Deficits in individuals’ self-views have been linked to multiple negative psychological outcomes. Although self-views are important for understanding psychopathology, they are not sufficient. Specifically, they fail to capture how individuals’ actions are influenced by their values. We propose a new construct, ego fidelity, to refer to a disposition toward oneself, others, and situations that draws on internal values as a source of motivation. The purpose of the present research is to distinguish ego fidelity from self-esteem and self-efficacy. This research also aims to examine the incremental predictive utility of ego fidelity for understanding why individuals act the way they do in uncertain situations, and to identify features of psychopathology that ego fidelity may help to explain above and beyond related constructs. These goals were achieved across five studies intended to: (1) distinguish ego fidelity from self-esteem and self-efficacy, as well as identify personality factors related to ego fidelity; (2) examine connections between ego fidelity and why individuals act the way they do in uncertain situations; and (3) identify features of psychopathology that ego fidelity may help to explain above and beyond self-esteem or self-efficacy. Finally, the present research aims to validate two measures of the ego fidelity, the Ego Fidelity Scale and the Ego Fidelity Interview. Ego fidelity was found to have some predictive utility above and beyond self-esteem and self-efficacy for certain personality features and traits related to psychopathology (e.g., social anxiety), though further refinement of the measures developed and presented as a result of this research will be necessary to improve of understanding of the relations between these constructs.
Ego Fidelity, Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign