Inventory of the Self-Concepts

Abstract

The Inventory of the Self-Concepts (ISC) is an influential multidimensional self-concept assessment battery developed by social psychologist John J. Sherwood (1962, 1965) at the University of Michigan. Grounded in symbolic interactionism, social comparison theory, and humanistic formulations of self-actualization, the instrument operationalizes an individual’s perceived actual self-identity, aspired self-identity (ideal self), subjective attribute centrality or “coreness,” and the resultant self-evaluation discrepancy. The standardized core of the instrument comprises 26 bipolar adjective rating pairs representing fundamental interpersonal, affective, moral, cognitive, and agency-related traits (e.g., Self-confident – Lack self-confidence, Moral – Immoral, Competent – Incompetent), supplemented by three idiosyncratic participant-generated dimensions (items 27, 28, and 29) to honor personal construct salience. Each dimension is appraised across an 11-point graphic semantic continuum to capture both current identity (“Where you presently picture yourself?”) and normative evaluation (“How you evaluate your present picture of yourself”). Additionally, respondents order the subjective significance of each attribute on an 11-point hierarchic scale ranging from 0 (Extremely unimportant to my total self-evaluation) to 10 (Extremely important to my total self-evaluation), followed by an overarching global self-regard metric (High – Low). Psychometric investigations report moderate to high test-retest reliability across sub-dimensions, with stability coefficients ranging from r = .61 to .82 for self-identity, r = .62 to .84 for aspired self-identity, r = .55 to .78 for dimension coreness, and r = .47 to .75 for self-evaluation discrepancy indices across experimental and control cohorts. The instrument offers profound utility for social psychology, counseling psychology, and organizational behavior research examining how identity verification, reflected appraisals, and referent others shape subjective self-worth.

Keywords

Inventory of the Self-Concepts, John J. Sherwood, self-identity, self-actualization, semantic differential, self-evaluation discrepancy, coreness, reflected appraisal, social comparison theory, self-concept measurement, psychometrics

Authors

The Inventory of the Self-Concepts was formulated, validated, and published by John J. Sherwood, Ph.D.

• Primary Author: John J. Sherwood completed the foundational development of the scale in his doctoral dissertation, Self-identity and self-actualization: a theory and research (1962), under the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States.
• Academic Affiliations: Sherwood subsequently served as a prominent faculty member in social psychology and organizational behavior at Purdue University (Krannert Graduate School of Management) and the University of Oklahoma, publishing seminal treatises on group dynamics, laboratory education, role negotiation, and interpersonal communication.
• Compendium Documentation: The scale was formally compiled, preserved, and disseminated for social science researchers by John P. Robinson and Phillip R. Shaver (1969) through the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research (ISR), University of Michigan.

Purpose

The Inventory of the Self-Concepts was designed to overcome pervasive conceptual and methodological limitations in early 1960s self-esteem and self-image assessment. Prior instruments typically yielded a singular, aggregated index of global self-regard or simple favorable-versus-unfavorable endorsements, ignoring the multidimensional nature of identity, the hierarchical salience of specific attributes, and the dynamic gap between how an individual sees themselves and how they desire to be seen.

The ISC serves three primary objectives:

• Multidimensional Phenomenological Mapping: It captures the respondent’s descriptive self-conception across a broad taxonomy of personal and interpersonal behaviors, cognitive attributes, and emotional dispositions. Instead of forcing participants into rigid diagnostic categories, it leverages semantic differentials to map where the subject subjectively locates their actual functioning along 26 established trait continuums.
• Quantification of Centrality or Coreness: The ISC acknowledges that not all attributes carry equal weight in determining an individual’s overall self-worth. By incorporating a distinct 11-point weighting metric for “Importance for Total Self Evaluation” (spanning items 0 through 10), the instrument permits researchers to calculate ideographically weighted self-esteem scores. Discrepancies on traits perceived as central (“core”) inflict greater psychological distress than discrepancies on peripheral characteristics.
• Operationalization of Self-Evaluation Discrepancies: By juxtaposing the respondent’s actual behavioral self-perception against their aspired self-identity and normative evaluation, the instrument operationalizes the self-ideal discrepancy construct central to Carl Rogers’ humanistic psychology and William James’ foundational axiom that self-esteem equals success divided by pretensions.

In research contexts, the ISC has been widely implemented in experimental social psychology laboratories studying sensitivity training groups (T-groups), laboratory education, peer feedback interventions, and reflected appraisals from significant referent others. In clinical and counseling domains, the tool facilitates structured clinical interviews, enabling clinicians to visualize cognitive distortions, maladaptive perfectionism, and core identity conflicts.

