Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIII. Humanistic/Existential
Theories- Rogers:
Person−Centered Theory
(^340) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
one experiences various forms of mental discomfort, such as anxiety, depression, and
low self-esteem.
In the 1980s, E. Tory Higgins developed a version of Rogers’s theory that con-
tinues to be influential in personality and social psychological research. Higgins’s
version of the theory is called self-discrepancy theory and argues not only for the real
self–ideal self discrepancy but also for real self–ought self discrepancy (Higgins,
1987). One difference between Rogers and Higgins is the more specific nature of
Higgins’s theory. By proposing at least two distinct forms of discrepancy, he pre-
dicted distinct negative outcomes from each. For instance, real-ideal discrepancy
should lead to dejection-related emotions (e.g., depression, sadness, disappoint-
ment), whereas real-ought discrepancy should lead to agitation-related emotions
(e.g., anxiety, fear, threat). Although more specific, Higgins’s theory nonetheless has
essentially the same form and assumptions of Rogers’s theory: Individuals with high
levels of self-discrepancy are most likely to experience high levels of negative affect
in their lives, such as anxiety and depression.
Higgins’s theory has garnered much empirical attention since the mid-1980s.
Some of the recent research has sought to clarify the conditions under which self-
discrepancies predict emotional experience (Phillips & Silvia, 2005). For example,
Ann Phillips and Paul Silvia predicted that the negative emotion experienced from
either real-ideal or real-ought discrepancies would be most extreme when people are
more self-focused or self-aware. Being in a state of self-focus not only makes one
more aware of his or her self-relevant traits, but also makes a person more likely to
detect discrepancies and therefore be more interested in being congruent.
To test their prediction, Phillips and Silvia brought participants into a lab and
induced self-awareness in half of the participants by having them complete ques-
tionnaires about self-discrepancies and mood in front of a mirror. The other half of
the sample completed the same questionnaires but while sitting at a normal desk
without a mirror present. For obvious reasons, if you are answering questions about
yourself while looking at yourself in a mirror, you are more likely to be self-aware.
As predicted, the phenomenon of experiencing negative emotion as a result of self-
discrepancies occurred only among those participants who were highly self-aware
(i.e., those who completed the questionnaires in front of the mirror).
In other research involving Higgins’s self-discrepancy theory, researchers have
applied the theory to health-related variables such as alcohol consumption (Wolfe &
Maisto, 2000), eating disorders (Veale, Kinderman, Riley, & Lambrou, 2003), and
mental health in general (Liao & Fan, 2003). For instance, Wendy Wolfe and Stephen
Maisto (2000) tested the prediction that higher real-ideal self-discrepancy would be
related to greater alcohol consumption in a sample of university students. Wolfe and
Maisto reasoned that people who have large real-ideal self-discrepancies look to re-
lieve their negative affective states (anxiety, depression) by turning to alcohol. As was
the case in the research by Phillips and Silvia on self-awareness and self-discrepancy,
the researchers also reasoned that this effect should be even stronger on those di-
mensions of self-concept that are particularly important and salient to the individual.
In other words, they believed both the magnitude of the discrepancy and the salience
of the discrepancy (i.e., self-awareness) should be related to alcohol consumption.
To test their prediction, Wolfe and Maisto studied university students who
were moderate drinkers. In an experimental design, they assigned half the students
334 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories