Key Motives Flashcards
Leon Festinger
- Was the beginning of social psych
- Studied under Kurt Lewin
- Top 5 in citations w/o publishing much
- Then studied archeology, then history
- Was interested in ppl, how they behave & why they do the things they do
- Emphasized experimental + real-world observation
- Was interested in deeply held beliefs (especially ideals resistant of other real world issues)
Leon Festinger and the Dooms Day Cult
- Joined this doomsday cult called ‘The Seekers’
- Highly indoctrinated group that required its members to give up their life to join this group, cut family ties, sold property, etc. (it was really hard to get in as they were secretive, reluctant to meet, suspicious)
- Dorothy Martin lead the group, as she was the only one able to do automatic writing (you get messages from supernatural beings and relay messages)
- From automatic writing she found out Doomsday (end of the world) was to be on December 21st 1954, due to a great flood, and a flying saucer would rescue the group
The day before Doomsday
- They all met at Martin’s house and were expecting a ‘Visitor’ at midnight to gather them into UFO before the flood at 7 am on Dec. 21st
- At midnight, when nothing happened, they said the clock in the living room is actually slow but there is a better one in the kitchen
- Continued sitting around and waiting
- The more they waited to more uncomfortable everyone got
- At 4:45 am Martin received another message saying that the little group, by sitting and waiting all night created such light that God saved the world from destruction
- After this event, you would expect people to be skeptical of this cult but the complete reversal happened
- They were no longer secretive and got into urgent proselytizing, trying to spread message and recruit and disconfirmation lead to an increased conviction, leading to his proposed Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Festinger’s conclusion on what is needed for conviction to increase with disconfirmation
- High initial conviction and strong link to action (tied their life to the cult making it difficult to go back to old life)
- High commitment, difficult to back out of
- Specific and real-world based belief
- Disconfirmation is recognized
- Social Support
Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger & colleagues)
- People troubled by inconsistency between their thoughts, feelings, and actions and as a result experience an unpleasant emotional state or dissonance (affective, uncomfortable arousal)
- People are then motivated to reduce such dissonance by rationalizing their actions or changing their attitude in order to create greater consistency (smoking while emphasizing importance of good health; binging on unhealthy food while on a diet)
How do people reduce dissonance and rationalize their actions using various strategies including:
- Changing their attitudes/cognitions (I don’t need to be on a diet)
- Changing perception of the action. (I hardly ate any dessert)
- Adding consonant cognitions (this dessert was actually quite nutritious)
- Minimizing the importance of the conflict (I don’t care if I’m overweight - life is short)
- Reducing perceived choice (I had no choice - this dessert was served for a special occasion)
Methods of Dissonance Induction
- Induced Compliance
- Free Choice
- Effort Justification
- Induced Hypocrisy
Induced Compliance
- Someone with more power has you complete a task that does not fit well with your personal attitudes or beliefs (something really boring)
- If you cannot justify the behaviour, why did you do it?
Induced Compliance - Classic Work by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
- Participants asked to complete boring peg turning tasks for an hour
- Then, those in experimental conditions asked to tell another participant that the tasks were interesting and enjoyable (those in the control were not asked to tell the other person anything)
- Some participants offered $1 for lying to next participant, while others offered $20 for doing so
- Participants later asked to evaluate their study experience
- Saying something we don’t believe and doing so with little justification (weak external insufficient justification) produces dissonance (to reduce dissonance/inconsistency, they changed their cognition to the study was not so bad)
- Dissonance leads to attitude change and changed cognition
Free Choice
- Choice between two equally attractive options arouses dissonance when considering positive aspects of rejected alternative and negative aspects of chosen alternative
- People often reduce dissonance that is aroused after making a decision by increasing their liking for the chosen item and decreasing their liking for the rejected item
- Spread of Alternatives
Free Choice - Classic Study (Brehm, 1956)
- Women were asked to rate several appliances
- Given choice between two equally favourable items or a favourable and an unfavourable item
- After making decision, all Ps rated the items again
- Those who had the easy decision had little cognitive dissonance and changes, whereas those with a difficult decision had a lot of cognitive dissonance and had very different changes in their ratings following spread of alternatives
Free Choice - Rationalizing Choices
