chapter 4: the self Flashcards
self-concept
all of an individual’s knowledge about their personal qualities
Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory
o The theory that we make inferences about our personal characteristics on the basis of our overt behaviours when internal cues are weak or ambiguous
o Especially true when we are first developing a self-concept or when we don’t have a good sense of who we are in a particular domain
o Especially likely to draw self-inferences from behaviours that people see as freely chosen
children and markers experiment
introducing children to drawing with colourful markers, some children received a previously promised “good player” certificate, others unexpectedly received it, some didn’t
o 1-2 weeks later they were given markers during free time
o Those who hadn’t received the reward or received it unexpectedly drew 16% of the time, those who expected and got the reward drew 8.6% of their free time
o Must have concluded that they drew for the reward, not just for the pleasure of creating a picture
can imagined behaviors be input for self-perception process
yes
o Thinking about actual or imagined behaviour increases the accessibility of related personal characteristics – thoughts come to mind easier and then become the basis for a self-inference
o Seeing yourself as possessing relevant traits – improve not only confidence, persistence and effort, but also actual performance on the task
gymnast experiment
gymnasts assigned to practice a new balance-beam move or imagine doing the same thing trying to form a realistic image of every detail
o Both groups showed the same improvement
looking-glass self
one source of our self-knowledge are people’s reactions to us
children told they’re tidy experiment
three groups of schoolchildren: one told they’re tidy, one repeatedly instructed to be tidy, control
o The tidiest were kids in the first group – labelled as tidy, they behaved accordingly reflecting their new self-concepts
- Not necessary to be explicitly labelled with a trait – choosing you to run important errands
o Largest effects on people whose self-concepts are uncertain or still developing
social-comparison theory
- Social comparison theory – the theory that people learn about and evaluate their personal qualities by comparing themselves to others
o Leon Festinger – people would gain the most accurate information about themselves by seeking out similar others for comparison
o Contrast effect – an effect of comparison standard or prime that makes the perceiver’s judgement more different from the standard – if there’s a big difference that leads to a biased view of self (much lower or much higher self esteem)
o Assimilation effect – an effect of comparison standard or prime that makes the perceiver’s judgement more similar to the standard – see your skills as slightly better when comparing to someone who’s slightly more skilled than you
why do people compare themselves to others
May seek out accurate self-knowledge (mastery), to show solidarity (connectedness) or feel better about themselves (valuing me and mine)
why is learning about ourselves different than learning about others
see ourselves in a wider range of situations and for more time, we have access to our inner thoughts
what’s a common strategy to infer others’ thoughts
consider our own thoughts, assume that they have similar ones and then adjust them if necessary to reflect specific information we know about the other person
what’s a common strategy to infer others’ thoughts
consider our own thoughts, assume that they have similar ones and then adjust them if necessary to reflect specific information we know about the other person acto
what’s a common strategy to infer others’ thoughts
consider our own thoughts, assume that they have similar ones and then adjust them if necessary to reflect specific information we know about the other person acto
what’s a common strategy to infer others’ thoughts
consider our own thoughts, assume that they have similar ones and then adjust them if necessary to reflect specific information we know about the other person acto
actor-observer effect
the idea that we attribute our own behaviors to situational causes while seeing others’ acts as due to their inner characteristics
reasons for the actor-observer effect
o When we witness another person’s behaviour, that person is salient – they’re the focus of attention and stand out against the background
When we act, we look out at the world, so the stimulus or trigger is the salient factor
o When asked why something occurred people consider different alternatives for the self and for others (why you liked the latest thriller – external reasons vs why your friend likes it – internal reasons)
when is the actor-observer effect much smaller
may operate differently depending on whether the to-be-explained action is positive or negative (reversed for positive behaviors in order to boost self-esteem)
o More likely when a behavior is seen as deviating widely from what most others do in a particular circumstance compared to behaviors that seem more mundane or typical
difference between the actor and the observer
actors explain their behavior by their own beliefs and goals, observers more often cite more remote causes of those beliefs or goals
students kept diaries experiment
50 students kept diaries of their positive and negative moods and tried to identify the sources for 5 weeks
