illusions about the self 2

Question 1

how do we know that people’s self views are more positive than warranted/are illusory

Answer 1

they are inconsistent with statistical probabilities for a group and/or objective reality

Question 2

what are the two self enhancement strategies

Answer 2

advancement: increasing how positively you see yourself

protection: decreasing how negatively you see yourself

Question 3

give an example of a protection strategy

Answer 3

self handicapping: creating obstacles for yourself that allow you to avoid the responsibility for potential failure that could damage self esteem

Question 4

when are you more likely to use self advancement/protection

Answer 4

high self esteem: advancement

low self esteem: protection

Question 5

two reasons for feeling holier than thou

Answer 5

• overly charitable views of self
• overly cynical views of others

Question 6

daffodil days study

Answer 6

investigating the source of bias for feeling holier than thou
- asked people before and after an event how many daffodils they were planning to buy for charity and how many they actually did
-also asked them to estimate how many other people would buy

found that people greatly overestimated how many they were willing to buy, but were closer when it came to making estimates about their peers

suggests that the bias lies in errors in self judgement rather than views of others

Question 7

how much do people tend to overestimate the likelihood that they would choose a kind action

Answer 7

they overestimate by 32% - only 4% when they estimate for other people

Question 8

what are the two types of information we use to make predictions about behaviour

Answer 8

case based: evidence relevant to the specific case or person under consideration

base rate/distributional: evidence about the distribution of behaviour in similar or past situations - people are usually good at estimating this type of information

Question 9

base rate fallacy

Answer 9

we tend to assign greater value to case based info and often ignore distributional info

Question 10

what sort of information do we use when we make predictions about our own behaviour, or about people we know

Answer 10

case based info - we have a clearer sense/more access to information about what we are like/how we think of ourselves as a person

Question 11

what sort of information do we use when we make predictions about an average person’s behaviour?

Answer 11

base rate info - the idea of “average person” is abstract so we don’t have any case based info - forces us to rely on distributional info

Question 12

base rate fallacy in self perceptions

Answer 12

ps asked to make predictions about how much they would donate and how much an average person would donate - given base rate info

info improved accuracy of their predictions about the average person but not accuracy of predictions about themselves - still used case based info

Question 13

case based info for judgements about specific others

Answer 13

method of base rate fallacies in self perceptions but added a third prediction about a known peer

found that people also ignored base rate info for the peer

suggests that the better than average effect is due to base rate fallacy, not self enhancement motivation

Question 14

worse than average effect

Answer 14

there are some domains where most people rate themselves as worse than others:
- concentration
-artistic ability
-acting ability
-mechanical ability

Question 15

anchor hypothesis

Answer 15

the anchoring bias is responsible for the better than average and worse than average effects

Question 16

anchoring bias

Answer 16

common human tendency to rely too heavily on first piece of information that comes to mind/is offered (the anchor) when making a decision

judgements tend to be biased towards anchor/info that we can easily retrieve

Question 17

how does the anchoring bias affect comparisons between the self and others?

Answer 17

our own abilities act as an anchor because they come to use automatically and effortlessly

we insufficiently take information about other’s abilities into account

Question 18

anchoring bias and better than average/worse than average effects

Answer 18

people’s own skills serve as an anchor but we fail to consider the skills of others

this leads to:

better than average effect in domains that are easy for most people

and

worse than average effect in domains that are hard for most people

Question 19

better than average effect and difficulty

Answer 19

experimentally manipulated participant’s perceptions of their skills - had them do either a hard or easy test and then rate their ability compared to their peers

found that difficulty of test determined whether people saw themselves as better or worse than average

Question 20

meta analysis of positive illusions

Answer 20

• positive illusions about the self are good for personal adjustment - higher subjective well being and lower feelings of depression

mixed effects for relationships
- self enhancement is linked to more liking by strangers but no association for longer term relationships

types of traits you self enhance on matter:
collectivistic traits = seen as more likeable/warm

individualistic: - more competent, less likeable/warm