This book is about human behavior and, more particularly, about a class
of human behaviors-those behaviors by people that have themselves as the
object of their behaviors. These self-referent behaviors are social in
nature in the sense that in large measure, they are the outcomes of
pervasive social processes and are themselves major influences on social
outcomes. As such, self-referent behaviors have the potential to be sig-
nificant organizing constructs in the study of the broader field of
social psychology. In any case, they are regarded here as of intrinsic
interest and are the focus of this volume. Four broad categories of
self-referent behaviors are considered with regard to their social bases
and conse- quences as these are revealed in the social psychological and
sociological literature. With appropriate discriminations made within
each group- ing, the four categories are: self-conceiving,
self-evaluating, self-feeling, and self-protective-self-enhancing
responses. Following a consideration of the social antecedents and
consequences of each category of self- referent behaviors, I present a
final summary statement that outlines a theoretical model of the
additive and interactive social influences on and consequences of the
mutually influential self-referent behaviors. The outline of the
theoretical model reflects my synthesis of the apparently relevant
theoretical and empirical literature and is intended to function as a
framework for the orderly incorporation of new theoretical asser- tions
and more or less apparently relevant empirical associations.
