin-
ally significant, F(l, 24) = 2.73, p = .11. A highly significant
group effect was also found, F(l, 24) = 18.47, p < .001, reveal-
ing that subjects were faster to respond to in-groups than to out-
groups.
Discussion
These results demonstrate both the stability and malleability
of the self-concept in response to a challenging event. The self-
concepts of these individuals seemed to remain quite stable in
that the experimental feedback did not influence the terms they
used to describe themselves. Individuals receiving the unique-
ness manipulation and individuals receiving the similarity ma-
nipulations were alike in characterizing themselves as average
and similar to others and also as special and unique. If one col-
lected only these observations, one would tend to infer that the
self-conceptions of these individuals were relatively unrespon-
sive to the self-relevant information provided by the study.
At the same time, the results of the word association, latency,
and similarity tasks suggest that underlying these similar gen-
eral self-descriptions were very different temporary self-concep-
tions. Thus, individuals led to feel unique were apparently dis-
turbed by this knowledge and, following the preference manipu-
lation, viewed the state of uniqueness as negative and
undesirable, whereas the state of similarity to others became
correspondingly positive and desirable. These subjects provided
relatively more negative associations to uniqueness-related
words and relatively more positive associations to similarity-
related words. As a consequence of the challenge to their simi-
larity to others provided by the experiment, uniqueness subjects
appeared to recruit conceptions of themselves as similar to oth-
ers. They were relatively quick to endorse and slow to reject
similarity-related words as self-descriptive. Moreover, they
viewed themselves as similar to in-groups and made these judg-
ments quickly. Individuals made to feel extremely similar to
others responded in exactly the opposite way.
The fact that both groups of subjects described themselves in
the same way on the self-categorization task, regardless of the
manipulation, is significant because it suggests that conceptions
of one's self as similar to others and as different from others
are among those core self-conceptions or self-schemas that are
critical for self-definition and that are not easily altered. Such
self-conceptions may indeed be enduringly salient to the indi-
vidual and thus accessible regardless of prevailing social cir-
cumstances. Other studies (e.g., Markus, 1977) have shown that
when individuals do not have self-schemas for particular do-
mains of behavior they will change their self-descriptions in the
direction of the self-relevant information provided in the labo-
ratory. Thus, if uniqueness and similarity were domains of only
limited investment and concern, we would expect those pro-
vided with uniqueness information to describe themselves as
unique and those provided with similarity information to char-
acterize themselves as similar to others.
The importance attached to conceptions of similarity and
uniqueness may be one reason why the similarity and unique-
ness created in the lab produced negative associations and why
these subjects were apparently unwilling to simply ignore the
self-relevant information. As the self-concept literature would
predict (Greenwald, 1980; Snyder & Swann, 1978; Swann,
1983), the individuals in this study, when challenged, did indeed
attempt to affirm their self-conceptions. Yet, what is notable for
the question of malleability in the self-concept is that the self-
conceptions being verified were quite different for the two
groups. Moreover, these self-conceptions bore a systematic rela-
tion to the information received about themselves from the so-
cial environment. They were elicited in response to the chal-
lenging event. It seems that the uniqueness subjects had working
self-concepts comprised, at least in part, of conceptions of their
similarity to others, whereas the similarity subjects had working
self-concepts that included conceptions of their uniqueness.
The self-concept, although resistant to the view of the self pre-
sented by the experimental manipulation, did indeed react to
the self-relevant information and can thus be considered mal-
leable and fluid.
What are the consequences of the self-concept's sensitivity to
important self-relevant events? As suggested earlier, variations
in the contents of the working self-concept are likely to have
powerful consequences for temporary self-esteem, for mood,
and for the immediately consequent thoughts and actions.
There is a large volume of research indicating that individuals
4
Because we were concerned with judgments of similarity, we in-
cluded only latencies of responses indicating similarity (i.e., ratings of
4, 5, and 6). Only subjects who felt similar to at least one in-group and
at least one out-group were included.
 STABILITY AND MALLEABILITY OF THE SELF-CONCEPT
are heavily influenced in their self-evaluations, judgments,
memory, and behavior by their currently accessible pool of
thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs (Higgins & King, 1981; Nisbett
& Ross, 1980; Sherman, Skov, Hervitz, & Stock, 1981; Snyder,
1982). If the totalitarian ego (Greenwald, 1980) was completely
powerful and self-serving biases thoroughly pervasive, most in-
dividuals would enjoy more freedom from worry, sadness, anxi-
ety, guilt, and embarrassment. Yet, because the working self-
concept is quite responsive to the social environment, these re-
actions are common.