o Another group of students just had to describe how different factors can generally affect people’s moods
o No difference in factors – the vast wealth of self-knowledge doesn’t guarantee that we can generate unique insights into our own behavior
self-aspects
summaries of a person’s beliefs about the self in specific domains, roles, or activities
strategies of self coherence
o Noting a few core attributes they believe characterize them uniquely among people and consistently across situations
Self-schema – core characteristics that a person believes characterize them across situation – once something is incorporated people notice and process information about it very efficiently
People tend to see evidence for these core traits even in their most mundane behaviors, reinforcing their sense of stable and unitary self
o Making accessible at any time only a subset of our self-knowledge and self-aspects
Ex: researchers asked biased questions to induce students to reflect on either their past introverted or extroverted behaviors – students rated themselves but also behaved accordingly
o Selective memory – when thinking about their past, people reconstruct an autobiography or life story that integrates their various self-aspects and characteristics
People whose behavior has changed from shy to outgoing may retrieve a biased set of autobiographical memories
constructing a coherent sense of self in the West
people tend to see the self as independent, separate from other people, revealed primarily in inner thought and feelings
General attributes that mark them as unique – I’m intelligent
constructing a coherent sense of self in the east
o Asia, Africa, South America – see the self as connected with others and revealed in social roles and relationships
Define themselves in terms of relationships, roles, attributes – I’m a daughter
Often visualize memories from a third person perspective
More emphasis on self aspects than on self-schemata – may have a self-concept that incorporates more variability, inconsistencies and even contradictions
can we all think about ourselves in both a collectivist and individualist way
each of us has the capacity to think of ourselves in both collectivist and individualist ways
- Ex: priming US students with individualism or collectivism caused them to display the types of values an judgement characteristics of those respective cultures
self-esteem
– an individual’s positive or negative evaluation of themselves
o Trait self-esteem: chronic feelings about the self
o State self-esteem: a person’s relatively fleeting feelings about the self in a particular moment
lake Wobegon effect
– people generally tend to inflate their own abilities and accomplishments, seeking to elevate their self-esteem
o Rate themselves above average on majority of qualities
faces of politicians experiment
students viewed a picture of a male politician whose face had been digitally blended with the participant’s own face – men prefer
o Women don’t – might be weird because it’s a combination of a male and a female face
self-enhancing bias
any tendency to gather or interpret information concerning the self in a way that leads to overly positive evaluations
how does unbiased working memory affect self perception
easy to remember one’s own contributions, more difficult to imagine others’ (less when the project is a failure)
introversion or extroversion experiment
students were led to believe that their extroversion or introversion was a desirable characteristic
o When students had to recall past behaviors, they described more memories of the sort they believed to be desirable
o + the same experiment but with brushing teeth – most of us amass more positive experiences than negative ones both in reality and memory
self-complexity
the extent to which a person possesses many and diverse self-aspects
- Negative events or failures seem to have about the same negative impact on people regardless of their level of self-complexity – negative effects are more powerful
self-evaluation maintenance
a theory outlining the conditions under which people’s self-esteem will be maintained or will suffer based on social comparisons to close or distant others
o Abraham Tesser – two possible reactions after social comparison – depend on the closeness of the other person and the importance or centrality of the attribute in question for the person’s self-concept
Olympic Games observation
o The silver-medalist naturally compares themselves to the gold-medalist and doesn’t feel good
o The bronze-medalist compares themselves to the person in the 4th place – happier
2 tactics for self-esteem
establishing distance between ourselves and those who are successful (downplaying our similarities to them or backing off from our relationships with them)
o Comparing with those who are less fortunate
breast-cancer patients experiment
they compared themselves with others who were worse off – people whose disease wasn’t responding to treatments or those who lacked social support or contracted the disease at a comparatively young age
comparing relationships study
when people had to list aspects of their relationships that were better than most people’s – felt more positive about the relationship compared to those who just listed good aspects of their relationships
why self-enhance
- Some people who strive for high self-esteem really amount to efforts at self-improvement
