Chapter 3: The Social Self Flashcards
How is our self knowledge organized and stored?
Self Schemas
DEF What is a self schema?
a cognitive structure, derived from past experience that represents a person’s beliefs and feelings about the self, both in general and specific situations
What is the Hazel Markus hypothesis?
a person who has a self schema of a particular domain should…
- process that infor more quickly
- retrieve consistent evidence more quickly
- reject contradictory infor more quickly
Hazel Markus Experiment
- participants self label and independent or dependent
- rated closer to extremes mean that was schematic
- rated closer to moderate mean that was aschematic
- asked to rate how certain traits described them
- schematic people more quickly identified similar traits, made overall ratings quicker, and were more likely to reject contradictions thatn aschematic people
What are some potential origins for the sense of self?
- Family and other socialization agents
- situationism
- malleability and stability
How do socialization agents influence our sense of self?
- socialization agents teach up which attitudes, behaviors, and scripts are appopriate
- we know ourselves by imagining what others think of us (social construction)
What family dynamics influence our sense of self?
- sibling dynamics
What are sibling dynamics?
- scarce resources lead to sibling conflict
- siblings develop different personality traits so they occupy different niches
What is the older sibling trope?
more powerful, surrogate parent
What is the younger sibling trope?
more agreeable, willing to try new things and go against norms set by older sibling
DEF What is siuationism?
we adapt our self to meet a situation
DEF What is a working self concept?
only a subset of a person’s vast pool of self-knowledge is brought to mind in any given context
DEF What is the William McGuire and Alice Hypothesis?
we tend to highlight what makes us unique in a given situation (assimilation and differentiation)
Willima McGuire and Alice Experiment
- asked children to describe themselves
- wrote about details that made them a part of a minority group
- age if they were older
- gender if a girl
- race if they were black or other racial minority
How do malleability and stability affect our sense of self?
- malleability of the self changes in certain social situation
- stability of the self is our continuous core stable self
What remains stable over time in our sense of self?
- our pool of self-knowledge remains relatively stable
- even the way we change in social situations is predictable and consistent
DEF What is the independent self-construal?
- self is autonomous, distinct and separate from others
- assert your uniqueness
- internal causes for behavior
- western cultures
- SELF IN TERMS OF TRAITS THAT ARE STABLE ACROSS TIME AND SOCIAL CONTEXT
DEF What is the interdependent self construal?
- self is fundamentally connected to other people
- find a place within community
- fulfill appropriate social roles
- eastern cultures
- SELF IS EMBEDDED WITHIN SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS, ROLES, AND DUTIES
independent vs interdependent focus experiment
- participants asked to tell a story when they were the center of attention
- westerners tell the story in first person, looking outward, as lead role
- easterners tell the story as if they were an observer, third person persepctive
McPartland and Kuhn ‘Who Am I’ Experiment
- participants asked to write a list answered the Q
- American gave context-free responses
- –personality traits, preferences, etc.
- Interdependent culture groups list relationships and contect
- — “Jan’s friend”
- — “serious at work”, “fun with friends”
Ma and Schoenenan Experiment (Kenya)
- repeated who am i experiment with four groups in Kenya
- tribes with little to no western exposure = interdependent
- workers in Nairobi = interdependent with some independent self construals
- Kenyan undergrads = independent with some interdependent self construals
How does gender affect self construal?
Women may be more interdependent
- more likely to show pictures that include other people
- more emphatic, better judge of others’ emotions
- more attuned to situational cues
How do we account for different social contruals across gender?
different genders are raised differently, experience different socialization
- girls are talked with about emotions
- children play in gender separated groups
- girls focus on cooperative games (mother child)
- boys focus on hierarchy and competition
DEF What is social comparison theory?
people compare themselves to other people to obtain an accurate assessment of their own opinions, abilities, and internal states
- difficult to quantify honesty, easy to compare your honesty to someone else’s
How do we choose people for social comparison?
- compare to someone at same skill level
- biased to choose slightly inferior people (we like self esteem boost)
- someone with slighty better grades is an opportunity for improvement
DEF What is self esteem?
overall positive or negative evaluation people have of themselves
DEF What is trait self esteem?
a persons’s enduring level of relf regard OVER TIME
- fairly stable and consistent
DEF What is state self esteem?
dynamic and changeable self evaluations as momentary feelings about the self
- situation factors
DEF What is contingencies of self worth hypothesis?
