Helen C Boucher
Biographic Data
| ID | 180940 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helen C Boucher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helen C |
| FAMILY NAME | Boucher |
| SIGNATURE | BOUCHER H C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bates College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 98 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Social class and self-concept consistency
Current accounts of social class (SES) hold that for upper-SES individuals, material advantages promote an orientation to the self and tendency to anchor behavior on internal states (e.g., traits), while for lower-SES individuals, fewer resources promote an orientation to others and responsiveness to the context. I extend this view to the domain of self-perception, demonstrating across two studies that upper-SES individuals express greater consis…
Belief in Foreign Supernatural Agents as an Alternate Source of Control When Personal Control Is Threatened
Across four studies (N = 460), we examined whether foreign supernatural agents (i.e., ones outside one’s own religious tradition) can serve as sources of secondary control (by hearing and responding to requests) and compensatory control (by imbuing the world with order and structure) when personal control is threatened. In Study 1, non-Buddhist control-threat participants believed in the Buddha as a source of secondary control more than nonthreat…
Fluid compensation following threats to self-concept clarity
We examined defensive responses to self-clarity threats, finding that self-uncertain participants gave larger rewards to a social hero, but larger punishments to a social transgressor, than self-certain participants (Study 1). To examine whether there are individual differences in defensiveness to meaning threats, we included moderators, showing that high self-esteem individuals (HSE) thinking about self-inconsistencies gave more polarized evalua…
Beliefs in Emotional Residue in Japan and the United States
Japanese participants endorsed a belief in emotional residue (i.e., emotions lingering in a physical space can affect a new person entering it) more strongly than Americans when the question was posed with explicit items. However, both Japanese and Americans expressed the belief when it was measured with indirect, scenario-based questions. Also, both groups thought that negative emotional residues would decay over time. We discuss future research…
The Relational-Interdependent Self-Construal and Positive Illusions in Friendship
Three studies investigated whether the tendency to define the self in terms of close relationships moderates positive illusions in friendship (i.e., operationalized as the better-than-average effect). High scorers on the Relational-Interdependent Self-Construal (RISC) Scale were more likely to enhance a close/best friend over an acquaintance (Study 1), were more likely to exploit attribute ambiguity to favor their friends (Study 2), and were more…
The idea of money counteracts ego depletion effects
The Relational Self
Language and the bicultural dialectical self
We examined the effect of language priming on naïve dialecticism, with special attention paid to effects on dialectical beliefs about the self. European Americans responding in English and bilingual Chinese responding in either Chinese or English completed several measures designed to tap dialectical thinking and dialectical self-perceptions, including tolerance of contradiction, change in thoughts and behavior over time and context, holistic bel…
Self-knowledge defenses to self-threats
The Dialectical Self-Concept II
Although there is growing evidence that dialectical thinkers express more inconsistency within the global self-concept, whether this holds true for inconsistency across roles and within specific roles has received little attention. I examine whether dialectical thinking is associated with less cross-role and within-role consistency and whether dialecticism moderates the relationship between self-consistency and subjective well-being, self-concept…
The Dialectical Self-Concept
Naïve dialecticism refers to a set of East Asian lay beliefs characterized by tolerance for contradiction, the expectation of change, and cognitive holism. In five studies, the authors examined the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to global self-concept inconsistency among dialectical cultures. Contradictory self-knowledge was more readily available (Study 1) and simultaneously accessible (Study 2) among East Asians (Japanese and Chinese) than…
Cultural differences in self-verification
Culture and Implicit Self-Esteem
One explanation for the lower self-esteem of East Asians is that they have dialectical, or inconsistent, self-esteem in that they endorse both the positively and the negatively keyed items of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, relative to Euro-Americans. The following research extended this effect to implicit self-esteem. In two studies, Chinese, Euro-Americans (Studies 1 and 2), and Chinese Americans (Study 2) completed explicit and implicit measu…
Relational selves as self-affirmational resources
The relational self revealed
The authors offer a new, integrative conceptualization of the relational self based on a synthesis of recent approaches to the self and significant others. This conceptualization provides a sharper and fuller definition of the relational self than does any existing approach alone and a common framework to interpret findings from separate literatures. The authors then present 5 propositions and evidence to support the thesis that relational selves…
The relational self revealed
The authors offer a new, integrative conceptualization of the relational self based on a synthesis of recent approaches to the self and significant others. This conceptualization provides a sharper and fuller definition of the relational self than does any existing approach alone and a common framework to interpret findings from separate literatures. The authors then present 5 propositions and evidence to support the thesis that relational selves…
The Dialectical Self-Concept II
Although there is growing evidence that dialectical thinkers express more inconsistency within the global self-concept, whether this holds true for inconsistency across roles and within specific roles has received little attention. I examine whether dialectical thinking is associated with less cross-role and within-role consistency and whether dialecticism moderates the relationship between self-consistency and subjective well-being, self-concept…
Culture and Implicit Self-Esteem
One explanation for the lower self-esteem of East Asians is that they have dialectical, or inconsistent, self-esteem in that they endorse both the positively and the negatively keyed items of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, relative to Euro-Americans. The following research extended this effect to implicit self-esteem. In two studies, Chinese, Euro-Americans (Studies 1 and 2), and Chinese Americans (Study 2) completed explicit and implicit measu…
Cultural differences in self-verification