- Other study shows that bettors at a race track were more confident in choices after placing their bet than before
- Applies to choice for political candidates, restaurants, vacation spots, or consumer goods; once people make a decision, they distort subsequent information to support their decision
Effort Justification
- Engaging in negative behaviour for a desirable outcome
- Cognition that action is negative is dissonant with engaging in the action particularly when the outcome is less desirable
- Ex. paying a high price for something (in dollars, time, effort) that turns out to be disappointing
Aronson & Mills (1959) Classic work on Effort Justification
- Female Ps believed they were joining a discussion group about sex and needed to pass a screening test to get into the discussion group
- Control Ps read innocuous words to male experimenter; mild initiation read mildly sexual terms; severe initiation Ps read obscene passages from erotic novel
- They then could listen in on group discussion which turned out to be super boring and about insect sex life
- Ps in the severe initiation group rated the discussion group more favourably, as they experienced the most dissonance and needed to justify the humiliation more and make it feel all worth it
Aronson & Mills conclusion
- People experience dissonance when they struggle to get something only to be disappointed by it
- However, they can reduce this dissonance by changing their cognitions about the very thing
- This strategy may be relevant in certain groups through painful initiation rituals (hazing), religious organization though investment of time and money, expensive restaurants or merchandise, among others, although negative to severe consequences associated with hazing
Resource Justification and Effort Justification
Time and money (the more you invest time and money into smth, the more you value it); shown with Armin Heinrich and the I am rich button app that cost $1000
Induced Hypocrisy
- Advocating for a belief
- Failing to act in support of that belief
- Affects all of us, we all live with some form of hypocrisy but these dissonant cognitions are not salient at the same time
- These hypocrisy paradigm highlights those cognitions and make them salient again
Aronson et al., 1991 study
- Students at university were asked to make a speech for condom use and believed this speech would be used in high school AIDS education program
- After, they were asked to list the times they had failed to use a condom
- This lead to dissonance and to reduce it, they rated themselves even higher on intention for condom use and bought more condoms after being indicated where on campus, they are available
When does inconsistency produce dissonance
Likely when it implicates a core sense of self and when there are foreseeable negative consequences for our actions
Why does a core sense of self relate to dissonance?
- Centrality of the self-concept
- People think of themselves as rational and morally good, so challenges to these self perceptions are more likely to arouse dissonance and more likely to prompt dissonance reduction
Why does foreseeable negative consequences relate to dissonance?
When students asked to write an essay advocating for a harmful product (smoking cigarettes is good for you) and were told their essay had negative consequences they experienced dissonance but only when they were told beforehand that their position would be shared; moreso they felt like liars for spreading a belief but not following it
What do aroused dissonance levels depend on?
- Weak external justification
- Perceived choice
- Commitment
- Cultural influences
Prof study on perceived choice
- Would have experimenters follow a script to make ppl conscientious before study
- Acknowledge how busy ppl are, tell them how important study is, and how much they are looking forward to participant opinions on study, but still would offer ppl to leave
- No one would leave, would put effort into study participation, and when asked about study would repeat experimenter’s words used in script
Culture and Self-Concept (Hoshino-Browne et al., 2005)
– Individualistic cultures see self as independent vs collectivistic cultures see the self as interdependent
- European Canadians and Asian Canadians asked to make a choice for themselves or their friends in study
- European Canadians had the most spread of alternatives when choosing for themselves, while Asian Canadians had the most spread of alternatives when choosing for others, and actually had no spread of alternatives for themselves
Self-Perception Theory
When internal cues are difficult to interpret, people gain insight by observing their own behaviour
Are cognitive dissonance effects merely self-perception effects?
- Inferring attitudes from behaviour
- Ex. I picked that poster, I must like it a lot more than the other poster (no dissonance required)
Dissonance vs Self-Perception
A key difference is the uncomfortable arousal involved in dissonance, which researchers tried to focus on via misattribution of arousal (two factor theory of emotion: taking a date to a scary movie and feeling heart rate go up from movie but misattribute arousal to their date when looking at them)
Can you misattribute arousal and eliminate dissonance effects?
