 I'll get a May 40 here. So Elliot Blatt in my last stream was encouraged me to stop stop self-flagellating So I looked up self-flagellation online and all the results were for like whipping yourself so then I put in emotional self-flagellation and then About the first thing that came up Was a link about self verification theory And essentially it says that we feel better when We get other people to see us the way that we view ourselves so Why have I been at ease over the course of my life with so many abusive bosses like abusive girlfriends? because they gave me The feedback they saw me the same way that that I view myself So when I was talking to a friend about the way my boss would operate He said you know I wouldn't I wouldn't last you know a minute in that sort of situation I would just walk out so I noticed with my friends with good solid self-esteem That they would never put out with the kind of abuse that I've typically put up with so Why have I had this this lifetime of putting out with abuse? But I guess I developed you know quite a negative self-image when I was a child So I think this is really interesting 70% of people supposedly have a positive view of themselves and Then about 30% of the population has a negative view of itself So I would suspect that the 70% of the largely normal people and the 30% are the addicts All right, so it's a member of five different torst out programs. I can certainly identify with the addicts so it provides us with a sense of coherence and comfort when We can get other people to see us the way we view ourselves now for 70% of people. That's a good thing That's positive, but for a third of us That's bad because we essentially seek out people to to verify our negative view of ourselves, so There's theory posits that people prefer to be seen as Themselves the same way they see themselves even if their self-views are negative so people act According to the preference for evaluations that verify their self-views So they work to ensure that their experiences confirm and reinforce their self-views. This is why it's so hard to change because we have these these deeply held beliefs about ourselves and We seek out experiences and we seek out people who will verify our own views of ourselves So people who see themselves as likable Seek out and embrace others who view them as likable those who see themselves as Dislikeable seek out and embrace others who evaluate them negatively So self verification theory is Based on the premise that we have a very powerful desire to confirm and thus stabilize our firmly held self-views Because this provides coherence like we understand how the world works if we can get Experiences and feedback that verifies our own Perspectives on ourself because that way it's like oh, I'm not lying. I'm not living in delusion at least I'm seeing myself Accurately even if it's negative So I probably had a most of my life Seeing myself negatively and thus I would seek out often people who would confirm that that point of view so People are motivated to maintain their own view of themselves because this provides them with comfort and the feeling that they Are in reality that they're seeing themselves accurately so Our self-views organize our efforts to maximize coherence We want coherence. We want to believe that we make sense the world makes sense their interactions make sense and so we tend to attribute you know all sorts of meaning and purpose and coherence and planning and Connection to events where there is no such qualities. All right, the world is incredibly wild chaotic and dangerous But most of us would go nuts if we accepted the reality of the world. So we tell ourselves stories To try to comfort ourselves So apparently self verification theory developed after World War two And I love this. I mean, this is this is great I'm so excited about this because it seems so true our our own views of ourselves are incredibly powerful And we seek out people we seek out experiences We seek out situations and we seek out groups and we seek out jobs We seek out social activities and we seek out parties that reinforce our own view of ourselves So you'll see certain people with a negative view of themselves. They seek out failure again and again and again So we try to bring into social reality Harmony with our own internal view of ourselves We we tend to have long-standing beliefs about ourself Hey, I'm a good speaker. I'm a good singer. I'm a good worker. I'm a good friend And then we try to seek out situations and people who will verify our own self-views Why do we develop self-views in the first place? Because we observe how other people treat us And then people become more and more certain of their self-use is they acquire more and more evidence So for example in second grade, I wrote wrote something. We had a class assignment we were sitting on a bridge looking at these logs in the stream and I wrote a few sentences about looking at these logs in the stream and my words had such an impact on people They immediately got the sense that I have writing abilities so then I'd seek out more and more situations where I could display my writing abilities because It felt really good and I came to see myself as a writer And so you see yourself as an athlete or as a good worker or an entrepreneur You'll seek out situations where you can get that self-perception validated So once we get a little bit of evidence We usually tend to develop firmly held self-views and this enables us to make predictions about our life our world our place in the world and These self-views and these predictions guide our behavior. They make sense of continuity place and coherence So stable self-views serve a pragmatic function. They stabilize our social relations and They also serve an epistemic function epistemology refers to how do we know what we know? right, so Our self-views affirm our sense that things are as they should be the world is just how it should be so our self-views are the foundation of our Knowledge of the world right? You're not going to trust your knowledge of the world if you can't trust your views of yourself so people strive for self-verification and When we can't Verify our own views of ourselves. It causes us to question our own ability to discern reality So by mid childhood so by about age seven children Display a preference for evaluations that confirm and stabilize their self-view whether their self-view is positive or negative 70% of people have a positive self-view