- Self-regulation – efforts to control one’s behavior in line with internal standards (self-guides) or external standards - Self-esteem had value above and beyond its usefulness as an indicator of our level of success in our commerce with the world
- People prefer to feel good about themselves to value “me and mine”: high self-esteem is associated with positive emotions and lower likelihood of depression
- Ex: if people were guessing how much money they had in their account – always guessed more
how do people self-enhance
avoid situations in which we don’t perform well, refuse to compare ourselves with more successful others and fail to notice that we’re not all that we could or should be
Japan and self-criticism
- Japanese students score lower on self-esteem questionnaires than American students do, may even reverse the self-enhancing bias (greater tendency to accept negative rather than positive information about the self)
o Self-criticism which is meant to improve one’s actions and ability to fit in harmoniously with others
o US – the view of the self as autonomous and separate from others – positive personal attributes are the fundamental source of personal worth (self-enhancement is natural)
See themselves as intelligent, independent, fit for leadership
o Collectivist cultures – connectedness among individuals and groups is emphasized over personal autonomy, the value of self is measured by adjustment to others’ expectations and shared ideals
Might see themselves as particularly good at fitting with others or suiting their actions to social situations
what’s self-esteem a signal of
how well we’re doing in fulfilling our fundamental social motives for mastery of our environment and connectedness with others
o Men’s self-esteem is more influenced by successes and failures involving mastery and women’s by connectedness
which principle comes into operation once we construct a self-concept
conservativism
what do emotions include
thoughts, feelings, bodily reactions, desires for action
William James
sensations from the skin and muscles were the chief causes of the experience of emotion
prevalent theory of emotions today
emotion = physiological arousal + a belief concerning its cause
- Prevalent view today = emotions are caused by appraisals of self-relevant object or event
o Appraisal – an individual’s interpretation of a self-relevant event or situation that direct emotional responses and behavior – can involve a host of considerations (if an action or event is positive or negative for the self, caused by the self or caused by another person or caused by the circumstances, if the action or even is controllable or uncontrollable)
what are our appraisals based on
salient cues (conspicuous features, people or events that may or may not correspond to the true causes of our emotions)
flexible appraisals experiment
participants told that they’re exposed to a “subliminal noise” that will make them more or less stressed + videotaped while delivering a speech
o No noise was actually played, but those who’re told that it’s the stressful noise rated themselves as less anxious and made fewer speech errors – attributed their stage fright to the noise
what emotions do Japanese people feel more often
connectedness, indebtedness, familiarity
what do our appraisals of events affect
many aspects of the body and mind, thinking (focusing us on the content of our appraisals)
o Strong emotions of any sort positive or negative can create intense arousal that limits people’s ability to pay attention to other events
what’s frequently activated together in an emotion
- Appraisals, bodily responses, subjective feelings and emotionally driven behavior
pen in people’s mouth experiment
people wrote with a pen clenched between their teeth or held loosely between pursed lips – smile or a scowl
o Had to watch a series of cartoons – those who were smiling assigned higher ratings
botox experiment
asked women to comprehend sentences describing happy, sad and anger-inducing actions before and after receiving a botox injection (paralyze frowning)
o Women were slower to understand sadness and anger-inducing sentences
washing hands experiment
participants shown a film clip of disgust-inducing scene and then some are asked to wash their hands
o Read actions that count as immoral – those who washed their hands rated the scenarios as less morally wrong
self-expression
a motive for choosing behaviours that are intended to reflect and express the self-concept
self-presentation
a motive for choosing behaviors intended to create in observers a desired impression of the self
two most common goals of social interaction
integration and self-promotion
self-monitoring
a personality characteristic defined as the degree to which people are sensitive to the demands of social situations and shape their behaviors accordingly
o High self-monitors typically shape their behaviors to project the impression they think their current audience or situation demand
o Low self-monitors – behave in ways that express their internal attitudes and dispositions and behave more consistently from audience to audience
ambitious people pretend experiment
participants pretended to be ambitious, selfish people who would be suitable for a “cutthroat position in a dog-eating environment”
o Some learned they failed and some that they succeeded
o High-monitors – felt better when they succeed, low-monitors didn’t
the ideal self
