Why do we care so much?

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Why do we care so much? “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Introduction. People generally search for positive feedback pertaining to the self, in order to maintain a positive self-image. People also generally do not seek external feedback that accurately reflects their self-image, but rather a fair looking glass that displays positive images of the self, which serve to protect their personal self-esteem. (Brehm, Cassin, & Fein, 5th ed. 1998) Definition. Along these lines, Tesser's self-evaluation maintenance model states that the performance of others in our social environments can affect our self-evaluations, (Taylor & Brown, 1988). When a person we are close to performs well on a task, what will determine whether we will react positively or negatively to that behavior? Factors. There are three (3) influential factors that lead to having
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positive or negative thoughts on others successes when dealing with the self. They are crucial in understanding the idea of self-esteem maintenance. The factors are Performance, Closeness, and Importance.  Performance is the most straight forward, and states that one will make decisions about their feelings towards others, based on how well that person performed on the same task that another has already completed.(lecture 2/13/03) This is made by a measurement of some sort. In this case, Satoka got a higher grade then Steve and Sarah on the exam. This caused Steve to show feelings of jealousy towards Satoka, however Sarah, ...

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