The idea of money counteracts ego depletion effects
Language and the bicultural dialectical self
We examined the effect of language priming on naïve dialecticism, with special attention paid to effects on dialectical beliefs about the self. European Americans responding in English and bilingual Chinese responding in either Chinese or English completed several measures designed to tap dialectical thinking and dialectical self-perceptions, including tolerance of contradiction, change in thoughts and behavior over time and context, holistic bel…
Relational selves as self-affirmational resources
Beliefs in Emotional Residue in Japan and the United States
Japanese participants endorsed a belief in emotional residue (i.e., emotions lingering in a physical space can affect a new person entering it) more strongly than Americans when the question was posed with explicit items. However, both Japanese and Americans expressed the belief when it was measured with indirect, scenario-based questions. Also, both groups thought that negative emotional residues would decay over time. We discuss future research…
Belief in Foreign Supernatural Agents as an Alternate Source of Control When Personal Control Is Threatened
Across four studies (N = 460), we examined whether foreign supernatural agents (i.e., ones outside one’s own religious tradition) can serve as sources of secondary control (by hearing and responding to requests) and compensatory control (by imbuing the world with order and structure) when personal control is threatened. In Study 1, non-Buddhist control-threat participants believed in the Buddha as a source of secondary control more than nonthreat…
The relational self revealed
The authors offer a new, integrative conceptualization of the relational self based on a synthesis of recent approaches to the self and significant others. This conceptualization provides a sharper and fuller definition of the relational self than does any existing approach alone and a common framework to interpret findings from separate literatures. The authors then present 5 propositions and evidence to support the thesis that relational selves…
Relational selves as self-affirmational resources
The Dialectical Self-Concept
Naïve dialecticism refers to a set of East Asian lay beliefs characterized by tolerance for contradiction, the expectation of change, and cognitive holism. In five studies, the authors examined the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to global self-concept inconsistency among dialectical cultures. Contradictory self-knowledge was more readily available (Study 1) and simultaneously accessible (Study 2) among East Asians (Japanese and Chinese) than…
Cultural differences in self-verification
Culture and Implicit Self-Esteem
One explanation for the lower self-esteem of East Asians is that they have dialectical, or inconsistent, self-esteem in that they endorse both the positively and the negatively keyed items of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, relative to Euro-Americans. The following research extended this effect to implicit self-esteem. In two studies, Chinese, Euro-Americans (Studies 1 and 2), and Chinese Americans (Study 2) completed explicit and implicit measu…
The Relational Self
Language and the bicultural dialectical self
We examined the effect of language priming on naïve dialecticism, with special attention paid to effects on dialectical beliefs about the self. European Americans responding in English and bilingual Chinese responding in either Chinese or English completed several measures designed to tap dialectical thinking and dialectical self-perceptions, including tolerance of contradiction, change in thoughts and behavior over time and context, holistic bel…
Self-knowledge defenses to self-threats
The Dialectical Self-Concept II
Although there is growing evidence that dialectical thinkers express more inconsistency within the global self-concept, whether this holds true for inconsistency across roles and within specific roles has received little attention. I examine whether dialectical thinking is associated with less cross-role and within-role consistency and whether dialecticism moderates the relationship between self-consistency and subjective well-being, self-concept…
The idea of money counteracts ego depletion effects
The Relational-Interdependent Self-Construal and Positive Illusions in Friendship
Three studies investigated whether the tendency to define the self in terms of close relationships moderates positive illusions in friendship (i.e., operationalized as the better-than-average effect). High scorers on the Relational-Interdependent Self-Construal (RISC) Scale were more likely to enhance a close/best friend over an acquaintance (Study 1), were more likely to exploit attribute ambiguity to favor their friends (Study 2), and were more…
Beliefs in Emotional Residue in Japan and the United States
Japanese participants endorsed a belief in emotional residue (i.e., emotions lingering in a physical space can affect a new person entering it) more strongly than Americans when the question was posed with explicit items. However, both Japanese and Americans expressed the belief when it was measured with indirect, scenario-based questions. Also, both groups thought that negative emotional residues would decay over time. We discuss future research…
Fluid compensation following threats to self-concept clarity
We examined defensive responses to self-clarity threats, finding that self-uncertain participants gave larger rewards to a social hero, but larger punishments to a social transgressor, than self-certain participants (Study 1). To examine whether there are individual differences in defensiveness to meaning threats, we included moderators, showing that high self-esteem individuals (HSE) thinking about self-inconsistencies gave more polarized evalua…
Belief in Foreign Supernatural Agents as an Alternate Source of Control When Personal Control Is Threatened
Across four studies (N = 460), we examined whether foreign supernatural agents (i.e., ones outside one’s own religious tradition) can serve as sources of secondary control (by hearing and responding to requests) and compensatory control (by imbuing the world with order and structure) when personal control is threatened. In Study 1, non-Buddhist control-threat participants believed in the Buddha as a source of secondary control more than nonthreat…
Social class and self-concept consistency
Current accounts of social class (SES) hold that for upper-SES individuals, material advantages promote an orientation to the self and tendency to anchor behavior on internal states (e.g., traits), while for lower-SES individuals, fewer resources promote an orientation to others and responsiveness to the context. I extend this view to the domain of self-perception, demonstrating across two studies that upper-SES individuals express greater consis…
Psychology (15 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (12 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (11 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (4 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (4 works)