chapter 3 Flashcards
what is the Social Self? (according to William James)
the self is not something to be distinguished from the social world, but rather a social entity through and through
most of the time, why do we draw inaccurate conclusions about ourselves?
because we don’t have access to certain nonconscious mental processes (ex those that lead us to prefer objects we looked at most recently)
what was the conclusion of the study where participants rated how frequently they did certain things (ex reading), and then rated how frequently they think others think that they do it.
Participants rated the accuracy of self-predictions to be greater than the accurace of predictions about other (they thought they knew themselves better than other would)
What about when they asked participants to record their days, and asked their surroundings to rate how frequently they think the participant does the behavior. what was the conclusion?
reports of close other were as accurate as the participant’s anticipation of their behavior. Others know us as well as ourselves!
What traits are we better at judging for ourselves vs other people are better at judging for ourselves?
We are better judges of our internal traits (ex optimism). Others are better at judging our external traits (ex outspoken)
What traits do we often over-enhance when describing our personality?
Traits that we value highly
What is the self-schema?
A cognitive structure derived from past experience, that represents a person’s beliefs and feelings about themself, in both general and specific situations.
What did Hazel Markus (1977) describe as someone who was “schematic”?
Someone who had stronger opinions about themselves, in this example people whorated themselves as extremely dependent or extremely independent (both ends of the spectrum)
In Markus’ study, what do schematic people do more than aschematic? (2 things)
schematic people:
1) judged schema-relevant traits as true or false about themselves more quickly than aschematic participants
2) generate more behaviors consistent with the schema-relevant trait
Someone who is schematic on conscientiousness is likely to be far more attuned to how ……. other are compared to someone who is aschematic on conscientiousness
conscientious
Remember: Self-knowleddge is stored in memory in cognitive structures know as _______
self-schemas