a person’s sense of what they would ideally like to be
o Traits that help you match your aspirations
ought self
a person’s sense of what they are obligated to be, or should be
o Traits that help you meet your obligations
regulatory focus theory
a theory that people typically have either a promotion or prevention focus, shaping the ways they self-regulate to attain positive outcomes versus avoiding negative outcomes
- Those with a promotion focus – seek opportunities to obtain positive outcomes relevant to goals, when they do, they achieve happiness
o Those with prevention focus seek to avoid negative outcomes relevant to goals, when they succeed they feel relief and when they don’t anxiety
GPA strategies experiment
students were induced to think of their ideal selves (promotion) or their ought selves (prevention) and then presented with strategies of obtaining a good GPA
o Those who thought about ideal selves rated the strategies as more enjoyable if promotion
- Ex: follow up study – students asked to list an ideal or ought goal, then asked to list strategies that could help them achieve the goal or avoid failing
o Ideal-primed students believed the strategies they generated would be more enjoyable if they were promotion focused
reasons to regulate self-behavior
express their self-concepts, create a desired impression, achieve a self they personally desire
social nature of self experiment
present in particular ways in two videotaped segments that they believed would be viewed by others
o In one they portrayed themselves as introverted and in the other as extroverted, told only one is needed and deleted the other
o Extroversion tape seen by others – sat closer to the confederate
strategies to weaken the effects of temptations
o Self administer penalties or rewards
o Try to think of the acts that contribute to our long-term goals in especially positive ways, linking them to our central values
o View temptations in more abstract ways which should highlight the temptation’s incompatibility with our central goals
superordinate vs subordinate categories experiment
- Ex: students presented with different objects, some asked to generate a superordinate category and others subordinate
o Producing broad categories – prime more abstract thinking
o After the task had to evaluate an apple and a candy bar
o Those primed with abstract – rated the candy bar more negatively and opted for the apple more often – abstract thinking enables effective self-control
how does exerting self control affect people’s abilities
- Exerting self-control in a task weakens people’s ability to exercise control in a completely different task
o At times, cognitive load may reduce attention to, and feelings of temptation by attractive stimuli such as calorie-rich treat food
o Some cognitive resources are required to recognize the tempting nature of such stimuli (might facilitate self-regulation)
self-affirmation
any action or event that enhances or highlights one’s own sense of personal integrity, such as affirming one’s most important values
hand in ice experiment
engaged in an initial task that either required or didn’t require self-control
o Some participants wrote about their most important personal value (self-affirmation task)
o All students engaged in a task that requires self-control (keeping their hand in a bucket of cold water)
o Those who engaged in self-control earlier kept their hand in the cold water for a shorter period of time, but not when they self-affirmed
self-awareness
a state of heightened awareness of the self, including our internal standards and whether we measure up to them
o Focusing attention on the self highlights the distance between our current self and our actual or ideal selves – unpleasant
what do people do with the feedback that’s inconsistent with an established self-concept
avoid, distrust, resist
are people with high-self esteem protected from inconsistent feedback
yes, but when people’s self-esteem is overinflated or unstable the impact of negative effects can be magnified
o People with unrealistically inflated self-views are the most likely to turn to violence and aggression
how are people whose self-concept is much higher than their friends’ rating
have poor social skills, the negative effect on mental health may last for years
people reminded of a mismatch experiment
when people are reminded of significant mismatch between their current self and their self-guides, levels of “natural killer” self activity in their bloodstream decreased
o Threats to the self elevate the stress hormone cortisol which may aid in dealing with the threat, but if such reactions occur in the long haul they may lead to a host of physical health aliments
type A behavior pattern
ambitiousness, competitiveness, rapid speech style, hostility, anger) – higher heart disease, anger and hostility most important
positive emotions in yearbook photos
observers rate the amount of positive emotion evident in women’s college yearbook photos – predicted positive outcomes in the women’s marriages and their personal well-being as much as 30 years later
nun diaries
examined autobiographical statements written by nuns as they entered their religious order in the 1900s
o Those statements with more positive emotional content – longer lived
o Death rates of those with the most positive statements were 2.5 times lower than those with less positive statements
learned helplessness