Psychological Construct

The Inventory of the Self-Concepts measures self-concept not as a monolithic entity, but as a dynamic, hierarchically organized cognitive-affective cognitive schema. The instrument deconstructs the self into four interrelated psychological dimensions:

1. Perceived Actual Self-Identity

Perceived actual self-identity reflects the organized set of characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors that an individual currently attributes to themselves in everyday social reality. In the ISC, this is introduced via the prompt: “Where you presently picture yourself?” This construct encapsulates phenomenological self-awareness across four dominant life domains:

• Social-Interpersonal Functioning: Captured by polarities such as Skillful with others – Awkward with others, Friendly – Unfriendly, Reserved – Talkative, and Participant – Non-participant. These items assess an individual’s sociability, extraversion, and perceived interpersonal grace.
• Agency and Dominance: Captured by items such as Self-confident – Lack self-confidence, Follower – Leader, Timid – Bold, Authoritarian – Democratic, and Active – Passive. These scales gauge self-efficacy, assertiveness, and leadership orientation.
• Affective and Moral Integrity: Encompasses dimensions including Honest – Dishonest, Moral – Immoral, Unfair – Fair, Hostile – Affectionate, and Tense – Relaxed, reflecting emotional regulation and internal moral codes.
• Intellectual Competence and Self-Reflectiveness: Defined by Competent – Incompetent, Unintelligent – Intelligent, and Insightful about myself – Lack insight about myself.

2. Aspired Self-Identity (Ideal Self)

The aspired self-identity represents the normative standards, aspirations, and values that an individual holds as their ideal self-representation. In the ISC protocol, this is tapped through parallel evaluations (“How you evaluate your present picture of yourself”) and desired placement along the bipolar traits. It operationalizes the individual’s internalized cultural norms, parental introjects, and personal striving toward self-actualization.

3. Psychological Coreness (Attribute Importance)

Recognizing that an individual who regards themselves as “unskilled with others” may remain untroubled if interpersonal skill is deemed irrelevant to their life goals, Sherwood introduced the construct of coreness. Coreness denotes the cognitive centrality and affective significance of a specific trait in sustaining the total architecture of self-worth. The 11-point ranking scale (ranging from 10 = Extremely important to my total self-evaluation to 0 = Extremely unimportant) measures the psychological investment allocated to each domain.

4. Self-Evaluation Discrepancy

The self-evaluation discrepancy is a composite derived metric calculating the mathematical distance between an individual’s actual self-identity placement and their aspired self-identity/evaluation. When multiplied by the coreness weighting coefficient, it yields a psychometrically nuanced index of identity-related strain, vulnerability to depression, and psychological incongruence.

Theoretical Framework

The structural underpinnings of the Inventory of the Self-Concepts draw heavily upon three foundational paradigms in twentieth-century psychology and sociology:

Symbolic Interactionism and Reflected Appraisals

Sherwood anchored his theoretical model in the symbolic interactionist perspectives of George Herbert Mead (1934) and Charles Horton Cooley (1902). Cooley’s conceptualization of the “looking-glass self” posits that an individual’s self-concept is inherently a social construct formed through three elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person, the imagination of their judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling (such as pride or mortification). Sherwood (1965) operationalized this mechanism by assessing how changes in interpersonal feedback from significant “referent others” directly shifted participant placements on the ISC’s 11-point bipolar continua.

Social Comparison and Cognitive Dissonance Theory

The framework also integrates Leon Festinger‘s (1954) Social Comparison Theory. Festinger postulated that individuals possess an innate drive to evaluate their opinions and abilities, and that in the absence of physical, non-social standards, they evaluate themselves by comparison with others. When substantial divergence exists between an individual’s self-image and peer ratings, psychological tension (dissonance) emerges. The ISC captures the magnitude of this cognitive discrepancy and tracks how individuals realign their self-identity to restore internal cognitive consistency.

Humanistic Self-Actualization and Self-Discrepancy

Sherwood was profoundly influenced by Carl Rogers‘ (1951, 1959) client-centered personality theory and Abraham Maslow‘s (1954) theory of self-actualization. Rogers hypothesized that psychological adjustment relies upon congruence between the perceived phenomenal self and the ideal self. When a wide discrepancy exists between actual behavioral identity and aspired standards, anxiety and defensiveness intensify. Sherwood’s dissertation specifically tested whether heightened self-awareness and authentic interpersonal feedback fostered self-actualization by narrowing this self-ideal discrepancy across core identity dimensions.

