Self-enhancement

Self-enhancement is a type of motivation that works to make people feel good about themselves and to maintain self-esteem.^[1] This motive becomes especially prominent in situations of threat, failure or blows to one's self-esteem.^[2][3][4] Self-enhancement involves a preference for positive over negative self-views.^[5] It is one of the three self-evaluation motives along with self-assessment (the drive for an accurate self-concept) and self-verification (the drive for a self-concept congruent with one's identity). Self-evaluation motives drive the process of self-regulation, that is, how people control and direct their own actions.

There are a variety of strategies that people can use to enhance their sense of personal worth. For example, they can downplay skills that they lack or they can criticise others to seem better by comparison. These strategies are successful, in that people tend to think of themselves as having more positive qualities and fewer negative qualities than others.^[6] Although self-enhancement is seen in people with low self-esteem as well as with high self-esteem, these two groups tend to use different strategies. People who already have high esteem enhance their self-concept directly, by processing new information in a biased way. People with low self-esteem use more indirect strategies, for example by avoiding situations in which their negative qualities will be noticeable.^[7]

There are controversies over whether or not self-enhancement is beneficial to the individual, and over whether self-enhancement is culturally universal or specific to Western individualism.