Self-verification theory

Self-verification is a social psychological theory that asserts people want to be known and understood by others according to their firmly held beliefs and feelings about themselves, that is self-views (i.e. self-concepts and self-esteem). A competing theory to self-verification is self-enhancement or the drive for positive evaluations.

Because chronic self-concepts and self-esteem play an important role in understanding the world, providing a sense of coherence, and guiding action, people become motivated to maintain them through self-verification strivings. Such strivings provide stability to people’s lives, making their experiences more coherent, orderly, and comprehensible than they would be otherwise. Self-verification processes are also adaptive for groups, groups of diverse backgrounds and the larger society, in that they make people predictable to one another thus serve to facilitate social interaction. (Swann , Milton & Polzer 2000, p. 79, 238-250) To this end, people engage in a variety of activities that are designed to obtain self-verifying information.

Developed by William Swann (1983), the theory grew out of earlier writings which held that people form self-views so that they can understand and predict the responses of others and know how to act toward them (see Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934).

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