and 30% of people the addicts have a negative self-view So when adults praise children with low self-esteem It can often backfire because it lowers these children's self-worth In the view of setbacks it causes them to question if they're seeing themselves accurately So a stable self-view is usually essential to our functioning And those who don't have a stable self-view tend to be seriously impaired So Oliver Sacks the neurologist he wrote about a man patient William Thompson who was a chronic alcoholic And suffered from tremendous memory loss so profound that he forgot who he was And he desperately attempted to recover his previous identity So he sometimes developed hypotheses about who he was and then he'd test these hypotheses on those who happen to be present I think all of us do this to some extent we develop hypotheses about who we are and then we test them out on people So he was doomed to enact these tests repeatedly for the remainder of his life So if you don't have a stable self-view You are wrecked But if you have a negative self-view you're in deep trouble as well So because he didn't Didn't have a strong sense of self because this guy Had a sense of self that kept disappearing. He did not know how to act towards other people So his inability to obtain self verification then deprived him of a capacity to have meaningful interactions with others Right, you can't have meaningful interactions with others unless you're at ease with knowing who you are so That's why we can't help but develop strategies To elicit support for our own views of ourself So you'll notice that some people are very needy and pretty much everyone either subtly or obviously Is trying to elicit from you and from life verification That they see themselves accurately So people conduct self verifying opportunity structures So they seek out social environments that satisfy their needs So they seek and enter into relationships in which they are going to experience confirmation of their own self view So if you hate yourself, you'll seek out relationships where You are hated, right? So abused women, right? They're seeking out relationships where they're treated badly because their self view is that they deserve to be beaten Now you have a view that you deserve to be beaten You're going to seek out this kind of relationships and a lot of women who get into abusive relationships It's not just one they get into more and more and more. I've been in a string of abusive employer relationships Not in the last few years, but prior to that because those abusive employer relationships would replay the most intense emotional experiences of my childhood So people will tend to leave relationships where they don't receive self verification Right, we seek out friends who feed back to us our view of ourselves Whether it's positive or negative So then we use a second self verification strategy The systemic communication of our own self view to others. So we let people know. Hey, I'm a good writer I'm a good worker. I'm a good singer. I'm a good athlete. I'm a good lover All right, uh, I'm Jewish. So people display identity cues. They may wear a yarmulke They may wear a cross people display identity cues highly visible signs and symbols of who they are So physical appearances are an important type of identity cue So the clothes we wear Advertise numerous self-use including one's political leanings income level religious convictions and so on Then we also communicate our identities through our actions So depressed college students are more likely to solicit unfavorable feedback from their roommates than non-depressed students So when they solicit negative feedback They get it and the more negative feedback they solicit You know, the more likely their roommates are to think negatively of them and Convince them to make plans to find another roommate at the end of the semester Now what happens if people's efforts to obtain self verification evaluations fail? Well, people will usually still cling to their self view And They will then employ another strategy of self verification that is seeing non-existent evidence So I'm often surprised. How does someone see themselves, you know, so inaccurately And people aren't getting the self verification that they want from others. And so they persist in their own views And they start seeing Non-existent evidence All right, it's like people who are so desperate for meaning they believe in crazy conspiracy theories or religions or courts or superstitions right So people with this positive self view spend longer Examining evaluations that they expect to be positive people with negative self use spend longer scrutinizing evaluations that they expect to be negative People who see themselves positively more likely to remember praise People who see themselves negatively are more likely to remember criticism. Oh man. What's up, bro? I haven't talked to you for ages Coming at you live from Tannum Sands Australia right now. I just learned about self verification theory I think it's amazing because you'll see people who hate themselves and they might May encounter some good luck or some good things their way, but they will find ways to sabotage it Then other people have a positive self view no matter the difficulties they face They plow through them and keep going so People tend to interpret information in ways that reinforce their self views So people with low self-esteem Perceive their partner's feelings toward them as being more negative than they actually are People with positive self-esteem tend to regard their partners feelings toward them as more positive than they really are so attentional encoding retrieval and interpretation processes Stabilize our self-use. They allow us to see ourselves and the world Is offering far more confirmation of our own views than actually exists So people can't can't live without meaning and a sense of coherence. And so they They invent meaning and they read meaning into The world where it's not really there So we essentially create channels for information processing that reinforces our self view So people with positive self views prefer to interact with those who evaluate them positively People with negative self views prefer to interact with those who evaluate them negatively Yeah, so for much of my life I would often rather interact with people who viewed me negatively because I thought they were more honest So when given an option of being an environment Where you're going to get negative