Self-Enhancement 2.0 : An Integrated Approach to Measuring Dyadic Self-Enhancement at Two Levels

Kurzfassung/Abstract

The present research integrates and extends existing approaches to measuring self-enhancement in interpersonal relationships. We composed a dyadic self-enhancement index by contrasting self-perceptions with the academic achievements of both dyad members and disentangled the effects of the perceivers, the targets, and the relationships by using social relations analyses. At two different levels, we examined the interpersonal consequences of self-enhancement in 330 eighth-grade students. Results revealed that, at a habitual level, the more students tended to feel unrealistically superior to other students, the more they tended to dislike others, yet this did not affect how much others disliked them. However, at a relationship level, we found different effects in specific relationships between individuals: The more a student felt unrealistically superior to a specific other student, the less he or she liked the other student, and the less he or she was liked by that student.