Chapter 2: The Self in a Social World

Question 1

What components make up the self?

Answer 1

• Self-concept - who am I?
• Self-esteem - my sense of self-worth?
• Social self - My roles as a student, family member, and friend; my group identity
• Self-knowledge - How can I explain and predict myself?

Question 2

What’s the spotlight effect?

Answer 2

• People perceive themselves as centre stage (i.e., the main character)
• Often think people are paying a lot more attention to them than they actually are
• Ex. Study with the logos on the shirts, students grossly overestimated how much people would notice

Question 3

What are the consequences of the spotlight effect?

Answer 3

• You can be perceived as self-centred
• You ignore others (not paying attention to what they’re saying)
• You no longer act as yourself, may lead to social anxiety

Question 4

T.F: Lockwood and Kunda (1997) found that social comparisons can have either positive or negative effects on the self.

Answer 4

• TRUE

Question 5

What did the meta-analysis about the effects of social media discover?

Answer 5

• Exposure to potential upward comparison targets on social media had adverse effects on user’s body image, subjective well-being, mental health, and self-esteem
• Exposure to so-called “superior” others on social media leads people to evaluate themselves in a more negative light
• People compare themselves to unrealistic, unrelatable targets that are manipulated and idealizedself-representations

Question 6

What does the Social Comparison Theory state?

Answer 6

There are four different types of comparisons:
- Upward: can either be jealous or motivating comparisons
- Downward: can either be scornful or gratuitous comparisons

Question 7

What does Relative Deprivation Theory describe?

Answer 7

• We engage in social comparisons constantly
• Even if we are doing better than some, others are doing better than us, providing us with constant opportunities to make upward comparisons
• Was determined from a survey of black American soldiers that many in the southern United States were much more satisfied with their stations cause regardless of the racism at the time, their lives could always be worse. They knew they were in no position to get a promotion
• A very psychological interpretation of conditions (it’s all in your head)

Question 8

What are the two types of relative deprivation?

Answer 8

• Egoistic - find it as a personal deprivation, it’s holding only yourself back from getting promoted etc.
• Fraternal - you may be doing fine, but you find that your community/association is deprived relative to other communities/associations

Question 9

What are the preconditions for Relative Deprivation?

Answer 9

• Desire/envy
• Entitlement (‘I should get it too’)
• Feasibility (‘I meet all the conditions’)
• Personal responsibility for failure

Question 10

What are some of the implications of relative deprivation theory?

Answer 10

• Explains why people aren’t happy regardless of having great lives

Question 11

What’s the Illusion of Transparency?

Answer 11

• When we feel especially transparent when we feel self-conscious and worry about being viewed negatively by others
• Very much in our heads

Question 12

What are self-schemas?

Answer 12

• The elements of your self-concept, the specific beliefs by which you define yourself
• Will be more likely to identify these schemas in others as well

Question 13

What is the Looking-Glass Self?

Answer 13

• Concept developed by Charles H. Cooley, in 1902
• Our use of how we think others perceive us as a mirror for perceiving ourselves. What matters is the way we imagine they see us.

Question 14

How does the concept of self-esteem differ between collectivist and individualist cultures?

Answer 14

• Collectivist - view self-esteem as more malleable
• Individualist - view self-esteem as more rigid

Question 15

What’s the planning fallacy?

Answer 15

• We often underestimate how long it will take to complete a task
• Better to look at past behaviour as a predictor for future success

Question 16

What’s impact bias?

Answer 16

• Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events
• Especially after negative events. We discount the importance of everything else
• Ex. Getting broken up with and you feel sad and then next week you’re fine

Question 17

What are dual attitudes?

Answer 17

• Our automatic, implicit attitudes regarding someone or something often differ from our consciously controlled, explicit attitudes

Question 18

T/F: People are never really motivated to maintain their self-esteem.

Answer 18

• FALSE
• People are usually motivated to maintain their self-esteem
• Self-esteem can be threatened by social comparisons

Question 19

Why do we strive to maintain self-esteem?

Answer 19

• Relationships with others help us survive/thrive, so we must be able to withstand social rejection or sense when it’s coming and defend against it.
• Can also motivate us to self-improve

Question 20

What is self-esteem dependent upon?

Answer 20

• Depends on whether we believe we have traits that make us attractive to others, and not necessarily on traits we say we value most

Question 21

What’s Terror Management Theory?

Answer 21

• States that the reality of our death motivates us to gain recognition from our work and values
• That’s why we must continuously pursue SE by meeting society’s demands

Question 22

Why can actively pursuing self-esteem backfire?

Answer 22

• Less open to criticism
• Less empathetic
• Enjoy things less
• Very high self-esteem can lead to narcissism

Question 23

What’s the major difference between self-efficacy ad self-esteem?

Answer 23

• Self-efficacy - If you believe you can do something
• Self-esteem - If you like yourself overall

Question 24

What’s a self-serving bias?

Answer 24

• Helps us explain/rationalize negative and positive events
• Attribute successes to ourselves, blame others for our failures
• Depressed people do not display much self-serving bias

Question 25

T/F: Most people see themselves as better than average.

Answer 25

• This is true

Question 26

What’s defensive pessimism?

Answer 26

• You’re optimistic but with a dash of realism. It helps anticipate problems and motivates effective coping
• Also more open to criticism

Question 27

What’s the false consensus effect?

Answer 27

• On matters of opinion, we find support for our positions by overestimating the extent to which others agree
• What we consider common sense others must also consider common sense
• “we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are”.

Question 28

What’s the false uniqueness effect?

Answer 28

• We serve our self-image by seeing our talents and moral behaviours as relatively unusual
• We see our failings as relatively normal and our virtues as relatively exceptional

Question 29

What are temporal comparisons?

Answer 29

• Our past selves help enhance our views of our current selves (we’re always improving)
• Can create a false sense of improvement
• We perceive positive past selves as psychologically closer in time vs. negative past selves

Question 30

What are the five components of a self-serving bias?

Answer 30

• Illusory sense of improvement
• Self-serving attributions
• Self-congratulatory comparisons
• Illusory optimism
• False consensus for failings

Question 31

What’s self-handicapping?

Answer 31

• Sabotaging your chances for success by weighting impediments that make success less likely
• Keeps potential failure from hurting self-esteem
• Occurs especially when self-image is heavily tied with performance

Question 32

What’s self-presentation theory?

Answer 32

• We are eager to impress others, so we feel anxious when motivated to impress others but have self-doubts

Question 33

What’s alcohol myopia?

Answer 33

• Restricts people from thinking about their internal states when drunk