The meaning and generality of perceived actual-ideal discrepancies.

Abstract

"The logical justification for current interpretations of actual-ideal self-description discrepancies was called into question. An experiment was performed in which Ss did actual-ideal Q sorts using self-referent items and using home-town-referent items. The resulting sets of correlations were found to have a statistically significant correlation of .70 between them and this was taken as evidence indicating a certain amount of generality to perceived actual-ideal discrepancies and further substantiating the criticism of current interpretations of these discrepancies when limited to the self as the object of description. Implications of these findings for future research were sketched briefly.".