- If there is normal dissonance induction, one can misattribute arousal and therefore not need to reduce dissonance
- However if it is self-perception, misattribution should have no impact
Dissonance and the Pill (Cooper & Zanna, 1974)
- Procedure involved subjects being asked to write a counter-attitudinal essay (topic with near unanimous disagreement) banning all speakers on campus
- Stimulated induced compliance/free choice paradigm by giving the illusion of high choice or low choice
- Ps then given a pill (placebo) that would either arouse, relax or have no effect on them and were then observed for attitude change
Conclusion of Dissonance and Pill study
- No choice condition did not have an attitude change
- “Aroused” + high choice condition had dissonance effect go away, due to attributing their discomfort to the pill (some but not much attitude change)
- “No effect” + high choice condition felt classic dissonance at writing against their own belief and concluded they must believe what they wrote (had attitude change)
- “Relaxation” + high choice condition had the most dissonance increase, their feelings going against their expectation of relaxation (had the highest attitude change)
Dissonance and the Brain
- Free choice paradigm vs Difficult choice
- With difficult choice condition, they saw increased activation in Dorsal ACC (involved in processing conflict) and anterior insula (involved in process of emotional arousal, like embodiment of disgust, guilt, etc.)
- They concluded that ACC and INS activity predicted PCC activity, which predicted a spread of alternatives (the higher the conflict in the brain, the higher the dissonance reduction)
- Another study induced compliance by asking the current participant to tell the next how comfortable scanning is, when it is really not
- They saw the same activation in the dACC and aINS for the counter-attitudinal condition and concluded the ACC and INS predict attitude change (the more conflict in the brain, the more in line they felt about what they had to say)
Self-Enhancement vs Growth/Self-Knowledge
- Self relevance means we are driven to see ourselves as valuable, competent, worthy, and to bolster our SE and defend our positive views of ourselves
- However it also means we are motivated to grow, learn new things about ourselves and our surroundings and are driven to achieve self-expansion and self-knowledge
- This heightens dissonance, due to contradictions
Positive Illusions about the self
- We are biased in our views towards ourselves, often using ‘Rose-coloured glasses’
- There are three types of illusions (self, control, optimism), which are technically errors, but they are all adaptive, by boosting beliefs in our ability to pursue a goal, in our environments for supporting that goal and that that goal is attainable
- Turns attention away from negative outcomes and stimuli towards goals
Unrealistic Self-Perceptions Better-than Avg Effect
- Positive illusions about ourselves stem from Better-than-avg effect
- Feeling more [moral, human, virtuous, competent, compassionate, less biased, talented, understanding, less error prone] than average
Are positive illusions healthy?
- Positive illusions are “health-protective” psychological resources that help people cope with adversity
- Depressed people and those with lower self-esteem tend to have more realistic view of themselves
- But positive illusions can lead to chronic patterns of self-defeating behaviours, by downsizing negative things we do and preventing opportunities for growth and learning as it is hard to take in inconsistencies of positive illusions
Self-handicapping
Behaviours designed to sabotage one’s own performance in order to provide a subsequent excuse for failure (like not studying for an exam and failing it, which protects you from attributing the failure to yourself, attributing it instead to a lack of studying)
Why do we engage in self-handicapping
It provides us with an explanation for possible failure and protects the self from seeing failure as a lack of ability by providing external justification
Sandbagging
Some people do this, by downplaying their own ability, lowering expectations or openly predicting failure (“I’m not that good at playing soccer” when actually really good)
Consequences of Self-handicapping or Sandbagging
Has negative impact on performance and affects social relationships, as others tend to show less liking toward people who do this
Maintaining Positive Illusions with Social Comparison
- We learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to others
- When on important attributes or dimensions, we often compare ourselves to others who are similar, whereas for objective standards, we compare ourselves to others period
Two types of social comparisons
- Upward (compare ourselves to someone better, which either makes us feel worse or inspired)
- Downward (compare ourselves to someone worse, which usually makes us feel better “at least I’m not at their level”)
Upward Social Comparisons (Lockwood & Kunda, 1999)
- Participants asked to self-rate how they felt about themselves in that moment and at their best moment, after half were asked to compare themselves to a superstar
- When rating their usual selves, those comparing themselves to superstars felt more positively about themselves compared to those who didn’t (“If I lock in, I can get there too”)
- When rating themselves at their best however, those who compared themselves had less positive self ratings than those who did not (“I’m at my best and still not on same level, I suck”)
Downward Social Comparison
- We tend to make comparisons with others who are worse off and feel better about ourselves, based off of moral superiority
- If experiencing a tragic life event, we tend to affiliate with others in same predicament who are adjusting well, like role models, and compare ourselves with others who are worse off (we all lost our jobs, but I’m doing better than this guy)
Downward Social Comparison and Reality TV Shows
- This effect is built into these shows
- They will threaten the self, by showing people who are richer than audience will ever be
- But they also provide a resolution to the threat, as their characters often tend to be awful or do awful things, making people feel really good about where they’re at, as they could/would never do such things
Past Self-Comparisons
- We tend to subjectively distance past personal failures and to perceive past successes closer in time (“things I did not do very well are behind us vs my successes just happened… 20 years ago)
- It protects us from negative implications of past failures and allows us to capitalize on past successes (determining whether we did well or not)
- Has been demonstrated through experiments where participants were asked to remember their best and worst grades
Ultimate Motive/Psychological Defense Theories
- Terror Management Theory (TMT)
- Self-Affirmation Theory (SAT)
- Belonging
- Compensatory Control
- Meaning
Terror Management Theory - Bases of Self-Worth
- Standards, values, social roles, and SE
- Living up to cultural-value standards provides a sense of SE; many of these standards vary w/in and between cultures
- Can also relieve death awareness (creative immortality)
TMT - Self-Esteem
A person’s evaluation of his or her value or self-worth
TMT - Just world beliefs
The idea that good things will happen to the worthy and bad things will happen to the unworthy
TMT - What role does social validation pay?
