L04 - Origins of Self-Knowledge

Question 1

What are the prerequisites for self-knowledge?

Answer 1

1. Self-awareness
- we are not born understanding that our self is separate from other people
- emerges aroung 18 months old
– Pass Rouge Test
- By age 4, children undersand that they have private access to the self in that others don’t have access to their thinking

2. Perspective-taking
- imagining others’ responses helps the child to acquire the ability to look at themsevles “from the outside”
- can then draw conclusions about self
- develops around age 5
– Pass False Belief problems (smarties task)

Question 2

Describe the findings of the False Belief Problem.

(Smarties task)

Answer 2

3 year olds fail: incorrectly think that other children will know that there are pencils inside the box + say that they always knew there were pencils in the box

5 year olds pass: correctly say that others will think that there are Smarties inside the box

Question 3

What are the intrapersonal sources of self-knowledge?

Answer 3

Self-perception: we observe our overt behaviours and use these observations to infer what we’re like
- similar to how we infer what other people are like

Introspection: we direct our attention inwards to our internal states (thoughts and feelings) and use this self-awareness to draw conclusions about what we are like

Question 4

Describe Andersen & Ross’ study on internal states vs. behaviour (1984).

Do people prioritize awareness of internal states or overt behaviour to construct self-knowledge?

Answer 4

Method: 40 undergrads
- how useful are different sources of information for someone to get to know what you are really like (1-11 scales)?
– seeing overt behaviour for a day
– seeing overt behaviour for several months
– knowing thoughts and feelings for a day
– knowing thoguht and feelings for several months
– interviews with friends and family

prioritization of internal states
- people report that knowing their internal states is better for understanding the self than knowing their behaviour or interviewing close ones

Question 4

Describe Andersen’s study on access to others’ internal states (1984)

How does access to internal states vs. behaviour shape others’ impressions?

Answer 4

Method: 60 Ps
- listened to interviews with strangers describing themselves
- assigned to 1 of 3 conditions
– Cognitive/affective: interviewee describing past thoughts and feelings
– Behavioural: interviewee describing past behaviour
– Control: interviewee describing mix of past thoughts, feelings, and behaviour
- Formed impression of interviewee by rating them on a personality measure
– compared these to interviewee’s self-ratings and to interviewee’s close friends’ ratings

cognitive/affective interviews produced impressions that are most in line with interviewee’s self-ratings and with close friends’ ratings

suggests that knowing thoughts and feelings is most useful for knowing someone well

Question 5

What does prioritizing internal states imply?

Answer 5

people prioritize awareness of their thoughts and feelings (vs. behaviours) to construct self-knowledge and beleive this is most revealing of what others are like
- why?
– recognize that actions can be influenced by external factors so think that thoughts and feelings are more revealig of inner self

self-perception may be more useful for forming self-knowledge wehn people are unclear about their internal states

assumption that introspection is useful source of self-knowledge is shared by much of psychology research which relies on self-report

Question 6

Describe Wilson et al.’s study on accuracy of introspection (1982).

Are people aware of what impacts their mood?

Answer 6

Method: 55 undergrads
- daily diary study for 5 weeks
- every evening rated (1 = very bad, 7 = very good)
– overall mood
– several predictors of mood: e.g., the weather, relationships with friends, workload, amount of exercise, # of hours of sleep the night before
- at the end of the study
– Ps estimated the relationship between their mood and each predictor (e.g., how do you think sleep affected your mood?)
– 22 additional observers also estimated the relationship between mood and each predictor (based on theories about mood, not by looking at Ps’ data)
– researchers calculated actual correlation between mood and each predictor (compared these with Ps’ and observers’ estimates)

Results:
- average within-participant accuracy correlation = 0.42
– shows that Ps made fairly accurate judgements about how various predictors influenced their mood
– but also indicates that Ps made quite a few errors (49% of subjects got the direction of at least one estimate backwards)
- average accuracy correlation for observer = 0.46
– shows that observers were just as accurate judges of predictors of mood as were the Ps themselves

suggests that people don’t have real, unique understanding of their mood, but isntead rely on shared theories about predictors of mood

Question 7

What does accuracy of introspection imply?