feedback Versus neutral people with low self-esteem prefer the negative feedback So both men and women and children and teenagers employ all these self-verification qualities And we employ self verification even with regard to qualities of ourselves that are easily changed and Regardless of whether the qualities in question are specific such as intelligence, sociability or dominance or global self-esteem and depression So people are particularly likely to seek self-verifying Vervifying evaluations if their self-views are confidently held Important or extreme people with negative self views have a clear tendency to seek and embrace negative rather than positive romantic partners I remember I had one I've dated a lot of women whose fathers were were sex addicts And so I'd go into a room and I'd find the women whose father was a sex addict And you know, they had a certain view of men that I would then embody and that was familiar to them because That's how their father was so Have you ever dated a woman with you know, low self-esteem then I dated one woman like that and I found for the first and only time in my life I just started yelling at her. I've never been someone who's yelled at his girlfriends, but there was one girlfriend I had 2006 2007 I found myself yelling at because It was as though she just kind of invited the abuse And I didn't like myself for it So when you put a stop to anyone abusing you not only will that protect you but it protects other people from their worst selves So people with a negative self view will seek out and embrace Romantic partners who see them negatively people with a positive self view React to positive evaluations from their spouses People with negative self views display the opposite reaction the more favorable their spouses were the less committed they were So if you have a positive self view and your spouse is positive towards you that makes you more committed to the relationship If you have a negative self view and your spouse is a positive View of you then that will make you less committed to the relationship because you're not getting the coherence And the feedback and the self verification that you yearn for So self verification theory predicts a variety of outcomes At the individual interpersonal and social level So approximately 70 percent of people have positive self views So self verification brings stability to people's lives that renders their experiences more coherent orderly and comprehensible Success in acquiring self verifying evaluations brings with it important psychological benefits To the extent that people get self verification their relationships tend to be more predictable and manageable So that helps them to not only achieve their relationship goals such as raising children coordinating careers It's also psychologically comforting and reduces anxiety. So when you're not getting your self verification Your anxiety goes up and your sense that the world is a chaotic and dangerous place goes up The people with negative self views The fruits of self verification strivings are sometimes adaptive and sometimes not So when your negative self view accurately reflects immutable personal limitations So seeking verification of your negative self view can be adaptive Because it satisfies your need for coherence and makes you feel understood, right? We all want to be Understood But when negative self views are not grounded in reality That leads us to find people who will You know be really mean to us That makes us seek out unhealthy relationships to Validate our negative self views So people with inappropriately negative self views more receptive to social support that validates their negative feelings They're less receptive to social support that could rescue them So we're talking, you know abused women here would be a classic example And groups benefit from self verification striving. So if you're Jewish and people regard Jews as smart Then you're going to naturally incline to thinking yeah, yeah, I'm smart. My group is smart Or if people regard your group as criminally inclined or violent Then that makes it easier for you to Act in a way that you get that self verification. Hey, I'm trying to do a live stream here Come on these bloody birds. I'm trying to share, you know, great wisdom with you about self verification theory And these birds just went shut up These birds start going at about 3 30 a.m. All right Because they don't have daylight savings time here in here in australia So can you try to keep it down? Man trying to provide the high quality social science here Okay, self verification theory. I find this absolutely fascinating So self verification particularly useful for small groups Composed of people from diverse backgrounds, right? This is how we can work with diversity So out of a fear of being misunderstood members of diverse groups You'd be careful to avoid expressing controversial ideas Self verification reduces this fear by convincing them that they are understood And they open up to their co-workers which leads them to express upbeat ideas that lead to problem solving And listening negative about self verifying evaluations may help keep anxiety at bay So if I feel like I'm badly dressed for an event or I've got bad breath or You know, I'm in pain or I'm just not feeling very sociable and I can get someone to validate my self view Then that reduces anxiety When people with negative self views receive positive feedback, they feel physiologically threatened They feel distressed and they want to avoid contact and they receive negative feedback And they have a negative self view They are galvanized because it confirms their understanding of how the world works It produces a feeling of coherence and harmony And then the opposite patterns emerge for people with positive views So self verification processes are adaptive for larger groups and for larger society Now generally speaking self verification is good for people It produces feelings of coherence, it reduces anxiety, improves group functioning But for people who have inappropriately negative self views Self verification towards positive change Makes your life situation much more difficult than it would be otherwise So we tend to prefer self confirming evaluations So people who see themselves as disorganized or see themselves as unintelligent Prefer evidence that other people will perceive them as such So I want you to feel to see me as smart And I'd like you to see me as happy and I'd like you to