The malleability observed in this study resulted from a
change in the accessibility of particular self-conceptions. Indi-
viduals tuned in self-conceptions in response to the challenging
self-relevant information, and thus the working self-concept
was different from what it was before the uniqueness-common-
ness manipulation. We can, however, inquire about a different
question of malleability; that is, whether the manipulation pro-
duced changes not just in the relative accessibility of self-con-
ceptions but also in the content of self-conceptions. Although
the current study did not address this second type of malleabil-
ity, it appears that individuals were bothered by the manipula-
tion, and it is likely that they modified their self-conceptions to
some extent. At the minimum, it can be assumed that each time
a particular conception of the self is activated, it will change,
however slightly, by the conditions and circumstances of the
processing. Moreover, these subjects have some new self-con-
ceptions to add to their universe. Those in the unique condition,
for example, now have a conception of themselves as quite pe-
culiar and uncommon in many of their preferences. Even if this
self-conception was later undermined by the experimental de-
briefing that revealed the rigged nature of the information, a
conception of what could be possible was created for the subject
(see Markus & Nurius, in press). Such changes were, of course,
subtle and unlikely to cause a major revision of the self-concept,
yet they may constitute the process by which the self-concept
changes progressively as it incorporates new conceptions of the
self. If situations repeatedly arise that require the individual to
activate self-conceptions that are at variance with certain core
self-conceptions, we can imagine that these core conceptions,
too, would eventually change.
The findings of this study are consistent with the developing
view that the self-concept should not be viewed as a monolithic
entity or even as a generalized average sense of the self that is
carried around from one situation to another. Instead, the self-
concept is more productively viewed as a space (McGuire &
McGuire, 1982; Markus & Wurf, in press), a confederation
(Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984), or a system (Martindale, 1980)
of self-conceptions. From this set of self-conceptions, the indi-
vidual constructs a working self-concept that integrates the core
self-conceptions with those elicited by the immediate context.
In this sense, the self-concept becomes similar to that suggested
by the symbolic interactionists. Thus, for Mead (1934) there
was no fixed self-concept, only the current self-concept that was
negotiated from the available set of self-conceptions.
The findings of the responsivity of the self-concept presented
in this article do not contradict the possibility that the self re-
sists modification or change, or that it selectively distorts reality
to maintain a positive view. Indeed, those individuals who
found themselves uncomfortably unique were struggling to as-
865
sert their similarity to others and vice versa. Yet these data ques-
tion the nature of this stability and how this stability is achieved.
The general conclusion here is that the considerable stability
accorded the self-concept may, in fact, mask significant mallea-
bility or fluidity that results as individuals respond to the view
of the self communicated by the situation. A challenging event
appears to initiate a process whereby the individual evaluates
the information and then responds by attempting to integrate
the self-conceptions offered by the environment with existing
self-conceptions. In this sense, the working self-concept can be
viewed as quite situation dependent.
The malleability of the self-concept revealed in this article
suggests a need for measures of the self-concept that have the
capacity to reveal the entire range of behavior involved in self-
categorization, self-definition, or in the creation of an identity
for one's self. Measures that assume the self to be a static struc-
ture and require individuals to respond to very general descrip-
tions about the self or to simply label one's self are often not
adequate for revealing how the individual adjusts and calibrates
the working self-concept in response to the social situation.
Measures of latency and confidence of self-description, indica-
tions of social comparison efforts, evaluations of others, mea-
sures of anticipated consensus with others, or predictions of the
evaluation of others, for example, all have the potential to re-
flect the momentary fluctuations in the availability and organi-
zation of self-conceptions that accompany self-relevant changes
in the social environment. For the most part, measures of the
self-concept have been unnecessarily constrained and may have
concealed its diversity and flexibility.
Finally, these findings imply that if we assume the self-con-
cept to be a significant regulator of behavior, it should be ex-
plored while the individual is engaged in a particular social situ-
ation or responding to a task or an objective, a position that has
been argued repeatedly by Gergen (1967b, 1977). Measures of
the self-concept in completely unframed, unstructured circum-
stances may be useful for some general diagnostic purposes, but
they are unlikely to elicit the type of working self-concepts that
are elicited in particular social situations and that mediate on-
going behavior. Placing the individual within a particular con-
text reveals how the self-concept, although resisting challenge
and disconfirmation, varies with the prevailing social situation
and how it depends on the social context for its particular mani-
festation and expression.
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