Self-descriptions and other essays and self-report measures of self-enhancement, self-protection and their correlates

The dataset comprises short essays and questionnaire self-reports from 378 participants, who had complete data and provided quality data. The participants are U.S. citizens, 25 to 40 years of age and whose L1 is the English language. They wrote four short essays, answering the prompts on their positive traits, their negative traits, positive sides of universal healthcare, and the negative sides of universal healthcare. The self-report questions comprise self-enhancement, self-protection, global self-esteem, the Dark Tetrad, depression, anxiety, stress, and the Big Five traits and facets. The data were collected in two waves; the first one in the middle of December 2024, and the second one in the beginning of February 2025. The second wave of data collection happened in order to enlarge the sample size. The purpose of this data collection was to obtain data for the PhD research of the author, on the topic of the amplified and attenuated language in self-descriptions as signals of personality and constructs related to maintaining a positive self-view.