On the status of self in social prediction: comment on Karniol (2003)

A challenge to mainstream notions on the status of the self in social prediction is welcome. The self-as-distinct model (R. Karniol, 2003) is thoughtful, provocative, and parsimonious, but it is also underspecified, undertested, and selective in its treatment of the evidence. More important, the model does not provide compelling answers to issues pertaining to the origins of prototypic social knowledge, the status of self-knowledge, the content of the self-representation, whether the use of self in social prediction is a logical contradiction, and whether the self's role in social prediction is amotivated.