- Confidence in the absolute correcteness of our beliefs and values by TMT (social consensus and validation for implied correctness)
- Doubt about personal worldview after learning about another culture may play a central role in prejudice and intergroup conflict (the existence of conflicting cultures can be profoundly threatening and we need to psychologically or physically remove the threat)
TMT - Empirical Tests of TMT
- Research to assess TMT has focused primarily on cultural worldviews and SE
- Mortality salience hypothesis (cultural worldview protects against death and death reminders should cause people to bolster their worldviews OR bolster SE)
TMT - Protective Shield of Cultural Beliefs
- When cultural beliefs are compromised, thoughts of death leak into a person’s mind
- Death thought accessibility (DTA) hypothesis (fill in the blanks with words)
- Reminders of death increase investment in culture, but threatening culture increases awareness of death
Self-Affirmation Theory (SAT)
- Most basic fundamental need is basic self-worth, moral adequacy/integrity (essentially a SE w a want at the core of wanting to feel good about yourself)
- Explains TMT effects, like self-related conflict
- Novel hypothesis is if you boost SE, prior to threat inoculate people against threat (don’t need defences, should be protected against threats)
- Everything is about getting self-worth which fits with TMT reactions of worldview and self
SAT - SE Threat
- Personality feedback, modelled on the Barnum effect (ppl believe things on personality as applying to them) with participants getting RA to two conditions: positive (clear thinking, able, resourceful) and negative (passive, narrow-minded, lack of insight)
- Stereotype threat is when you face a stereotype saying you won’t do as well in a domain, you think over it, stress, and it impacts your performance (women and math)
- Mortality salience threat (we are a better alternative, so we are going to use death threats as well) vs dental pain
- The idea is that self-affirmation should protect against these threats
SAT Threat reduction with women and math performance
- When it was just the stereotype threat, women performed worse
- When there was affirmation added prior to stereotype threat, the math performance was equal for both genders
Self-Affirmation and Mortality Salience
- When faced with mortality salience, those with an implicit SE boost had significantly less worldview defense than those without
- Pairing (+) with self reinforces positives and helps feel good about oneself (like classic TMT study)
- Lead to a new theory building off of TMT study: that it is actually more about SE than death threat
Belonging
- We are social creatures (arguably the most) and we live or die/reproduce based on our connections; it is a fundamental need to belong which is what we are geared around
- ‘Sociometer’ is a barometer of emotion and can tell us how we are feeling
- SE (worth) serves as a barometer of belonging and tells us our degree of inclusion
- We don’t need SE to fight death, but we need it to understand our position in the group and feel like we belong
- If we lose SE, we want to get it back to feel like we belong
Threats to Belonging
Triggers Social Exclusion & Separation
Leary et al. (1995) Threat to Belonging Study
- 3/5 participants would work together as a group and the other 2 would work individually; they were told that a) they either would work as a member of the 3-person group (included condition) or would work alone (excluded condition) and b) this selection was based either on the other members’ preferences (based on the rating sheets that respondents completed earlier) on a random procedure
- Threat to belonging and SE
- Those in the “chosen” exclusion group had self rated themselves lower for SE and rated others lower, saying they did not want to be in that group anyways (wanted exclusion)
Compensatory Control
- Everything boils down to having control or not, as shown by increased popularity of authorities political parties and religious deities when faced with situations out of our control
- Control is a resource and when you lose it you need to supplement it with an internal (personal) or external (world) force, which overlaps with TMT defences (external = worldview)
Waterloo Study on Threat to Control
- Participants asked to think of a time where they had no control
- Reactions are very similar to TMT but with a twist: people were looking for control through agents active in control, like God or more authoritarian governments
- Preference for those who will rule, are powerful and will take care of their followers, hence the need to be on their team
Kay et al. (2008) study on which God is prefered
