ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE SELF 2 Flashcards
What does research into positive illusions suggest about their consequences for well-being?
Most people have positive illusions, they are adaptive and healthy
Why are our self-perceptions biased to be overly positive?
- Self-enhancement motive
*Self-esteem is a psychological need
What are two possible motives on our positive self-view?
*inaccurate, overly charitable views of self (and accurate views of their others)?
*inaccurate, overly cynical views of others (accurate views of self)
Explain the “Daffodil Days” Study on holier-than-thou bias?
5 weeks before charity event:
*“Will you buy at least one daffodil and, if so, how many?”
*“Will a peer buy at least one daffodil?”
*3 days after event:
*“How many did you buy?”
FINDINGS:
Overly positive with us and closer to reality with peers
Suggests that feeling “holier-than-thou”/ better-than average effectis due to errors in judgments about self, not in judgments about others
Is there a Cognitive Bias in Self-Perception? (STUDY: Kindness)
people overestimate likelihood that they would choose the kinder action by an average of 32%
Means that seeing self as uniquely kind is due to having overly favourable views of self and not due to being overly cynical about others
*Strange… since we have so much information about ourselves
What are the Types of information on which to base predictions of future behaviour?
- Case-based: evidence relevant to the specific case or person under consideration
- Distributional / base-rate: evidence about the distribution of behaviour in similar or past situations
*People are generally pretty good at estimating the distribution of social behavior in various domains
Explain how an answer changes with case based or distributional / base-rate outlook?
Steve is shy, is he more likely to be a librarian or a salesman?
Case based: Shy ppl are nerdy, so assume librarian
Base rate: There are way more sales people then librarians (you’d have a better guess with sales person)
What is the Base rate fallacy?
we tend to assign greater value to case-based info and often ignore distributional info
How does our usage of case based info explain why we see ourselves more positively?
When we make predictions about our own behaviour, we use case-based info
*We have a clear sense of what we’re like as a person (e.g., “kind”)
*When we make predictions about an average person’s behaviour, we’re more likely to use base-rate info
*Idea of “average person” is vague and abstract, so no case-based info is available, and therefore we have to rely on distributional inf
Do we use case-based info to predict own behavior and base-rate info to predict others’ behaviour? (STUDY TO VERIFY)
Participants received $5.00 for participating in study
*Received info about 3 charities
*Told that future participants will have a chance of donating any or all of their study compensation to one of them
- If u were chosen for that, how much would you VS an average person donate
learned about ACTUAL donations of 3, 7, then 13 people from earlier study (and allowed to revise their estimates)
FOUND:
Base-rate info improved accuracy of predictions of peer’s behaviour
*BUT did not improve accuracy of predictions for own behaviour
*Hung on to case-based info and rejected base-rate info
Does the findings on case based info rule out a self enhancement motive?
NOPE,
We could still be doing that too
Does presence of any case-based info prompt ignoring of distributional info? (FOLLOW UP STUDY: SPECIFIC PEER)
Repeated method of previous study but added third prediction (5$ donation study)
How much would u donate?
How much would average peer donate?
How much would specific peer donate?
FOUND:
Would enhance the peer too!
People ignored base-rate info for self AND for specific peer
*Feeling holier than thou (better-than-average) not necessarily due to self-enhancement motivation, but base-rate fallacy
(In 5$ study)
When asked what they consulted to rate them, average person, and specific peer what did they say?
With self and peer, they considered the personality more
With average person, considered average behaviour more
Are there cases where our self-perceptions are negatively biased?
Yes! Worse-Than-Average Effect
What is the Worse-Than-Average Effect?
Some better-than-average studies show that there are some domains where people tend to rate themselves as worse than others
*Concentration
*Artistic ability
*Acting ability
*Mechanical ability
(Tend to be things ppl think are hard)
What is Anchoring bias?
Anchoring bias occurs when we rely heavily on the first piece of information we receive
How do we use the anchoring bias when assessing ourselves?
We first think about our own abilities because they come to us automatically and effortlessly =anchor
- Then we think about others abilities
Causes our judgments of our ourselves to be biased by towards how we perceive our own ability in a given domain
Is Anchoring bias responsible for the better-than-average and worse-than-average effect? (STUDY)
People’s own skills serve as an anchor, but we fail to consider the skills of others
Better-than-average effect in domains that are easy for most people
*Anchor to own experience of task feeling effortless, failing to take into account that others may feel similarly
Worse-than-average effect in domain that are hard for most people
*Anchor to own experience of task feeling hard, failing to take into account that others may feel similarly
Study on Better-Than-Average Effect and test Difficulty:
Participants either got a hard or easy test
*Participants rated own ability compared with peers’ ability (0-99 percentile)
Predictions:
Easy test: Participants will see own ability as above average
*Difficult test: Participants will see own ability as below average
FOUND: Difficulty of test determined whether people saw themselves as better-than or worse-than average
(So prediction was right!)
Are there cases in which our positive illusions lead to negative outcomes?
How are positive illusions good?
How are positive illusions bad?
Good:
*Higher subjective well-being
*Higher achievement
Bad:
*More boasting
*Interfere with taking sensible medical precaution
What did a meta analysis find on positive illusions and relationships?
Have mixed results
- How long you know someone matters
*Self-enhance with strangers / less with people you know - Type of traits you self-enhance on matters
*Good traits: friendly / likeable
- Bas traits: Individualistic (less likeable)- What we project with self-enhancement is what ppl will see