Answer 7

people don’t have a genuine understnading of why they think and feel the way they do
- internal processes are heavily influenced by automatic and unconscious processes

introspection may be more useful for describing intenral states, but not very useful for explaining why we have these in the first place
- Wilson (2002): suggests that people should take psychology courses if they want to understand themselves rather than relying on introspection

Question 8

What is symbolic interactionism?

Answer 8

Symbolic interactionism: the self-concept depends on our social interactions
- there is no self wihtout others

Question 9

What are the interpersonal sources of self-knowledge?

Answer 9

1. Social comparison
2. Looking-glass self
3. Social groups we belong to
4. including close others in the self

Question 10

What is social comparison?

Answer 10

We compare ourselves with others to form conclusions about our relative standing on attributes, abilities, opinions, etc.
- e.g., you can only conclude that you’re introverted by comparing yourself to others on introversion
- introspection and self-perception often rely on comparison

Question 11

How does social comparison relate to self-esteem?

Answer 11

We tend to engage in social comparison automatically
- direction of comparison influences self-esteem
– Upward: comparing ourselves to people that are better than us which leads to a decrease in sef-esteem
– Downward: comparing ourselves to people that are worse than us which leads to an increase in self-esteem

sometimes, we engage in social comparison strategically
- downward comparisons can help us feel better in difficult situations by focusing on people who are worse off
- upward comparisons can inspire us when wanting to improve ourselves

Question 12

What is the looking-glass self?

Answer 12

We construct our self-concept based on how others see us
- infer how others see us using:
– their direct feedback
– their behaviours towards us (e.g., facial expressions, sighs, etc.)
- not just close others, but also how others generally see us

Question 13

How do researchers evaluate looking-glass self?

Answer 13

Research examining looking-glass self compares (correlates):
- Ps’ self-report of their own personality/behaviour
- Observers’ reports of Ps’ personality/behaviour
– strangers or close ones

if looking-glass self theory is true, would expect a high correlation between self-report and observer report

Question 14

What are problems with the looking-glass self?

Answer 14

literature review of looking-glass self research shows that there is no consistent relationship between self-reports and observer reports

BUT, there is a strong relationship between people’s self-reports of their own personality and how they think they are perceived by others

Question 15

Why are there problems with the looking-glass self theory?

Answer 15

1. Others rarely provide full, honest feedback to us
   - feedback is often ambiguous (e.g., facial expression)
   – we’re rpobably exposed to more honest feedback in childhood and less in adulthood which may be part of self-beliefs formed in childhood endure into adulthood
   - feedback is often contradictory
2. We often dismiss or rationalize away negative feedback
   - healthy that we don’t incorporate all feedback because this would lead us to constantly change our self-concept and this would be confusing

for these reasons, we may know little about others’ actual reactions to us and we mus instead rely on our perceptions of others’ reactions to construct our self-concepts

Question 16

What are the two possible directions for the origins of our self-knowledge?

Answer 16

perception of others’ views of us –> self-concept

OR

self-concept –> perception of others’ views of us

Question 17

Describe Manheim’s study on causal evidence for looking-glass self (1966).

Do our perceptions of others’ views of us causally shape our self-concepts?

Answer 17

Method: longitudinal study of 103 university dorm residents
- baseline (Time 1):
– self-report of personality
– ratings of how they think other dorm residents view them
– importance of other dorm residents’ views of them
- 9 weeks later (Time 2):
– self-report of personality

Results:
- At Time 1, higher similarity between self-report of personality and perception of others’ view when people indicated that the other dorm residents’ view of them is important vs. not important to them
- self-report of personality at Time 2 changed in the direction that students’ thought others perceived them at Time 1

Question 18

What does the looking-glass self imply?

Answer 18

looking-glass slef means that the self-concept is shaped by how we think others see us, not by how they actually see us
- this is especially true for those whose opinions we really care about

Question 19

What is meant by social groups we belong to?