- Participants were asked to read about God as a creator (he created the world but had no active involvement after creation) or as a controller (created everything and remained involved afterwards, controlling all)
- Participants who were in the personal control condition endorsed God as a creator, with little difference to those without personal control
- Participants who were in the no personal control condition endorsed God as a controller WAY more than those with personal control
Illusion of Control (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008)
- Participants were in two conditions (control or no control) and participated in two studies unknowingly linked
- In the first study, they had to look at white noise & were asked how many patterns they saw; those with no control saw more patterns, as they were more motivated to find something not there
- In the second study, they had to look at stock markets (same principle) and those with no control saw more patterns, regardless of lack thereof
Meaning
- Existentialist, essential object of interest is obtaining and maintaining a sense of meaning
- Uses the Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM)
- Explains TMT, SE threat, Belonging, etc.
- Even every subtle meaning disruptions should cause the same defensive reactions caused by TMT, SE threats, loss of control, etc. (exact same threat defence response to anything, no matter the intensity)
Meaning - What is Meaning
Connections between mental representations (the lines connecting the dot, like a bigger more accurate associative network, which help provide an understanding/meaning)
Meaning - What is Threat
Meaning disruptions (breaking those connections/lines is a threat)
Meaning - Defense
Meaning affirmations (affirmation of meaning you already have or create new meaning)
Meaning - The Uncanny Valley
- The closer to human the more humans will like something, but if it reaches that point of being very humanlike but not human, likeness instantly drops
- It is a meaning disruption and feels uncomfortable
- Plastic surgery, human like robots, the Polar Express are all examples
Meaning - The Polar Express
The Polar Express was part of the beginning of CGI and received a lot of critic when it came out, as people felt horrified and uncomfortable with the animation to the point of not even being able to watch it, calling the characters dead eyed zombies; the reason for this was the lack of rapid eye movement, with eyes moving too smoothly to be humanlike, which was fixed by the animators
Meaning - Where the Wild Things Are
- Another example
- Kids loved this book but parents hated it and tried to get it banned
- It disrupted parents’ idealized way of seeing children as good beings who will try to do the good thing (meaning of children disrupted)
- Children however related to the characters in this book, fitting with their own meaning
Meaning - The Transmogrifying Experimenter (Proulx et al., 2008)
- During study, experimenter left and another experimenter (same hair and clothes but different person) swapped with them
- 95% of participants did not notice this change and the 5% who did showed an increase in worldview defences (favour in punishment of criminals)
- TMT dependent variable (reaffirms cultural values that are important to you & rejects any meaning disruptions/threats)
Travis’ Meaning Violations and their Defences
- Travis has used numerous violations, like books (Kaffka), art (Magriite), absurdist comedy (Monty Python), shifted patterns (wrong coloured deck of cards), misspellings (God of Cream), etc.
- Critiques said he only used negative meaning disruptions, so he demonstrated similar results with positive meaning disruptions
- He took a picture of participants and asked them to come back in two weeks, altering the treatment group pictures by morphing them with average faces to make them better looking
- When Ps came back to get pictures, there was a positive affect BUT as it was still a threat they also showed an increase in cultural worldview (there was still something wrong which prompted a need to reaffirm what they knew)
So which theory is it (According to Nash)?
- There are two answers:
1. Who cares who wins?
2. All of them “win”
What does Nash’s First Answer Mean?
The theories are all concepts or metaphors and each theorist will take a study through their lens and explain all the outcomes, making their falsifiability difficult and their ability to be chosen as correct or incorrect potentially impossible
What does Nash’s Second Answer Mean?
Each theory demonstrates important goals, needs, outcomes and all of the effects described are valid and there is a huge overlap between their theories and findings, revealing a common process
What question did Nash propose as better in both cases?