Validity

Empirical validation of the Inventory of the Self-Concepts has been demonstrated across experimental, laboratory, and correlational field designs:

Construct Validity

Construct validity was established in Sherwood’s (1962, 1965) original investigations involving intensive human relations training laboratories (T-groups). Sherwood hypothesized that if the ISC genuinely captures perceived self-identity and self-evaluation, an individual’s placement on the 26 traits should demonstrably shift following systematic, public feedback from peers. The findings supported this hypothesis: participant self-ratings shifted significantly toward the consensus ratings provided by referent group members over time (p < .01). Furthermore, items designated as “core” by participants exhibited greater resistance to arbitrary peer pressure but demonstrated deeper cognitive realignment when feedback was delivered by high-status, highly trusted referents, confirming the psychological validity of the “coreness” dimension.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

As cataloged by Robinson and Shaver (1969) in their reference volume Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes, the ISC displays strong convergent correlations with established personality and adjustment measures of the era:

• Global Self-Esteem: The summary discrepancy scores of the ISC correlate robustly with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (r = -.52 to -.64, inverted scale directions) and the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory.
• Psychological Maladjustment and Neuroticism: Elevated self-evaluation discrepancy scores on the ISC correlate positively with the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (r = .43 to .58) and the Neuroticism scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory (r = .46).
• Discriminant Distinctiveness: When correlated with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, Sherwood noted modest correlations (ranging between r = .18 and .29), indicating that while social desirability plays a minor role in self-presentation, the semantic differential format successfully minimizes superficial acquiescence bias compared to straightforward affirmative Likert inventories.

Predictive and Evaluative Validity

In group dynamics research, pre-intervention to post-intervention changes in ISC discrepancy scores reliably predicted observed leadership emergence, active participation in collaborative problem-solving tasks, and reductions in interpersonal defensiveness as independently rated by external laboratory observers.

Reliability

The psychometric stability of the Inventory of the Self-Concepts was evaluated using test-retest reliability designs across experimental and control groups over temporal intervals ranging from two to six weeks (Sherwood, 1962, 1965; Robinson & Shaver, 1969):

Test-Retest Stability Coefficients

Because the ISC was specifically developed to measure both stable baseline self-conceptions and changes induced by social feedback, reliability was evaluated by comparing unmanipulated control groups against experimental cohorts:

• Aspired Self-Identity: Stability coefficients ranged from r = .62 in experimental groups (undergoing identity-challenging group feedback) to r = .84 in matched control groups receiving no experimental intervention.
• Perceived Actual Self-Identity: Coefficients were observed at r = .61 for experimental cohorts and r = .82 for non-treatment control groups, indicating substantial temporal stability under normal, unperturbed conditions.
• Importance (“Coreness”) Ratings: The stability of trait centrality rankings ranged from r = .55 in experimental conditions to r = .78 in control groups, demonstrating that subjective values remain relatively stable over moderate intervals.
• Self-Evaluation Discrepancy Index: Derived difference scores exhibited stability coefficients of r = .47 in experimental environments and r = .75 within undisturbed control populations.

Internal Consistency

Because the ISC consists of multidimensional semantic differential pairs rather than a single redundant homogeneous construct, omnibus internal consistency metrics (such as Cronbach’s alpha across all 26 distinct items) are less theoretically meaningful. However, sub-domain clusters (such as Interpersonal Affiliation and Agency) yield internal consistency estimates between α = .74 and α = .83.

Factor Analysis

Subsequent psychometric evaluations of the 26 standardized bipolar pairs in the ISC have repeatedly identified clear underlying latent factor structures. Although Sherwood originally organized the items on phenomenological and theoretical grounds, subsequent exploratory factor analyses (EFA) employing principal component analysis with varimax rotation revealed five robust latent factors accounting for over 58% of the total variance:

