Egonomics: Self-Confidence, Motivation, and Self-Presentation in Social and Economic Interactions

经济经济学：社会和经济互动中的自信、动机和自我表现

• 批准号: 0096431
• 负责人: Roland Benabou
• 金额: $ 17.43万
• 依托单位: Princeton University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-04-01 至 2004-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0096431&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Egonomics; Self; Confidence; Motivation; Presentation

The maintenance and enhancement of self-esteem has long been identified as a fundamental humanconcern, playing a critical role in motivation, affect, and social interactions. This project brings the issueof self-knowledge into the realm of economic analysis, and shows that this has important implications forhow agents process information and make decisions in areas as diverse as education, investment, contractsand bargaining, or family and workplace relations. Conversely, the tools of economic modelling can helpunderstand that a number of puzzling facts and behaviors documented by psychologists are often quiterational, and determine when these strategies are effective and when they backfire.The first premise of the model is that people have imperfect knowledge of their own abilities and otherenduring characteristics, and constantly learn about them from experience and interactions with others.The second premise is that these self-perceptions affect the individual's incentives to undertake or perseverein a variety of tasks; in most activities, a higher self-confidence in one's ability or willpower enhances themotivation to act. This, in turn, generates a motive for the manipulation of the individual's self-image,both by himself and by others. First, an individual suffering from a bias towards instant gratification (timeinconsistency) has a vested interest in enhancing and protecting his self-confidence, so as to counter his owntendency to give up too easily (procrastinate, succumb to short-term temptations, etc.). Alternatively, themanipulator can be another person (parent, teacher, spouse, friend, colleague, manager) who is eager tosee the individual persevere and succeed in the task at hand.The first part of the project focuses on individual behavior and beliefs, explaining in particular whypeople value self-confidence, and how this concern affects their cognitive and decision-making processes.It helps account for why rational individuals often choose to remain ignorant about their own abilities, or"blind" to important signals from their environment; and why they sometimes deliberately impair theirown performance or choose overambitious tasks where they are doomed to fail (self-handicapping). Anothercentral focus of the research is the phenomenon of selective memory or awareness, that is, people'stendency to remember ego-enhancing information more than ego-threatening ones (e.g., successes morethan failures). In turn, this helps account for the widely documented fact that most people have overoptimistic assessments of themselves (self-serving beliefs). A formal welfare analysis then allows us to evaluate whether such "positive thinking" and similar forms of self-deception are really helpful to the individual, or whether it is ultimately better to always "be honest with yourself". The project also sheds light on why people sometimes attempt to lower their own self-confidence.The second part of the project extends the analysis to imperfect knowledge of one's strength or weaknessof will. This allows us to understand how the personal rules that people set for themselves (diet, exerciseregimen, moral code etc.) can be self-enforcing, and help them control their impulses. It can also explainthe "precedent-setting" role of lapses in adherence to a rule, and how the fear of subsequently "losing faithin oneself" helps the individual achieve self-discipline. Another issue addressed is how the self-monitoringwhich underlies the effectiveness of rules is undermined by opportunistic distortions of memory and excuse-making. Last but not least, the model helps account for the occurrence of excessively "legalistic" ruleswhich result in compulsive behavior, such as miserliness, workaholism, or anorexia.The third part of the project turns to interpersonal settings and contractual relationships. First, itprovides a formal economic analysis of the conflict between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation emphasizedby a large literature in psychology and sociology. It shows in particular that rewards for performanceoffered by a principal (manager, parent) can indeed have, through their impact on the self-image of theagent (worker, child), or his perception of the task, "hidden costs" which make them only weak reinforcersof the desired behavior in the short run, and negative reinforcers once they are withdrawn. The model alsosheds light on when it is actually the case that empowering an agent increases his motivation and effort,while closely monitoring his performance has the reverse effect. Another puzzle is that while boostingothers' self-esteem is a pervasive phenomenon, people also often criticize or downplay the achievements oftheir spouse, child, colleague and other partners on whose effort they depend. The project analyzes suchego-bashing as reflecting battles for dominance (real authority) within the relationship. Finally, it studiessituations where the agent has private information and engages in variety of self-presentation strategiessuch as pleas for leniency, self-deprecation, excuse-making, self-promotion, intimidation, ingratiation, andthe like.

