What is FALSE MODESTY in SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?

  • Jul 26, 2021
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What is false modesty in social psychology?

There is evidence that sometimes people have a different self to what they feel and perceive. The clearest example, however, is not so much false pride as but false modesty. There is a tendency to believe that false modesty allows you to highlight your own positive qualities, such as being competent, at the same time that it allows arousing sympathy, disguising glories as complaints or professions of modesty.

But in fact everything said above is not true. With this article from Psychology-Online, we will discover what is false modesty in social psychology, why it is used and what are the faces of false modesty.

You may also like: What is social desirability in psychology?

Index

  1. What is false modesty?
  2. Why is false modesty used?
  3. Shallow gratitude and the danger of overgrading
  4. The faces of false modesty

What is false modesty?

It is commonly known that false modesty is the worst of arrogance. Specifically, false modesty is the ability to falsely appear shy while explaining how good we are. According to Freud it is the specialization in "excusationes non petitae" (excusationes non richieste), which means exactly what one wants to deny.

Modesty is different from humility, which is a creaturely virtue that makes man aware of his own finitude. On the other hand, if he asks you what false modesty is, in reality it is a true deception, a close relative of proclaimed pride. In the following sections we will tell you what false modesty means in different contexts of our life.

Why is false modesty used?

Sometimes we wonder why false modesty is used. Perhaps at this moment someone comes to mind who, far from praising himself, denigrates or discredits himself. These denigrating attitudes can be subtly helpful in favoring beingas they often elicit feelings of calm. A topic of false modesty might be to tell a friend "I felt like an idiot" so that the friend will comfort you by saying, "but no, you did well." Another example of false modesty would be "I wish I didn't feel so unattractive" to lead to being told "come on, I know many other people who are much less attractive than you." Discover what is attitude according to social psychology.

There is another reason why people denigrate themselves and praise others. Specifically, it is done to minimize and minimize your ability. This allows them to reduce performance-related pressure and lower the initial benchmark for performance evaluation.

An example of false modesty is sports coaches. Before the deciding match, they praise the strength of the opponents and highlight the weaknesses that their team needs to work on. Coaches convey an image of modesty and sportsmanship and prepare the ground for a favorable evaluation, regardless of the result. A victory becomes the achievement of a praiseworthy goal and a loss becomes a fact attributable to the excellent defense of the opponents. Modesty, as Bacone said, is only one of the "arts of ostentation". Don't miss this article if you want to know more about how attitudes are formed.

Shallow gratitude and the danger of overgrading.

False modesty also appears in the autobiographical accounts that people make of their goals. To find out, Roy Baumeister and Stacey Ilko (1995) invited some students to write "an important experience of success, "asking only a portion of them to sign their own names and prepare to read their own writing to the the rest; these students often acknowledged the help or emotional support they had received. Those, on the other hand, who wrote anonymously only rarely mentioned their own gratitude, and more often painted themselves as the sole promoters of their own success. From these results, the researchers came up with the idea of ​​superficial gratitude, that is, the one who seems humble, while in the privacy of his own mind he only gives credit to himself.

Superficial gratitude can surface when our performance surpasses that of those who around us and we feel uncomfortable about the feelings others may have towards U.S. If we perceive that our success could make others jealous or resentful - a phenomenon that Julia Exline and Marci Lobel (1999) define "the dangers of overgrading" - we can minimize our results and show gratitude. For superclasses, modest self-introductions are a natural gesture.

So superficial gratitude and the danger of overclassification are phenomena that occur when a person feels above the rest, but does not want it to show that how proud or proud they are of it.

The faces of false modesty.

This phenomenon of false modesty can show itself in many ways. Next, we will see the faces of false modesty:

  • The invisible: He is a gifted person, but he rejects all public recognition so as not to be envied. He pretends to be "normal" and hides how good he is at what he does. His need is to take refuge from envy, whose destructiveness he fears, with the certainty that if nothing emerges he will be loved and accepted. In others it produces the suspicion of being deceived and of not really knowing who is in front of you.
  • The narcissist: You do your best to get one thing right and get a compliment on it. However, he rejects others, belittling himself in a big way, to induce others to say beautiful things to him. His need is to get external confirmations. To be told: "Bravo, I approve of you, you are a great one." He looks to others to convince him of his worth.
  • The superstitious: negate any value or success because he fears that acknowledging it will bring bad luck and attract a negative event. His need is not to tempt because for him, for some reason, asserting yourself is equivalent to being punished. When he is with others he creates an atmosphere of imminence, superstition and precariousness that makes him disturbing.
  • Discontent: he always sees the negative in what he does and only realizes what is missing. Can never feel happy. His need is to seek continuous goals so as not to stop to reflect, in an inappropriate perfectionism. It provokes anger and aggressiveness in the others. His silent "You don't know what he could do" is self-centered and dismissive.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is false modesty in social psychology?, we recommend that you enter our category of Social psychology.

Bibliography

  • Myers, D. G. (2008). Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • Pilutti, R. (2009). The presumption, the modesty will see the false claim. Recovered from: http://www.renatopilutti.it/2009/02/25/presunzione-modestia-vera-e-falsa/
  • RIZA (2012). No false modesty there. Recovered from: https://www.riza.it/psicologia/l-aiuto-pratico/3092/no-alla-falsa-modestia.html
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