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LEVEL OF ABSTRACTION AND SELF-UNDERSTANDING

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Date Issued:
1987
Summary:
The affects of level of abstraction on self-description inventories were investigated in this study. Seventy-five subjects were administered self-description inventories which assessed their overall standing on ten high level, abstract descriptors and ten low level, concrete descriptors. Subjects also indicated how much variability, certainty, and importance they associated with their responses. Results indicated that high level agents make judgments with more certainty than low level agents. Additionally, certainty and importance were unrelated thus indicating different aspects of self-understanding. Variability was negatively correlated with certainty yet positively correlated with the importance measure. This suggests that the notion of the self as a stable entity, as postulated by traditional self-concept theories, may be in error. It was advanced that variability be investigated as a flexible, adaptive aspect of self-understanding.
Title: LEVEL OF ABSTRACTION AND SELF-UNDERSTANDING.
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Name(s): COHEN, JOYCE.
Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Issuance: monographic
Date Issued: 1987
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 48 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: The affects of level of abstraction on self-description inventories were investigated in this study. Seventy-five subjects were administered self-description inventories which assessed their overall standing on ten high level, abstract descriptors and ten low level, concrete descriptors. Subjects also indicated how much variability, certainty, and importance they associated with their responses. Results indicated that high level agents make judgments with more certainty than low level agents. Additionally, certainty and importance were unrelated thus indicating different aspects of self-understanding. Variability was negatively correlated with certainty yet positively correlated with the importance measure. This suggests that the notion of the self as a stable entity, as postulated by traditional self-concept theories, may be in error. It was advanced that variability be investigated as a flexible, adaptive aspect of self-understanding.
Identifier: 14409 (digitool), FADT14409 (IID), fau:11210 (fedora)
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1987.
Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
Subject(s): Abstraction
Self-perception
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14409
Sublocation: Digital Library
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.