长期以来，自尊的维持和增强一直被认为是一个基本的人类问题，在动机，影响和社会交往中发挥着关键作用。该项目将自我认识的问题带入经济分析领域，并表明这对代理人如何处理信息并在教育，投资，合同和谈判，或家庭和工作场所关系等不同领域做出决策具有重要意义。相反，经济模型的工具可以帮助理解心理学家记录的一些令人困惑的事实和行为往往是相当理性的，并确定这些策略何时有效，何时适得其反。模型的第一个前提是人们对自己的能力和其他特征的认识是不完善的，第二个前提是，这些自我感知影响个体承担或坚持各种任务的动机;在大多数活动中，对自己能力或意志力的高度自信会增强行动的动力。这反过来又产生了一种操纵个人自我形象的动机，无论是他自己还是他人。第一，一个对即时满足（时间不一致）有偏见的人有一个既得利益，那就是增强和保护他的自信，以对抗他自己过于容易放弃的倾向（拖延，屈服于短期诱惑等）。或者，操纵者可以是另一个人（父母、老师、配偶、朋友、同事、经理）渴望看到个人坚持并成功完成手头的任务。项目的第一部分侧重于个人的行为和信念，特别解释为什么人们重视自信，以及这种担忧如何影响他们的认知和决策制定流程。它有助于解释为什么理性的人经常选择对自己的能力保持无知，或者对来自环境的重要信号“视而不见”;以及为什么他们有时故意损害自己的表现或选择过于雄心勃勃的任务，他们注定要失败（自我妨碍）。研究的另一个中心焦点是选择性记忆或意识现象，即人们倾向于记住自我增强的信息而不是自我威胁的信息（例如，成功多于失败）。反过来，这有助于解释一个被广泛记录的事实，即大多数人对自己的评估过于乐观（自私的信念）。一个正式的福利分析，然后让我们评估这种“积极的思考”和类似形式的自我欺骗是否真的对个人有帮助，或者它是否最终更好地始终“对自己诚实”。该项目还揭示了为什么人们有时会试图降低自己的自信心。该项目的第二部分将分析扩展到对一个人的意志力的强弱的不完全认识。这使我们能够理解人们为自己制定的个人规则（饮食，锻炼，道德准则等）。可以自我控制，帮助他们控制冲动。它还可以解释在遵守规则方面的失误的“先例设定”作用，以及对随后“失去信心”的恐惧如何帮助个人实现自律。另一个涉及的问题是，作为规则效力基础的自我监督是如何被机会主义的记忆扭曲和制造借口所破坏的。最后但并非最不重要的是，该模型有助于解释过度的“法律主义”规则的发生，这些规则导致了强迫性行为，如吝啬、工作狂或厌食症。首先，它提供了一个正式的经济学分析的冲突之间的外在和内在的动机所强调的大量文献在心理学和社会学。它特别表明，由委托人（经理，父母）提供的绩效奖励确实可以通过影响代理人（工人，孩子）的自我形象或他对任务的感知而产生“隐藏成本”，这使得他们在短期内只是期望行为的弱支持者，一旦他们退出，就会产生负面影响。该模型还揭示了实际情况，即授权代理人增加了他的动机和努力，而密切监视他的表现则产生了相反的效果。另一个令人困惑的问题是，虽然增强他人的自尊是一种普遍现象，但人们也经常批评或贬低他们的配偶、孩子、同事和其他伴侣的成就，他们的努力依赖于这些人的努力。该项目分析了这种抨击反映了关系中的主导权（真实的权威）之争。最后，它研究的情况下，代理人有私人信息，并从事各种自我介绍的strategies，如恳求宽大处理，自我贬低，借口，自我推销，恐吓，讨好，等等。