see me as a good guy But kind of underneath that there's all those decades where I had this negative self image Or this fear that I was a really bad person And that can come bubbling out if I'm not doing my 12-step recovery work on a daily basis Okay, we all possess flaws and weaknesses And so we all have somewhat negative self views that correspond to these flaws and weaknesses So people who lack some abilities such as those who are turned deaf or color blind They will have numerous reasons for bringing others to recognize their shortcomings So often you'll notice people want you to verify and recognize their shortcomings Self verification strivings can have really bad consequences when people have inappropriately negative self views Such as I am worthless Or I am fat. I am unintelligent I am inarticulate All right people with those views will then seek out that kind of negative feedback And such people then gravitate towards harsh and abusive partners And people who seek therapy For their psychological distress In such relationships They will return home to a self-verifying partner who will very likely undo the progress That the person made in the therapist's office The workplace may offer little solace for feelings of worthlessness and people with low self-esteem They make them ambivalent about receiving fair treatment Ambivalence that may undercut their propensity to insist that they get what they deserve from their employers People with negative self-use when they receive positive information It may produce debilitation because it means that the world does not cohere So positive life events have a positive effect on people who have positive self-esteem On people who have positive self-esteem they have a negative effect frequently on people with a negative self-view So it increases the health of those with the positive self-view and it reduces the health for people with low self-esteem so the strongest rival theory to self-verification theory is self enhancement theory Which uh holds that we do everything we can to enhance our lives So maybe self enhancement theory and self verification theory are sequential processes So maybe our immediate responses more likely to be self enhancing Or considered responses are more likely to be self verifying. So self enhancement strivings require only one step Upon classifying the evaluation people embrace positive evaluations reject negative ones But self verification strivings logically require at least two steps After classifying an evaluation it must be compared to the self view For only then can the person discriminate verifying evaluations from non verifying ones So if you deprive people of cognitive resources While they choose an interaction partner That could interfere with their ability to access their self concept and lock self verification from unfolding So self enhancement theory Says people are motivated to obtain maintain and increase positive self regard So when you look at people's social judgments attributions or overt behaviors There's a widespread tendency for people to favor themselves over others And traces of a preference for positivity emerge at a very young age So research on self verification You've got one approach that focuses on trade-offs between self verification and other motives such as positivity Particularly in close relationships. So how do people create and sustain idiosyncratic social worlds? that Don't cohere with the words that they have created outside their relationship So we often live in many different little worlds We have one life with our romantic partner one life at work one life with one friend one life with one social group So how do people compartmentalize their identities and navigate between social worlds in which they have negotiated completely distinct identities? So I have one Identity in orthodox Jewish life and that's as an orthodox Jew and I have other identities in other worlds So how does self verification unfold in a world that is not only outside of a given relationship but outside a given lifetime So how do we want to be perceived after we die? Most people want to be remembered as they were Then there's another current direction of research How do we improve people's self-esteem? Because self verification on the part of those with low self-esteem Can then lead them to seek out negative feedback which then reinforces that low self-esteem in a cyclical process So simple-minded approaches to this problem not only fail to work. They may backfire So repeating positive self affirmations makes people with high self-esteem feel better But makes those with low self-esteem feel worse Then messages that are disjunctive that don't cohere with one's experience and representation of reality will tend to be perplexing And disturbing and unsettling so these affirmations these Positive self affirmations are not an effective strategy for raising self-esteem Among those who need it most those with low self-esteem So a potential solution may be to cyborg tenuously verify a person's perception of themselves Okay, I know I have low self-esteem and I know I have some negative qualities But I also have many positive qualities All right, so encourage the development of more positive self-use in the future So we could reframe compliments from a partner In a more abstract way that encourages the individual with low self-esteem to reflect on the meaning and significance of that compliment So that could encourage people with low self-esteem to feel more positively about themselves and their relationships So self verification theory is absolutely fascinating Because we create words that verify Our own view of ourselves and of the world Right, we we choose News outlets that verify our view of the world. We choose live streamers who verify our view of the world We choose religious communities that verify our view of the world. We choose bosses and workplaces And and social groups that verify our view of the world right We tend not to be terribly open to reality instead We want reality to reinforce the patterns that we have for reality So the outside world is a chaotic frequently dangerous place and this is scary so we impose patterns and ideologies and rules and laws for how the world works But it's just not there in reality But we impose On the outside world patterns that we hold very dear in our inner world And then we seek for the outside world and other people and other situations to continually reinforce the way that we view ourselves