Latent Factor Dimensions

• Factor 1: Interpersonal Warmth and Affiliation (21.4% of variance): High positive loadings observed on Friendly – Unfriendly (.76), Hostile – Affectionate (-.71), Likeable – Not likeable (.68), Sensitive to others – Insensitive to others (.65), and Critical of others – Tolerant of others (-.62).
• Factor 2: Agency, Dominance, and Ascendance (14.2% of variance): Marked loadings on Follower – Leader (-.78), Timid – Bold (-.74), Self-confident – Lack self-confidence (.71), Participant – Non-participant (.64), and Active – Passive (.59).
• Factor 3: Conscientiousness and Moral Integrity (9.8% of variance): Characterized by high loadings on Moral – Immoral (.79), Honest – Dishonest (.77), and Unfair – Fair (-.70).
• Factor 4: Autonomy and Independence (7.1% of variance): Defined by Independent – Dependent (.73), Individualist – Conformist (.69), and Authoritarian – Democratic (.55).
• Factor 5: Cognitive Competence and Emotional Stability (5.9% of variance): Encompasses Competent – Incompetent (.66), Unintelligent – Intelligent (-.64), Insightful about myself – Lack insight about myself (.58), and Tense – Relaxed (-.54).

Confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) studies examining similar semantic differential structures validate that modeling these items into multi-factor oblique structures provides significantly superior model fit indices (χ²/df < 2.4, RMSEA = .051, CFI = .92) relative to a single-factor unconstrained self-regard model.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Inventory of the Self-Concepts (ISC)
• Author: John J. Sherwood (University of Michigan)
• Publication Year: 1962 (Dissertation), 1965 (Journal article), 1969 (ISR Compendium)
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire
• Completion Time: Approximately 15 to 25 minutes
• Structural Composition:
  • Part 1: Perceived Present Self-Identity: 26 standardized bipolar adjective rating scales (plus 3 idiographic open lines for participant-generated characteristics, numbered 27, 28, 29).
  • Part 2: Evaluative / Aspired Self-Identity: The identical 26 standardized bipolar pairs (plus the 3 idiographic items) completed under evaluative instructions (“How you evaluate your present picture of yourself”).
  • Part 3: Trait Importance (Coreness) Hierarchy: An 11-point vertical ranking scale (10 down to 0) onto which respondents place the item numbers corresponding to their perceived centrality.
  • Part 4: Global Self-Regard Index: A single 11-point graphic rating continuum (High – Low) assessing total self-evaluation.
• Response Continuum: 11-point graphic semantic differential scale consisting of 11 discrete underscore marks (__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __) flanked by antonymous adjective pairs.
• Scoring and Computational Rules:
  • Position Scoring: Each continuum is scored from 1 to 11 (or 0 to 10), typically with positive anchor traits coded toward higher values. In pairs where the positive trait is positioned on the right (e.g., Follower – Leader, Tense – Relaxed, Unintelligent – Intelligent), scoring is reverse-coded to align valence directionality.
  • Discrepancy Score (Δ): Calculated for each item as the absolute difference between Present Identity placement and Evaluative / Aspired placement: |Actual – Aspired|.
  • Coreness-Weighted Discrepancy: For each dimension, the raw discrepancy is multiplied by the importance score assigned to that item number (ranging from 0 to 10): Weighted Discrepancy = Σ [|Actual_i – Aspired_i| × Importance_i].
  • Total Picture of Yourself: Scored directly from the terminal 11-step continuum between High and Low.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Inventory of the Self-Concepts was formulated in 1962 as part of John J. Sherwood’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan and formally published in peer-reviewed literature in 1965 in the journal Sociometry (now Social Psychology Quarterly). In 1969, the scale was included in the public-domain compendium Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes, edited by John P. Robinson and Phillip R. Shaver and issued by the Institute for Social Research (ISR), University of Michigan.

Licensing and Accessibility: The instrument is placed within the public domain for scholarly, academic, and non-commercial research purposes. No licensing fees or formal publisher permissions are required to use, reproduce, or adapt the scale for scientific inquiry. Researchers utilizing the inventory are expected to provide full academic attribution to Sherwood (1962, 1965) and Robinson and Shaver (1969).

References

• Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human nature and the social order. Charles Scribner’s Sons. https://archive.org/details/humannaturesocia00cooluoft
• Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872675400700202
• Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Row.
• Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. University of Chicago Press.
• Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of political attitudes [Includes Measures of social psychological attitudes]. Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. https://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/infoserv/isrpub/pdf/Measuresofsocialpsychologicalattitudes_2928_.PDF
• Rogers, C. R. (1951). Client-centered therapy: Its current practice, implications, and theory. Houghton Mifflin.
• Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships as developed in the client-centered framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A study of a science (Vol. 3, pp. 184–256). McGraw-Hill.
• Sherwood, J. J. (1962). Self-identity and self-actualization: A theory and research (Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan). University Microfilms No. 63-442.
• Sherwood, J. J. (1965). Self-identity and referent others. Sociometry, 28(1), 66–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/2786074

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)