- Animals and humans that have endured uncontrollable outcomes often give up attempting to control their fate
o Ex: people exposed to inescapable bursts of noise and later failed to protect themselves from noises they could have easily stopped
o Appraisals of events as uncontrollable contributes to clinical depression – learned helplessness
Perceived “my fault” depression
o People with this attributional style more likely to become depressed
emotion focused coping
dealing with the negative emotions aroused by threats or stressors, often by suppressing emotions or distraction
waiting experiment
- Ex: told participants that they scored very well or very poorly on a test of intelligence and creativity and then told them to wait for 5 minutes
o For half – the waiting room was equipped with a mirror and camera (self-awareness)
o The people who scored poorly and were told to wait in the mirror room – left significantly sooner - Ex: gave participants false feedback about their test performance and then seated each one in front of a TV set to watch a video as the next part of the study
o Nature scenes + music – failure feedback people watched for much longer (distraction)
terror management theory
coping by reaffirming our most basic cultural worldviews such as religious beliefs of views of what’s the most important in life when face with one’s own death
o Thoughts about one’s own mortality – positive, prosocial behaviors but intolerance and rejection for the deviant and the different worldviews
writing about traumatic event experiment
students had to write about personally traumatic life events that they had never before discussed or trivial topics
o On the 4 successive days of the experiment, the first group reported more negative emotions and more physical discomfort but their immune-system functioning (for 6 weeks)
tend and befriend
- One measure to cope emotionally with stress is by nurturing one’s self, one’s kin and other people + creating and maintaining social networks of close others – more common in women, fight or flight more common in men
problem-focused coping
dealing with threats or stressors directly, often by reappraising the situation or by directly removing the threat
students told to repress emotions experiment
students watched an emotionally evocative film under instruction to suppress their emotions – reduced ability to remember details of the film
self-handicapping
seeking to avoid blame for an expected poor performance, either by claiming an excuse in advance or by actively sabotaging one’s own performance
o Can lower the probability of a good performance, may undercut one’s desire to improve on a task following failure
o May come with a social cost as well – observers (more women) dislike those who self-handicap and rate them negatively on a wide range of traits (women value effort for itself)
people who regarded themselves as poor study
questioned about their attributions for their situation and their general emotional well-being
o Poor people who believed they have a fair chance to achieve felt more pride and joy and less guilt and disappointment about their lives
o People often feel better if they feel like they have control, even when the outcome is negative
o Blaming external for failures lets you off the hook momentarily but interpreting the forces that influence your life as controllable will put you back in charge for the long-term
counterfactual thinking
how an outcome might have turned out differently
o Those focusing on “if only” throughts may feel bad, but might be functional to focus on them in order to develop appropriate tactics for when faced next with the same circumstances
o Counterfactuals that focus on better outcomes appear to elicit positive changes in our future behaviour which enhances our perceived sense of control which leads to further improvements
people asked to rate the importance they attached to certain life goals experiment
people asked to rate the importance they personally attached to several different life goals
o Intrinsic such as positive relationships, community service and health + external such as financial success, fame, physical attractiveness
o Those who attached more importance to intrinsic goals tended to have better well-being and lower levels of depression and psychological distress
o Benefits of deciding to cease pursuing a goal if it seems unreachable and to choose new ones
people with high self-esteem
those with high self-esteem respond to such threats with far fewer emotional and physical symptoms
o Respond better in the face of social exclusion – fight negative feedback, setbacks and stress with an aggressive use of self-enhancing biases and problem-focused coping
o Largely unaffected emotionally by negative feedback, compare themselves with others who’re worse-off and make self-enhancing attributions for their failures
o A strong sense of control lets them tackle problems head on
people with low self-esteem
much less likely to self-enhance, make less downwards comparisons and remember more negative things about themselves
how to cope with controllable threats
generally positive or mildly negative response and physiological responses are geared toward successful mobilization and effective action
o Problem-focused coping might work best even if it increases immediate distress
how to cope with uncontrollable threat
sescape, distraction and emotion-focused coping may be the only effective ways to deal with them
