Chapter 6 Flashcards
What is the Working Self-Concept?
The self-concept is an organized collection of beliefs about the self.
What is Social Comparison Theory?
Social Comparison Theory proposes that individuals compare themselves with others in order to assess their abilities and opinions
What is a reference group?
A set of people who are used as a gauge in making social comparisons
What is Downward Social Comparison? What does it enable you to do?
Looking at those you perceive to be worse off, enabling you to feel better about yourself
How do most people evaluate themselves? In the high school study, what percent rated themselves below average in “ability to get along with others”
Most peopel tend to evaluate themsleves in a more positive light than they really merit.
100% of the students
What is the N-effect and what effect does it have on the motivation to compare?
In which the number of recognized or known competitors appears to reduce the motivation to compete.
Social comparisons become less important to individuals as N (number of competitors) rises.
Explain how the Michaelangelo Effect can raise a persons’s self-esteem
A partner trying to “sculpt” into reality the ideal self of a loved one. “Bring out the best in the person”
One way cultures differ is on the dimension of Individualism versus Collectivism. Explain
Give the pen example.
Individualism involves putting personal goals ahead of group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group memberships.
Collectivism involves putting group goals ahead of personal goals and defining one’s identity in terms of the groups one belongs to.
5 pens, 4 red, 1 blue
American students always picked the blue
Indian students always picked the red
People reared in Individualist cultures suually have a more ___ self-view
Independent
Explain how women tend to show Relational Interdependence and men show Collective-Interdependence
Women are usually involved in close relationships involving intimate friends and family members
Men tend to interact in social groups such as clubs and sport teams.
People with low self-esteem appear to have self-views which are confused. Explain.
They tend to experience emotional highs and lows as well as mood swings. Contradictory behavior and susceptible to short-term fluctuations.
How are people “Cognitive Misers”?
What is Mindlessness? What is Mindfulness?
Cognitive resources are limited and the mind works to hoard them by taking cognitive shortcuts
Mindlessness- Rigid thinking in which details and important distinctions are lost
Mindfulness- promotes cognitive flexibility, which in turn can lead to self-acceptance and stress reduction.
What are Self-Attributions?
Explain each type
Internal vs External
Stable vs Unstable
Controllable vs. Uncontrollable
Self-Attributions: inferences that people draw about the causes of their own behavior.
Internal attributions ascribe the causes of behavior to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and feelings. External attributions ascribe the cause of behavior to situational demands and environmental constraints.
Stable: A cause that is more or less permanent and unlikely to change over time
Unstable: Include things such as mood, or motivation.
Controlled vs Uncontrollable: Self-explanatory
People with a pessimistic explanatory style tend to attribute their setbacks to which three factors?
Internal, stable, and global (or pervasive) factors
What is Affective Forecasting? How good are people at it?
How well people predict their future feelings in response to good and bad events. People are bad at this.
