self-verification motive
the desire to seek information about oneself that confirms one’s chronic self-views, regardless of whether this information is good or bad. This desire is often stronger than the self-enhancement motive, wherein people seek favorable information about themselves, or the self-assessment motive, wherein people seek accurate information about themselves. People seek self-verification (a) by gravitating toward situations and relationship partners in which they will receive self-confirmation, (b) by striving to elicit self-verifying feedback through their behavior, and (c) by selectively attending to, recalling, and interpreting evaluations in ways that tend to maintain their own views of themselves. [first proposed in 1983 by U.S. social psychologist William B. Swann (1952– )]