(one of the interpersonal sources for self-knowledge)

Answer 19

social categorization theory: we place ourselves and others into social groups and this process shapes our self-concepts
- e.g., race, ethnicity, gender
- social groups provide members with a shared identity that prescribes standards for what members should be like, believe, and behav
- Self-stereotyping: we take on and conform to the sahred identity of a social group in order to be accepted as part of that group by others
– more likely to do this with groups that are important to us

what are the characteristics of the social group I want to be a part of? –> self-stereotyping –> validation by others that I’m a good member of the group

we acquire some self-knowledge by taking on certain role identities
- the role identities we take on depend on the social positions available to us in society
- self-descriptions/behaviours in a role identity is determined by:
– expectations/standards for that role
– people’s unique strengths and preferences
- means that people don’t just rigidly adhere to a role expectation, but figure out how to make the role their own
– i.e., even if 2 people occupy the same role, each person’s role identity will be a bit different

Question 20

Describe Smith & Henry’s study that shows evidence for social categorization (1996).

Answer 20

Method: 153 Liberal Arts and Engineering majors
- rated slef on 90 triats (1-7 scale)
– e.g., domineering, sympathetic, cheerful
– 1-3 = descriptive, 5-7 = not descriptive
- rated ingroup and outgroup on same 90 traits
– Liberal Arts vs. Engineering
- Reaction time (RT) task
– rated same 90 traits as self descriptive or not
- Compared performance on RT task to ratings of ingroup
– if self-concept and perception of ingroup linked, would expect faster RTs for traits where self and ingroup are similar vs. dissimilar –> less interference on similar traits

faster RTs for traits on which a person sees themselves as matching the ingroup than for traits in which there is a mismatch
- both for yes/yes and no/no

suggests that perceptions of self and ingroup are linked

Question 21

How does outgroup influence the self-concept?

Answer 21

group membership is also often defined in contrast to outgroups
- means that the formation of some self-knowledge is a rejection of elements that are associated with an outgroup
- e.g., Indian-American, Mexican-American, and Black university students viewed healthy behaviour as White and therefore less likely to engage in them

Question 22

How does including close others in the self work?

Answer 22

in close relationships, we incorporate the others’ characteristics into our own self-concepts
- e.g., taking on a close others’ perspectives and characteristics

implies that self-other confusion is possible
- confuse one’s own characteristics with the characteristics of a close other or misremembering whether something happened to the self or close other

Question 23

Describe Aron et al.’s study on including others in self (1991).

Do people confuse their partner’s traits for their own?

Answer 23

Method: married graduate students
- rated traits for how descriptive they are of:
– self
– spouse
- me-not me reaction time task
– is the trait on the screen descriptive of you or not?
- greater self-other confusion indicated by:
– longer RTs for traits that are different between self and spouse
– more errors for traits that are different between sself and spouse (i.e., given opposite rating of what the subject originally indicated)

Ps were slower and made more mistakes on traits that differed between self and spouse
- for both “me” and “not-me” judgments

Suggests that close others and their characteristics become incorporated into the self-concept

Question 24

What are the determinants of self-concept change?

Answer 24

theories of interpersonal sources of self-knowledge point to routes to self-concept change:
- sociocultural and environmental changes
- social role changes
- changing the looking-glass
- changes to who one is close to

each interpersonal theory of self-knowledge implies different ways that the self-concept can change

Question 25

What are sociocultural and environmental changes that determine self-concept change?

Answer 25

Sociocultural: social movements change the expectations and role identities available to members of a social group
- these changes in expectations gradually influence the self-concepts of members of these groups

Environmental: self-concept may change in reaction to immediate change in social environment
- if new social environment comes with new norms for how epople relate to each other

Question 26

How do social role changes affect the self-concept?

Answer 26

gains and losses of social roles trigger changes to the self-concept
- initially comes with a period of self-concept confusion (low SCC) if perceiving a lot of change and feeling less positively about it
- gains particularly likely in early adulthood and losses particularly likely in late adulthood

Question 27

How does changing the looking glass affect self-concept?

Answer 27

people can purposely initiate a change to their self-concept if they believe they are perceived by others in an undesirable way
- focus is on changing perception of self by behaving differently until person thinks that others see the self in the desired way
– consistent with idea that desired reputation is most important self
- for change to be permanent, behaviour consistent with new self needs to be consistent and recognized by others

Question 28

How do changes to who one is close to affect self-concept?

Answer 28

since self-concept is partially a result of who a person is close to, means that the self-concept will change when we become closer to new people