exam 2 Flashcards
self-concept
-what you understand about yourself
-it forms the answer to “who I”
-this concept is multi-faceted: traits, roles, a nationality, role, college student, hobbies, interests (a reader), occupations
3 metaphors for how the self emerges
- social actor
- motivated agent
- autobiographical author
social actor
-enacts roles and displays traits by performing behaviors in the presence of others
-try to change TRAITS OR ROLES
motivated agent
-acts upon inner desires and formulates goals, values, and plant to guide behavior in the future
-want to change something ABOUT YOURSELF (like values or goals)
autobiographical author
-takes stock of life to create a story about who I am, how I came to be, and where my life may be going
-involves achieving a sense of temporal continuity in life (how my past self has developed into my present self, and how my present self will develop into an envisioned future self)
narrative identity
evolving story of the self that reconstructs the past and anticipates the future to provide a life with unity, meaning, and purpose
redemptive narratives
-track the move from suffering to an enhanced status or sate
-protagonist who journeys forth into dangerous and unredeemed world
William James
-How I became the person I am becoming
-the self is both I and Me
-self= the knower and what the knower knows when the knower reflects upon itself
Charles Taylor
-the self is a reflexive project
-we try to manage, discipline, refine, or improve the self
Ego
-Freud
-an executive self in the personality
-
Big 5
- extraversion
- neuroticism
- agreeableness
- conscientiousness
- openness to experience
traits
perceived consistencies in social performance
roles
capture the important structured relationships
social reputation =
traits + roles
Theory of Mind
-Wellman (1993)
-developed around age of 4, child’s understanding that the other people have minds, which are located desires and beliefs, and that motivates behavior
ability to infer another’s mental state and use this info to explain to explain and predict human behavior
The age 5-to-7 shift
cognitive and social changes that happen in the early elementary school years that result in children becoming more playful, intentional, and goal-oriented in their pursuit of approach to life
sets stage as motivated agent
Working memory
-can only hold so many things in memory at one time (what we can consciously perceive)
-what you’re thinking about in that moment
working self-concept
only a small subset of knowledge about the self can be activated at any given point in time
self-esteem
the overall opinion/ feeling towards ourselves
2 components of self esteem
1.) affective (a feeling) usually feel sad if low SE
2.) cognitive (a judgement) like a 1-7 scale “i dont think im a good person”
what is an unstable high self esteem more susceptible to?
ego threats ——–> aggression
narcissim
people sometimes attracted to the confidence
inflated self esteem: prone to aggression and poor interpersonal adjustment
SWANN
self-verification theory–>
-explains why some people strive to have a high self-esteem and some a low self-esteem. we like other people to verify what we think of ourselves.
contingency of self worth theory
where our self esteem derives from
what are the 2 social biases?
- downward social comparison: compare oneself to people or groups that are worse off than you leads to SELF-ENHANCEMENT EFFECT
- upward social comparison: compare oneself to people or groups that are better off than you
self-serving bias
tendency to perceive oneself favorably
examples of self-serving biases
- unrealistic optimist
- false consensus effect
- false uniqueness effect
- self-serving attributions
- better than revenge effect
- self-handicapping
- basking in reflected glory
False consensus effect
tendency to overestimate how common something is
- “everybody does it”
False uniqueness effect
tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or successful behaviors
-“Im special”
Self-serving attributions
attributing positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other factors
-“I won at scrabble because of my skill”
-I lost at scrabble because I got stuck with Qs and Zs and they got lucky with a triple word score”
Better than average effect
80-90% of people they are better than average in something
Self-handicapping
creating obstacles so that potential failure can be blamed on external factors aka self sabotage
BERGLAS & JONES 1978
-Participants told they would have difficulty with test preferred to take performance reducing drug rather than enhancing (placebo)
-Afraid their true selves would show
-If they fail = drug
-If succeed= did so in spite of the drug
Basking in reflected glory (BIRG-ing)
We associate ourselves with successful people and adopting their success as your own
Cialdini 1976: students are more likely to wear school apparel
“we “ won the game vs. “they” lost it
social comparison theory and its 2 components
people come to know about themselves by comparing themselves with others
1. Social norms and the opinions of others- compare when our own self-evaluation is unclear
2. Abilities and performance- here self evaluations driven by desire to become better
counterfactual
“what might have been”
Medvec, Madey, Gilovich- bronze medalists were actually happier than silver medalists
Consequences of social comparison
-can impact self-esteem
-feelings of regret
-feelings of envy
-behavioral consequences
SEM (self-evaluation maintenance model)
-Tesser 1988
-builds on social comparison theory and points to a range of psychological forces that help and maintain our self-esteem
1.) psychological closeness of another
2.) relative performance of that other
3.) relevance of the performance
-suggests managers may prefer less than optimal candidates who aren’t likely to challenge their standing in the org
cognitive accessibility
-the activation potential of available knowledge
-info that is ready to be used
priming
-making concepts temporarily (or chronically) accessible
-make us think about certain things
self-complexity
extent to which individuals have many different and relatively different ways of thinking about themselves
simplification strategies
we look for ways to not think about things too much
-heuristics
-confirmation bias
-magical thinking
- social cognition
-schemas
heuristics
-rules of thumb to simplify judgements/ processing
-mechanism for solving problems.
