[Self-concept related information processing in relation to perceived personal ability]

Cognitive self-schemata are conceived of as being generalized representations about the self which have been derived from previous experiences and the evaluations of these experiences. Self-schemata organize and guide the processing of self-related information. An experiment investigating such processing of self-related information in relation to perceived own ability--the self-concept of ability--as a variant of cognitive self-schemata is reported. Subjects with varying levels of self-concept of ability are requested to judge ability-related adjectives with regard to the self. The results indicate that those individuals with high perceived own ability judge adjectives which are consistent with this self-perception significantly faster and more frequently as being self-descriptive than adjectives which are inconsistent with this self-perception. Individuals with low perceived own ability do not differ in response latency and percentage of words judged as being either self-descriptive or not. Overall the results confirm only the assumption that individuals with high perceived own ability--but not individuals with low perceived own ability--possess ability-consistent cognitive self-schemata.