Ch 2 the self in a social world Flashcards
our self-concept is inherently social, what does this mean?
-our beliefs and feelings about ourselves influence the way we perceive, judge, and behave toward others
-the way that others behave toward us influence our beliefs and feelings toward ourselves
-humans need and hold a fundamental need to belong ]
medial prefrontal cortex, helps stitch together your sense of self
-it becomes more active when you think about yourself
What are our social selves? (hint there are 3)
1) individual self - is our individual qualities, traits, ex-patient
2) relational self - is our beliefs about our identities, ex we might see our self as caring
3) collective self - our identity as members of social groups to which we belong ex see yourself as Canadian
Self Discrepancy Theory by Higgins 1987 (3 selves) - possible selves
- we compare and contrast three aspects of our selves
1) actual self - the qualities we believe we currently possess
2) ideal self - the qualities we would like to possess
3) ought self - the qualities we feel that we should possess
Independent Culture
called individualistic where we value individuality, autonomy, and self-reliance
- individual achievement
- the same rule should be applied to everyone in individual cultures
- mostly western cultures, Canada, States, Europe, etc
- individual self is to be the most salient aspect of the self
- about oneself
Interdependent Culture
called collectivistic, where we value fitting in, cooperation, and social harmony
- status and context should be taken into account the same rule applies
- mostly eastern cultures, Asia, Africa, etc
- relational and collective self is often seen as more central
- about groups
what is Analytical Style and what culture does it represent?
- people focus on the main object only (focal point)
- independent cultures
what is Holistic Style and what culture does it represent?
- people tend to be more sensitive towards the context (surrounding features)
- interdependent cultures
What is self-esteem?
is essentially your attitude towards yourself
-non-depressed individuals are likely to try to maintain their self-esteem
Rosenberg measured self-esteem in 1965 and three ways to measure self-esteem
- he measured self-esteem as a trait; this is a stable and enduring attitude toward the self
- high trait self-esteem feel mostly positively about themselves but have a day or time where they feel bad about themselves therefore high trait self-esteem but low state self-esteem
- 3 ways to measure state self-esteem
1) social state self-esteem
2) performance state self-esteem
3) appearance state self-esteem - in general trait self-esteem stays stable whereas state self-esteem changes
what are the four ways to maintain self-esteem?
1) self-serving bias: is the common habit of a person taking credit for positive events or outcomes, but blaming outside factors for negative events. ex She gets a bad grade on another test and says the teacher doesn’t like her or the test was unfair
- self-serving attribution: is a form of self-serving bias, the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to yourself and negative outcomes to others
2) self-handicapping: is when someone makes excuses for a potential failure or anticipated poor performance. ex if a student says, “I’m not going to do well on the Psychology test because I’m sick,” or procrastinating and blaming all-nighter
3) self-serving affirmation: thinking about success or competence in another domain can help take away the sting of that specific domain.
4) Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing): individual associates themselves with known successful others such that the winner’s success becomes the individual’s own accomplishment. ex when a fan of a football team wears the team’s jersey and boasts after a win, this fan is engaging in BIRGing but in contrast, is
- Cutting off reflected failure (CORFing), Cutting off reflected failure. When someone disassociated themselves from another person because they do not want their own reputation tarnished because of the other person’s failures. ex taking a jersey off after the team loses or referring to an opposing team as “they”
What is a social comparison and what are the two kinds?
when we judge out traits by judging how we are relative to those around us
1) Upward comparison: compare ourselves to who are better off which can motivate is but costs our self-esteem
2) Downward comparison: compare ourselves to who is worse off which can boost our self-esteem but does not motivate us
- we generally choose downward comparison
inspired by upward comparisons when: (hint 3)
1) we believe that the level of success attained by the target is attainable
2) we are focused on promotion, rather than prevention
3) we are experiencing a life transition
Self Evaluation Maintenance Model (Tesser, 1998)
- a closet friend wins the soccer award but you thought you did
- the more important that domain is to you the more painful that upward comparison is and the closer that person is to you the more painful that upward comparison is
What is the key variable in the Self Evaluation Maintenance Model?
Self-Relevance of the domain:
- comparison: high in relevance, friends performance will be threatening to our sense of self, therefore, low self-esteem
- reflection: low in relevance, no threat to self, your friend’s performance is purely positive and might even can BIRGing, increase self-esteem
Wilson and Ross, we compare our past self to our present self ~ their study was Chump to Champ
-we want to improve our present self, we try to outperform our past self when we do we get a boost in self-esteem
-they asked participants to compare their present self to their past self
-then they made the distance either long or short - either beginning of the term or something recent
-then rate their traits 0-10 and reported if this was important to their self-concept
Found:
-people like to believe they are improving on the traits if they especially value them and when their past self was further away from their present self
Memories of our past self are subjective
-Conway and Ross ~ their study was called Getting what you want by revising what you had
typically we see our prior selves less positively than our present self
- Conway and Ross studied this, grades asked them how they did in the past and now, and believe they are doing better now.
- marriages or couples believe they are falling more in love each year when that’s not the case, as we cannot remember the past history/misremember their past
Positive Illusions (Spot light effect) and about on self
walking around believing that were are a little more positive and think their a little more important then others might think
-walk around with this inflated sense of self
-their own abilities
-how others will rate them
-how well things turn out for them in the future
spotlight effect means seeing our selfs at centre stage, overestimating the extent to which others attention is aimed at us
- those who are nondepressed/high self-esteem ^ and overestimate personal traits and how well things will turn out for them in the future
- but those who are depressed/low self-esteem are more realistic and don’t have the positive illusion
We overestimate our sense of personal control over the environment
ex dice, shake hard or soft for high or low numbers but they are random and we believe we have a sense of control
- our sense of control is adaptive however we overextend this adaptive tendency
- gives us a sense of control and keeps us motivated
What is the term that we tend to underestimate our task of completion?
scenario thinking - we fail to learn from prior experience
- we fail to add any room for error
- we are resilient to increase our competition times even if we have learned from the past
What is affective forecasting?
-we don’t learn from experience
-we overestimate both the intensity and duration of our future emotions
ex we say we will be so happy if we get accepted to Queens but that thrill decrease or a bad feeling won’t last as long as we believe
Why do we effective forecast (hint 2 reasons)
focalism - we focus on the feelings of that exact event but don’t think about all the other positive things going on in our lives
Immune Neglect - we don’t factor in other things, to undo our feelings when guessing or estimating how we will feel following an event
spotlight phenomenon
Fortune Study called ~ Guilty By Association Effect
-we tend to overestimate the extent to which other people are paying attention to us
ex - wearing a t-shirt that we think everyone will notice
Found - most people will not notice and we overestimate this
Fortune Study - Guilty By Association Effect
- their colleagues or friends will reflect on them
- like our old friend did some weird embarrassing behaviour with your new friends and now we are guilty of being associated with them (old friends), however, it does not extend to you
illusion of transparency
we feel especially transparent when we feel self-conscious and worry about being evaluated negatively by others
looking-glass self by Cooley
looking-glass self describes the process wherein individuals base their sense of self on how they believe others view them. Using social interaction as a type of “mirror,” people use the judgments they receive from others to measure their own worth, values, and behaviour.
