Reasserting the Self: Blocking Self-verifying Behavior Triggers Compensatory Self-verification

Previous research has demonstrated that when people receive self-discrepant feedback from their interaction partners, they respond by engaging in compensatory self-verification. We sought to extend this work by determining if merely preventing people from behaving in a self-verifying manner would trigger compensatory selfverification. Consistent with this possibility, when deprived of the opportunity to demonstrate their assertiveness, participants who perceived themselves as assertive subsequently compensated by displaying increased assertiveness in a subsequent interaction. In addition, self-perceived unassertive participants reported negative affect when forced to act in an assertive manner. Evidence that these effects were predicted by a measure of identity but not a measure of behavioral propensity diminished the plausibility of rival accounts such as ego depletion. We conclude that compensatory self-verification emerges even when people’s self-views are indirectly challenged by depriving them of the opportunity to self-verify.