-ignore actual probabilities
representativeness heuristics
tendency to judge the frequency of likelihood of an event by the extent that it resembles a typical case
availability heuristic
-basing judgements on ease with which examples come to mind
-the easier it comes to mind, the more frequent/important/true it seems to be
bias blind spot
it is difficult for us to wee our own biases, though we believe we can easily detect biases in others
confirmation bias
-tendency to pay attention to information that confirms one’s beliefs
-distort, mislabel, or ignore info that contradicts beliefs
difference between illusory correlation and self fulfilling prophecy
illusory= belief
SFP= behavior
illusory correlation
believing 2 ore more variables are related when there is actually no relationship
-ex: president gets elected and gas goes up “because of them”
self-fulfilling prophecy
-a belief that produces a behavior in ways that help the belief come true
ROSENTHAL & JACOBSON: teachers led to believe some students were gifted (“bloomers”) and some not. In reality, this was not true
When you have strong beliefs -> confirmation bias -> pick out all the things that make them “smarter”
Teachers behaved in ways that helped confirm their FALSE beliefs, and students reacted to teachers’ behaviors
Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid 1977
Marijuana study. Asked kids if they smoked and parents if they thought their kid did. If parents thought they did when they didn’t, more likely to in a year.
what constitutes our “reality”?
-belief
-confirmation bias
-illusory correlation
-availability
sympathetic magic
the formation of simple associations between objects (idea in our head form simple associations in our heads become meaningful)
-law of similarity and contagion
law of contagion
objects that were once in contact continue ot be connected after that connection is gone
-ex: wear albert einsteins lab coat vs nazzi padded jacket when its -20 F outside
law of similarity
things that are alike are the same
-ex: breaks up with you, get rid of their pics
Zeigarnik effect
-remember “incomplete” tasks more than completed tasks
-if tasks are too easy and we don’t struggle, then they are fast and immemorable
Why do we wanna make sense of everything?
prediction and control
attributions
-help us make sense out of experience
-linking an instance of behavior to a cause
2 broad causes of behavior
1.) dispositional causes
2.) situational causes
dispositional causes of behavior
-personality
-traits
-individual characteristics
-internal
-(ex: didn’t hold the door open because they’re selfish)
situational causes of behavior
-Environment
-Constraints
-Circumstances
-Social roles
FAE (fundamental attribution effect
-tendency to attribute others’ behavior to DISPOSITIONAL factors and to undervalue the role of situational
COST: distorts perception of why things happen
BENEFIT: cognitive shortcut (saves mental energy)
actor-observer effect
-actor and observers give different explanations/ have different perspectives for the same events
-observers= dispositional attributions for actor’s behaviors
-actors= situational attributions for own behavior
-depends on your perspective
fundamental attribution error
observer
overestimate =
underestimate =
overestimate = disposition
underestimate = situation
self-serving bias
-tendency to take personal credit for success and make excuses for failure
-explaining our OWN behavior
-attribution depends on whether behavior has positive or negative consequences
social cognition
how people think about others and the social world
-we form schemas to navigate through large amounts of info
schemas
mental model
ex: when going to a restaurant, we know the hostess has to seat us and we need a menu before we order
social factors that influence how we reason
planning fallacy, affective forecasting, hot cognition, mood congruent memory
planning fallacy
underestimating how much time it will take to complete a task
affective forecasting
predictions about one’s future feelings
impact bias- overestimate the intensity of their future feelings
durability bias- overestimate duration of positive/negative feelings
hot cognition
thoughts influences by desires and emotions
-affects social judgement
what do directional goals lead to?
motivated skepticism
You want something so bad, that you fail to see the truth of the circumstances even if there’s evidence to prove it.
need for closure
desire to come to a firm conclusion is often influenced by time constraints
-May choose whatever restaurant is nearby without causing if it is the best or not if really hungry
mood congruent memory
tendency to recall memories similar in valence to our current mood
chameleon effect
when we mimic the mannerisms of the person you are interacting with
-We do this because of the pro-social effects. This automatic mimicry has been shown to increase liking between the mimicked person and the mimicking person.
attitudes
ASDIOFHSDOIFHAFHOIDSIHO
LaPierre
traveled with Chinese couple in 1930s. Called hotels to see if a Chinese couple could have a room. All said no.
