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