- As if it IS entirely in the head there must be a process
- How does it work? How does it happen? What is the process? What is the threat and how does defence happen?
- Need to shift the focus from a social dynamic issue and put it more in the body
The common link between all of them
Anxiety (cognitive dissonance helps find things that buffer this anxiety to feel better)
Types of Motivational Conflict
- Approach-Avoidance Conflict (+-)
- Approach-Approach (++)
- Avoidance-Avoidance (–)
Anxiety and (+-) Motivational Conflict
- Classic form
- Wanting to get something but met with signals of something being wrong, in which case anxiety is very helpful
- If approaching a potential romantic interest and get a weird look from them, anxiety will make you aware of this and help you asses whether you should still go or not
Anxiety and (++) Motivational Conflict
- It is the worst conflict one could have
- Like having two fun events that you want to go to on the same day and having to choose which one you go to (especially if there is importance attached to those events: best friend’s birthday or anniversary with bf, two favourite artists performing at same time at a festival, etc.)
Anxiety and (–) Motivational Conflict
- You have to do something negative to avoid a negative outcome
- Have a midterm coming up and to avoid failing, you must study for that test instead of relaxing or doing something enjoyable
Biology of Conflict: Three systems that deal with conflict
- Fight
- Flight
- Freeze (BIS)
Biology of Conflict: Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS)
- In charge of risk assessment to conflict
- Similar to other two conflict systems but involves different brain pathways (Amygdala, the Septo-hippocampal system, and the PFC)
- Outputs involve feeling anxiety/discomfort, inhibiting ongoing behaviour, and heightening attention to environment (stop and analyze situation at hand)
Biology of Conflict: BIS Defensive Approach Process and the associated conditions
- Prefrontal Dorsal Stream (Complex Anxiety: social)
- Posterior Cingulate (Obsessional Anxiety: cognition/rumination)
- Septo-hippocampal system (GAD: cognition/aversion)
- Amygdala (GAD: arousal/startle)
- Medial hypothalamus (GAD?: risk assessment)
- Periaqueductal Gray (GAD?: defensive quiescence)
Mouse example of Goal Regulation
- Seeing cheese triggers approach
- Smells a cat, triggering Approach/Avoidance Conflict
- Is in a state of anxious vigilance, while determining whether to go or not (whether to approach or avoid)
- Scans for viable alternatives if resuming pursuit is not an option
- Determines cat odour as old and resumes eager absorption in approach (anxiety is gone)
Managing Motivational Conflict and Anxiety
- Solving the conflict involves assessment reveals danger is not a problem or too much of a problem, allowing one to resume approach or to withdraw; risk assessment is sufficient in clear situations, whereas unclear situations make solving the conflict more difficult
- Another thing that is also seen in animals to some extent is displacing behaviours (animals pacing in zoos to feel better, anxious dogs biting or licking an injury, rats running in wheel, people becoming/focusing unrealistically (on) positive
Managing Motivational Conflict and Anxiety through Self-handicapping
If during risk assessment you determine the problem is too much of a problem, self handicapping may happen (like with an upcoming exam, if your fear of failure is too great, instead of studying you do something else thereby removing negative experience and resolving anxiety and conflict by blaming failure on studying, rather than ability)
Approach Motivation as a Cure to Conflict
With a possible threat, you can use approach to diminish threat by focusing on positive goals and making everything good stand out
Ideals and Behaviours for Relief
- Goals are structured in an abstract-concrete hierarchy pyramid
- At the top, you have ideals, values, and world views (abstract things that orient and direct more concrete goals); they are non conflicted
- At the bottom, you have concrete behaviours; often conflicted
- Taking notes in class would be a concrete behaviour to pursue more and more abstract concepts (to get a career which allows one to contribute, be in control feel good, and be remembered)
- Taking notes is concrete, not as appealing and can come into conflict with other concrete behaviours like hanging out with friends
Why are ideals a part of this?
- They are portable, riding in your head, making them salient and always accessible
- They are conflict free by definition (a sanctuary)
- They have a pre-emptive resolution, as future threats are no longer threats, accommodated by ideals (a relationship with God or the Group, sense of personal achievement, immortality (symbolic and literal), personal and external control, etc.)
Threats, Defences and Anxiety
- We are controlled by conflict, when things we want clash (threat)
- It makes us feel uncomfortable (anxiety)
- To feel better we reaffirm an abstract goal (Defence)