-when face to face in hotels, most hotels said yes.
-Question: would people express prejudice?
-EXAMPLE OF ATTITUDES
explicit attitudes
participants are directly asked to provide their attitudes towards various objects, people, or issues
-survey or Likert scale
implicit attitudes
-an attitude a person doesn’t verbally/overtly expresses
-avoid the limitations that explicit attitudes have
how are implicit attitudes measured?
-infer participants attitude
1.) implicit association test- if you label cats with bad = negative attitude
2.) evaluative priming task- we can prime someone to walk more slowly by having them read words like cautious or leisurely.
What happened to participants after they got what they wanted?
-large systematic change to reduce dissonance
-outcome is clear only after making decision
what do we do to reduce dissonance?
change private opinion
Induced compliance study
-Less dissonance with $20 because justification for lying is high
-$1 highest ratings of enjoyment because didn’t have compensation, so felt more dissonant. Only given 1 dollar to lie. So they overcompensate. CHANGED THEIR BELIEFS
-Those who are highly rewarded for doing something that involves dissonance change their opinion less in agreeing with what they did than those who are given little reward
The illusion of Transparency
tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which their personal mental state is known by others.
- Liars overestimated how detectable their lies were 44%, when in reality, only 25% did
self-reference effect
information that is processed in relationship to the self is particularly well remembered
1. self reference
2. semantic
3. phonemic
4. structural
self-awareness
the extent to which we are currently fixing on our attention on our self-concept
self-consciousness and the 2 types
self-concept becomes highly accessible because of our concerns about being observed and potentially judged by others
private: introspect about our inner thoughts and feelings. most likely to base behavior on inner beliefs and values
public: focus on our outer public image and be particularly aware of extent to which we are meeting the standards set by others
east asia: high public self-awareness than people from western individualistc
why were children in front of the mirror less likely to steal than those who did not see the mirror
Mirror activated children’s self-awareness which reminded them of their belief about the importance of self-awareness
Deindividuation
loss of self-awareness and individual accountability in groups
5 presentation strategies to create a resulting emotion in the other person
- ingratiation= to create liking by using flattery or charm
- Intimidation= to create fear by showing you can be aggressive
- exemplification= to create guilt by showing that you are a better person than the other
- supplication= to create pity by indicating to others that you are helpless and needy
- self-promoting= to create respect by persuading others that you are competent
self-monitoring
being motivated and capable of regulating our behavior to meet the demands of social situations
narcissims
personality trait characterized by overly high self-esteem, self-admiration, and self-centeredness
attitude strength
how quickly an attitude comes to mind
what must be in line for attitude consistency?
affect, behavior, cognition
high self monitors vs low self-monitors
high: tend to blend into social situations to be liked
insufficient justification
situation actually causes our behavior, but we do not realize that the social situation was the cause
when extrinsic motivation is low –> people reduce cognitive dissonance by finding an intrinsic motivation for their behavior
overjustification
when we view our behavior as caused by the situation, leading us to discount the extent to which our behavior was actually caused by our own interest in it
self-perception
when we use our own behavior as a guide to determine our own thoughts and feelings
perceived self-knowledge is associated with
-decision satisfaction
-meaning in/of life
-moral behaviors
NOT EGO!!!!
effort justification
suffering for something can cause us to find it more desirable
Self-presentation
tendency to present a positive self-image to others, with the goal of increasing our social status
self-presentation—–> ________—–>_______
1) self presentation
2.) social status
3.) self-esteem
when successful self-presentation and other people view us positively, we have high social status, therefore experience positive self-esteem
thin-slice judgements
perceivers are able to make surprisingly accurate inferences about another person’s emotional state, personal traits, and sexual orientation based on snippets of info
psychological reactance
strong emotional response that we experience when we feel that our freedom of choice is being taken away when we expect what should have choice
subliminal advertising
when a message is presented to the consumer without the person being aware that a message has been presented
N-effect
the finding that increasing the number of competitors generally decreases one’s motivation to compete
local dominance effect
people are more influenced by social comparison when the comparison is more localized rather than being broad in general
frog pond effect
Marsh, Trautwein, Ludtke, Koller
-people in general had a better academic self-concept if they were a big frog in a small pond rather than a small frog in a big pond
Dunning-Kruger effect
Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, Kruger
-unskilled people often think they are on par or superior to their peers in tasks like test taking
brehm appliance experiment
example of dissonance after a decision
aronson & mills psych of sex experiment
example of EFFORT JUSTIFICATION
-severe participants liked the class the most