A perspective maintaining that peoples’ self esteem is contigent on the successes and failures in domains on which they have based their self worth (influence of domain)
Examples of domains for self evaluation
popularity, physical appearence, more virtue, intelligence
Contingencies of Self Worth Experiment
- students applying to undergrad filled out self esteem questionarres when they got acceptance/rejection letter
- greater impact on self esteem if academics were tied to self worth
DEF What is the sociometer hypothesis?
the idea that self esteem is an internal subjective index of the extent to which a person is inclined or looked on favorably by others
What details support the sociometer?
- we need community and shared resources so self esteem helps gauge interactions that we need to survive
- we feel good about things that others use to accept us
Western Self Esteem
- western culture invented low self esteem
- creates interactions designed to enhance self esteem (praised for achievements)
Eastern Self Esteem
- many east asian languges have no word or phrase for self esteem
- create interactions designed to improve the self (critique yourself with your peers)
Western vs. Eastern Self Esteem Experiment
- participants given a difficult task and then a second chance to try again
- westerners worked longer if they successded the first time
- easterners worked longer if they failed the first time
DEF What is self-enhancement?
desire to maintain, increase, or protect one’s positive self views.
DEF What are self serving construals?
people create self serving interpretations (construals) of traits to support self enhancement
- better-than-average effect
DEF What is the better than average effect?
most people think they are above average on various personality trait and abilty dimensions
- we judge other people how they are on average, but we judge ourselves at our best
DEF What is self affirmation theory?
people can maintain an overall sense of self worth following psychologically threatening information by affirming a values aspect of themselves unrelated to that
How does self enhancement affect our well-being? (west)
experiment showed people were happier when living with dillusions of a more positive self
- high self enhancers had more coping skills for stress
What are potential motives driving self evaluation?
- self enhancement
- self serving construals
- self affirmation theory
How does self enhancement effect our wellbeing? (east)
- east asians don’t approve of positive self illusions
- east asians are not tied to self esteem and therefore don’t need or benefit from positive self enhacement
- benefit from fulfilling social roles and expectations
DEF What is self verification theory?
that people sometimes strive for stable, subjectively accurate beliefs about themselves because such self views give them a sense of coherence and predictabilty
- we attempt to verify our pre-existing beliefs
- we selectively recall info that is consistent with our self view
- we focus on relationships that maintain our self views
How does self enhancement compare to self verification?
- self enhancement is relevant for emotional response to feedback
- self verification is relevant for a cognitive assessment of how valid the feedback is
Enhancement vs Verification Experiment
- pos and neg self view participants given pos or neg feedback
- neg belief saw neg as more accurate (verification)
- pos belief saw pos as more accurate (verification)
- everyone liked pos feeback (enhancement)
- on one like neg feedback (enhancement)
DEF What is self regulation?
the processess by which people initaite, alter, and control their behavior in pursuit of their goals
- helps us prioritize for long term goals
DEF What is self discrepancy theory?
behavior is motivated by standards reflecting ideal and ought selves
DEF What is the actual self?
the self that people believe they are
DEF What is the ideal self?
the self that embodies people’s wishes and aspirations
DEF What is the ought self?
the self that is concerned with the duties, obligations, and external demands people feel compelled to honor
What do we feel if we don’t meet ideal self standards?
dejection, disappointment, shame
What do we feel if we don’t meet ought self standards?
agitated, guilt, anxiety
How does self discrepancy theory relate to self regulation?
We change or regulate our behavior so our actual self is closer to ideal/ought.
DEF What is promotion focus?
focus on attaining positive outcomes
- approach related behavior
- ideal self standards
- westerners exhibit more
DEF What is prevention focus?
focus on avoiding negative outcomes
- avoidance related behavior
- ought self standards
- easterners exhibit more
DEF What is self presentation?
presenting the person we would like others to believe we are
- face
- self monitering
What is face?
the public image of ourself that we want others to believe
DEF What is self monitering?
the tendency to moniter one’s behavior to fit the demands of the current situation
- patients in mental hospitals show low self monitering
DEF What is self handicapping?
tendency to engage in self defeating behavior in order to have an excuse ready should one perform poorly or fail.
