Superstars and me: Predicting the impact of role models on the self.

1997/07/01 by Penelope Lockwood, Ziva Kunda · 1,532 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies #Personality Traits and Psychology #Psychology #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology

paper · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.73.1.91

published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73(1), 91-103 (American Psychological Association)

openalex publication_date 1997/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/08

Abstract

The authors propose that superstars are most likely to affect self-views when they are considered relevant. Relevant superstars provoke self-enhancement and inspiration when their success seems attainable but self-deflation when it seems unattainable. Participants ' elf-views were affected only when the star's domain of excellence was self-relevant. Relevant stars provoked self-enhancement and inspiration when their success eemed attainable in that participants either still had enough time to achieve comparable success or believed their own abilities could improve over time. Open-ended responses provided rich evidence of inspiration in these circumstances. Relevant stars provoked, if anything, self-deflation when their success eemed unattainable in that participants either had already missed the chance to achieve comparable success or viewed their abilities as fixed and so unlikely to improve. It is a cultural clich6 that superstars, that is, individuals of outstanding achievement, can serve as role models to others, inspiring and motivating them to do their utmost best. To pro-mote such inspiration, prominent women scientists are often invited to address high school girls, eminent African Americans

Citations

• The definition of self: Private and public self-evaluation management strategies.
• Theory and research concerning social comparisons of personal attributes.
• The affective consequences of social comparison: Either direction has its ups and downs.
• Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
• Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies.
• The case for motivated reasoning.
• A Theory of Social Comparison Processes
• For better or worse: The impact of upward social comparison on self-evaluations.
• A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality.
• The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations.

Cited by

• Self-enhancement [wikipedia]