Lecture 2 - The Self Flashcards
How did William James (1890) describe the self?
Containing two aspects: ‘I’ and ‘Me’
I: refers to the fact that I can be reflexivity aware of myself
Me: the knowledge I have about myself/ self-concept
How is our self-concept shaped by others?
- How we imagine ourselves in their eyes
- What we think they see
- How they treat us
Is there cultural consistency in how we view ourselves?
American: creative, successful, intelligent
Chinese: mother/ father, brother/ sister, employee of X
Ross, Xun, & Wilson (2002) study on multi-cultural self
- Participants: 111 Chinese-born students in Canada
- What did they do?: Complete an “I am…” task either in Chinese, or English
- Found: For bicultural individuals, different identities are stored in separate knowledge structures that can be activated by using different languages
What are the cultural differences in ambiguity?
Eastern cultures: more likely to report experiencing different emotions at the same time - more ambiguous feelings
Western cultures: more likely to report feeling one emotion - find it hard to imagine feeling two opposing emotions at the same time (being non-ambiguous)
Who proposed the social comparison theory?
Festinger
What is the social comparison theory?
- Where things cannot be measured objectively, people look to others for cues about how things should be judged.
- Judgments are made relative to available comparison standards
→ Whether something is “good” or “bad” depends on whether it is “better” or “worse”
Explain Klein (1997) study on social comparison and the self
- Participants: 437 US college students
- What did they do?: Told participants they had scored 40% or 60% on an aesthetic value judgment task + given information regarding average score (worse or better)
- Findings: Absolute (measurable) information counts – 40% v 60% comparison
But so does relative (comparison) information – 20% worse v 20% better comparison
How do we compare?
Most of the time we compare with similar others:
- If they are good at X, then I should be, too
- Serves self-evaluation motives
But sometimes we compare ourselves with dissimilar others:
- Self-improvement versus self-enhancement
How do we protect the self against unwanted comparisons?
- Attainment and maintenance of positive self-concept is an important individual motivation (i.e., self-enhancement)
- While we may have some choice in the comparisons we make, often we are confronted with unflattering comparisons
- There are strategies people use to maintain positive self-views in the face of negative feedback
What is self-enhancement motive?
A lot of social psychological theories of the self assume that people are motivated to maintain a self-concept that is positive
What is the self-verification motive?
Some have argued that an equally strong, if not stronger motive is for the self is to be seen accurately by others
