Introduction
The ought self, first described in Higgins’s (1987) self-discrepancy theory, is a personal standard or self-guide that refers to whom one believes they should or must be. The ought self has been assessed with several self-report and interview measures with the most common assessment being the SELVES interview/questionnaire (Higgins 1987). Other measures of the ought self include the Self-Concept Questionnaire (Watson 2000), the Integrated Self-Discrepancy Index (Hardin and Lakin 2009), and an Adjective Rating List (Ozgul et al. 2003). Assessment of the ought self typically includes a listing or ranking of a variety of traits or attributes that one believes they should or must possess. Examples of traits commonly listed to describe one’s ought self include successful, attractive, loving, conscientious, hard-working, kind, and independent. The development of the ought self domain is thought to be shaped by temperament and socialization experiences (e.g., caregiver-child...
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Mason, T.B., Smith, K.E. (2017). Ought Self. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1490-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1490-1
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